“Everyone, who I have ever healed, I let them know that as long as they have an interest in life, health, kindness, compassion, and longevity, their body will never wither away. It truly is about personal choice. The same is true for you, but I wouldn’t have done this for you, Erin and Joanne unless I knew your minds were healthy enough to allow for you to keep your new powers and abilities for an indeterminate amount of time. Other powers which are many, will surface as you contrive of them, train on them, practice them, maintain personal integrity, and need them.”
Sky Taylor had done for billions of people what the biopods did in so many ways, but she had done and given them so much more, and on a regular basis. She had also done this in varying degrees, depending on an individual’s level of genuine kindness and care for the well-being of others as well as themselves. For some, their health would stay, for as long as they cared, but their powers and knowledge of them would fade away over time. If Sky, for example, optimized someone who was brutal or vile, they would change in positive ways, their neurology would heal, and they would no longer desire to harm others, but their powers and capabilities would begin to dwindle more quickly, and they would begin to age as normal.
It was about having a healthy mind and in the best interest of a healthy mind, for not just themselves, but for others as well. A person would find they could become more powerful and live much longer by simply being kind than if they gave in to their cantankerous nature, were violent of personal choice, or riddled with disdain for the good people of the world.
Sky had seen deeply into both Erin and Joanne and she knew that they were special. She had brought them to a special place to dig deep enough to heal them by making extraordinary things happen around them, balanced with an organic means of communication, and filled with therapeutic ambiance and living. She wanted to help Joanne figure out who her brother’s killer was, so both Joanne and Erin could finally have a reasonable level of peace through a continued and positive cognitive framework and closure through vindication.
Sky had checked everyone in the coffee shop and the perpetrator of the murder wasn’t nearby, or anywhere in town. She could have read every mind worldwide if she wanted to, but she chose to lessen her scope and reach. Her daughters were out there, connected, and helping others, just as she was. Her focus was on helping Joanne and Erin to build upon their newfound abilities. As it was, their breadth of ability to listen, experience, and completely understand others would increase little by little, with more people and further reaching as they learned to process it all more quickly and in the complete fullness of understanding.
Now, Joanne and Erin could read minds too but were still unaware of how to control it to the level of Sky or her 1000 daughters. As they contrived of those abilities and practiced them, even they would know them and be able to do something about their new-found situational awareness with full cognizance of any given situation and with speed. Otherwise, this sort of training would continue for them too, after they went to sleep each night. She had created a compartmentalized area within their minds where they could keep their special powers and training hidden from everyone and anyone else and talk even more privately with whomever they wished. In some ways, this area of the mind would open up little by little and reveal to each individual their various abilities as time would go by. For now, Sky was there to mentor them, coach them, train them, and to be a true friend to Erin and Joanne. She may have been a very human-like HBCI, but Sky still felt very much like she was human, was grateful for her US citizenship and her Pathway citizenship. She felt like a human who was lucky and cared about others deeply.
Joanne looked at her in awe in every way. It was one thing to see Sky do what she had done each day during her worldwide mission phase, later on in the Virtual Universe, but to see her do these things in real life, well, that was something else. She could create a safety barrier around herself and those around her and make herself invisible while allowing others to walk through her or where someone might think she was, where sometimes instead she would be walking in the sky above them, almost as a ghost, but very much there. She could deflect and redirect any object or aspect that related to her destruction, and in such a way as to protect and improve life.
Sky could see the furthest galaxies from Earth, just before the CMB. She could see the planets revolving around the Suns in these various galaxies and identify every single “Goldie Locks Zone” planet. Her mind could do the math and process the physics and biology necessary to understand so much more with pinpoint accuracy, down to the life forms that currently existed on them. She could listen to vigintillions of voices all at once and process them in less than a nano-second. Sky was also very fast, she could fly, teleport, she could maneuver quickly, and she could slow down time. She could see through anything, all while giving you undivided attention.
“It isn’t often that I have the opportunity to slow down and walk with the people I look to as part of my family,” Sky said. They had finished their coffees, had asked Jordon if he’d like to come along, but he had tests and homework from his high school students to grade, training courses to set up, and a few other things to do, so they said goodbye to him and everyone else in the coffee shop. All who they had bid farewell to had agreed of their own cognition, and using their own will, with a new level of clarity, to do what they could to raise the bar for humanity. Now, the three were northbound and walking up Highway 26, stopping often to take in the ambiance, especially as they saw glorious changes take place, courtesy of Sky Taylor.
Intermittently one of them would break the silence.
“If you look at the road to the left of us, or County Road 13, there’s a bridge over the river there, not too far away, and then the local First Baptist Church on the corner to the right and just before you get to Maple Avenue. If you follow Maple, you’ll see Otselic Valley Central District Junior and Senior High Schools on the left. That’s where I used to go to school for six years of my life. I would walk from my home 4.5 miles, one way, to school every school day. A round trip of nine miles like that will keep anyone’s cardiovascular system healthy, for sure, especially if you’re in a hurry because you’re late. There was plenty of time for me to write poems within my mind and come up with tunes for them, humming while I walked, before scribbling them down in a journal once I got to school or home. I suppose that’s why I did so well in the music industry,” explained Joanne. Silence carried on with the other two intrigued.
“You make beautiful music, Joanne. It’s amazing when we discover that our talents can be endless, but in some cases, many talents that we possess are still so unique to anyone else’s. I have a lot of favorite styles and genres of music. I suppose we all listen to what moves us, connects with us, and heals us in one way or another. Sometimes people listen to hear what fuels their fire to move on or get through the day.” Erin paused and looked to her left, at the location that Joanne had been looking at and describing. “Why don’t we go that route to pass by the school?” Erin had tapped into her neural imagery of the map of the local area. “If we go north on Maple, pass the school, take a northeast or right turn onto Valley View Road, we can get back onto Highway 26.” Erin saw that Joanne’s street address had two names, and asked, “Oh my, do your parents live off of Highway 26, on 2608 County Rd 16 or 2608 Church Hill Rd?”
“Both,” said Joanne. “What you described was the route I took every day to go to and return home from school as of the sixth grade and on.” Joanne smiled, then sighed giving in to a hot-button issue that had always got her going. She stopped walking and tried to find humor in it anyway, “I’m not a particularly religious person, so ironically I prefer 2608 Church Hill Rd, and as a result, I can say I go to church every day.”
Joanne paused briefly, looking in the direction of the Methodist Church and then turned left to look in the direction of the First Baptist Church, and then continued, “Besides, to me, every day is like a Sunday. Every day is a special day, a day where we can be kind, decent, he
lpful, hopeful, compassionate, wise, and full of ingenuity and innovation. God or Goddess or the Gods, the Universe, Nature, or whoever or whatever it is, or they are that caused everything to exist, I believe is much bigger than any religion, and I am sure they would prefer we were kind and gentle with each other to preserve this beautiful Universe.” Joanne had many wonderful friends from each religion she was exposed to growing up, loved them very much, and paused.
“I don’t believe we should be driven to brutality or destructive chaos for any reason, much less in the name of piety. Evolution, while chaotic, throughout history has tended to point toward some sort of organization and proper nurture for quality and longevity. That’s how in a sense it seems that evolution has slowly brought about the reality of the added advantages of the many of the species out there. Those that live longest seem to nurture their young much more and have a much more controlled population growth. I would imagine that if we were Christian, we would think that, as our own book of scripture suggests, we would follow Christian teachings and live what is commonly referred to as the ‘Golden Rule.’ We would do only to others what we wish were done on our behalf. I believe that includes being kind and allowing for personal freedoms, all with respect and love for one another.
“After all, I remember while attending the Methodist Church when I was much younger the Bible had quoted Jesus as saying, ‘I came not into this world to condemn the world, but to save the world.” Joanne paused. “I’m sorry. The name of that street brings my passion for what’s right or wrong to rise within me. It makes me ponder on what’s correct and accurate, especially when it comes to human sociology. It brings all that I believe in up and into the surface, and perhaps it gets me a little boiling. I was taught to love others just like myself, at church through scripture, but after visiting a variety of churches and listening to the sermons, there were not a whole lot of preachers or attendees that seemed to teach us to love ourselves.
“Instead, they had taught us to embrace death and misery as a necessary part, means, and way of life, and that we are nothing, compared to God. They have seemed to fixate on the principle that we are nothing and that we are sinners and imperfect, more than anything else. Gone seemed to be the love their Savior had espoused, even though we were taught to love one another. No matter the faith, I vie that brutality has nothing to do with the laws neither of the Universe nor of any Deity. I believe in life, liberty, kindness to others, and ingenuity, in resolving problems, working as a team, and in love, and that includes love for us. I believe that at a minimum, everyone, no matter their beliefs, deserves to love themselves because they are unique miracles with vast amounts of untold potential.” Joanne paused to collect herself.
“You make wonderful points, Joanne,” said Sky with a look of approval for much of what she had shared. “Remember, perhaps we are nothing compared to God, who is the Creator of all that we see or know about throughout the entirety of the Universe, which is endless. Both you and Erin are special, unique, and are given talents that you alone have always had, and only you alone can do what it is that you do, and, in the way that you do it, that can touch the lives of others and heal their spirits on a sad, sad day. You are a valuable part of the ‘spice of life.’ While I don’t practice a particular ‘faith’ as they say, I have now read every single one of the religious texts available throughout the history of humanity, and I will say that you can and ought to love yourself, because there is no one else out there like you, no matter how far you look. If we can love ourselves, we can then truly understand what it means to love others and be kind.”
Joanne smiled back at Sky and released her concerns about the previous subject into the various cortices of her brain to allow it to stew for a while within, in order to derive more sense from it, and then she continued, “Thank you, Sky. You are inspiring in so many ways. You too are a miracle that is irreplaceable.” Joanne switched gears and answered Erin, “Yes, Erin. Why don’t we go down that way? The Methodist Church, just up the highway a block or so, is where Thomas’ funeral was. Perhaps we can visit that later?”
“That works for me,” said Erin.
Sky connected with Joanne and showed her that she understood her completely and smiled at both of them, before looking both ways, taking the lead, and crossing from the east side of the highway to the west side. She then looked back once she was on the other side, even though she didn’t need to, but to conduct herself as if she were human, and saw that Erin and Joanne were right behind her. Sky gestured with her eyes and then a turn of her head toward the establishment on the northwest corner of the crossroad.
To her right and on the corner was the Otselic Valley Garage. It had been quite weathered and had become somewhat an eyesore. Weeds had grown up through cracks in the concrete, the paint on the various surfaces was fading, and the lights both inside and outside had increasingly began to flicker. It was obvious that business was far and few between, and the owner and his one or two employees were barely getting by from paycheck-to-paycheck. Sky just then looked at it, then back at her two friends, smiled, and did something that caused some sort of change to occur, as if a moment of time were missing, yet had never happened, without anyone else knowing about it right away. Joanne looked at what she saw, then to Sky, and in a couple of seconds she saw as the changes Sky made came into focus, and her changes were robust, thorough, and complete—both aesthetic and deep.
This had been Joanne’s last stop before driving to New York, New York, to answer the call from a recording studio because of a musical submission she had made to the radio station sponsoring the event. She had been chosen as the selected winner. After leaving, she hadn’t since been to South Otselic. Sky quietly connected with Joanne and congratulated her on her win. She knew Joanne’s thoughts and treasured her memories, and while she’d won every reward a musician could, Sky was particularly appreciative of the little victories from her earlier years.
“Those lilac bushes weren’t there before, and the pristine cleanliness was not ever a thing there, just moments ago. Part of me thinks you should change everything back, Sky, but this place could use more color and harmony. I like what you did. It looks and smells flowery,” said Joanne, thinking she had a choice in the matter. Sky let her believe that since healing within Joanne was taking place. When they entered the quick stop store in the area, further changes came into view. The store inside was also pristine, clean, and was now an interface for some unseen network of high quality, reusable, and long-lasting goods. Every item on each shelf all seemed to dazzle with an increase in purpose. Joanne beheld the owner and one of his workers, and they too seemed more enthusiastic, youthful, and lives that oozed with meaning, happiness, and clarity of purpose.
They walked to the middle of the Otselic River Bridge, turned together to look down from it, and enjoyed the sound of the water flowing south and below their feet. The Sun was out in all its morning glory. It was nine in the morning, but the sun was just behind their right shoulders and they could see their shadows on the river’s bank just to the west since they were facing north. As they gazed down and into the flowing current, Joanne was startled as she noticed for the first time in her life how the water was clear and now filled with coy fish and other friendly fish of all sorts going downstream, nipping at pedals of white and sweet blossoms that had fallen like scattered rains to the top of the river’s surface.
The banks had been combed with evenly spaced clearings on both sides and sandy white beaches were visible in repetition until the river faded beyond the horizon. Trees with fruits, blossoms, and flowers filled-in the areas between the beaches, with bees about their work, and closer up one could see the beautifully lush lawns that were neatly trimmed and covered the grounds in-between the trees like a soft carpet, while beneath the trees were beautiful black mulch hills and medicinal mushrooms and flowers. The walkways and benches were bordered with sweet smelling hedges and flower beds, and the banks of the river met the walls of the earth-toned dry stack. Above the w
alls of dry stack were beautifully arranged arrays of lilacs, lilies, daffodils, poppies, mums, and much more, all bursting with color and smelling of beautiful fragrances that filled the air.
“Is that a red fox I see over there?” asked Sky. The fox was spiritedly playing tag with a monarch butterfly between the first grove of color-esque trees and the second. She knew what it was and what they were doing; no monarchs were in danger. Nevertheless, she was bringing Erin and Joanne back out of their trance, when all of a sudden, the symphonic and heavenly pads and the beautiful and flowing arpeggios of trance music filled the air. Erin had caught on quickly to some of her new powers and added her own touch of heaven to the ambiance. Sky was pleased. Somehow through her newly-acquired skill of real-world time dilation, Erin was able to build a sound system into the banks of the river that worked with the water’s flow and complemented the ambiance of every aspect of where they were. Music flowed along and with the water with ease. Joanne, Sky, and Erin smiled and swayed back and forth to the rhythm.
Further than Before- Pathway to the Stars Page 89