Further than Before- Pathway to the Stars

by Matthew Opdyke

  Joanne, feeling a previous sense of tension dissipate, said, “You two are wonderful. The haunting memories of this place are being clothed with beautiful ones. Thank you.” As Joanne said that, as if impossible, every moment and every memory of every person within a three-mile radius played before her eyes, and she knew the people in the town of South Otselic were much more pleasant and thoughtful than she had ever given them credit for. Sky picked up on their thoughts and sentiments right away, smiled to herself, and said nothing. Then it hit Joanne; none of them had been involved in any way in her brother’s murder. She also realized she could sense things from much further away, but not as clearly. “Perhaps in time, I will learn.”

  “Yes, you will,” replied Sky.

  All three turned westward toward the First Baptist Church and Erin and Joanne noticed how she had beautified its surroundings to make the next Sunday for its attendees all the more pleasant. “These are some wonderful people. They deserve a little flare,” whispered Sky. The lime and calcium stains from years of industrially polluted rains were gone from the windows and the side of the edifice and the building looked clean, fresh, and new, both inside and out. The building took on a beautiful shape that complemented the new surroundings of the Otselic River. The cars nearby that had once been riddled with hailstones during winters past, as well as cars that had suffered from wear and tear, were now pristine, and people would soon discover they no longer needed to fill their cars with fuel. Each vehicle in South Otselic was now as exotic as their owner’s minds would wish them to be. To top it off, each of their vehicles now had a small, hidden, and completely sustainable fusion core. Every comfort tied in with their physiological and neurological needs automatically. For entertainment, each passenger could watch their own shows with sound only they could hear, the driver could listen to their favorite music or radio personality, all could carry on conversations as desired at the level necessary for clarity and the driver could hear directions given, as they would override and pause other sounds. Their vehicles could now auto-start, carry out automatic parallel parking, and had been fitted with and could effectively employ the latest in anti-accident technologies. Finally, updates and upgrades, as well as repairs would be instant and automatic as well and were possible through vehicle-centric maintenance nanos. It was obvious Sky had done this, and she had many times before since every object she improved upon would be timeless and had something known as smart-visual technology, which allowed the owner to get creative with the appearance. The next morning, townsfolk would notice and would quite interestingly find themselves surprised in every possible and positive way, as their keys worked with remote buttons that were very intuitive, in parallel with the thoughts of the owner.

  Erin and Joanne were impressed with the details of the improvements that Sky had shared with them using their neural links. After finding themselves amazed at the creativity of these vintage, classic, and exotic cars, trucks, vans, boats, campers, and other vehicles parked outside and down the street, they turned the corner onto Maple Avenue and headed north.

  Joanne noticed, how, with every step she took, the streets around her went from cracked with weeds growing from the dirt gathered within, and worn from weather and use, to streets that were creative, cobblestone or even artistically soothing, matching the nature surrounding them, yet with clear enough definition to see animals, debris, other objects, and people. Each street aesthetic was seamlessly intertwined with what looked like flexible and automatically heated and cooled concrete that was poured into perfect sections and with quality. The signs were no longer rusty, bent, and riddled with .22 caliber holes, but were now digital readouts indicating speed, wildlife and child safety displays. Every sidewalk was wide, with extra lanes for bikes and for walking dogs. If someone were walking their dog, conveniently located nearby, every fifty feet or so were bags and receptacles. These receptacles and those of other private and public areas, each served as local refuse disposal systems, which were tied into the power systems and converted all manner of waste into enough energy to power everything within the town.

  Sky linked her mind to Erin’s and Joanne’s minds to show them how old products, and even trash, were both now sent to manufacturing plants and converted into not only the latest and greatest products but items that could be upgraded and updated for centuries to come. The store they had gone to that morning was now an exchange hub, where someone could take any old items and exchange them, no money needed, for a similar item that was new, much more spectacular, and the latest and greatest and upgradeable and updatable. Anything needed could be asked for and provided. Before her eyes, Joanne’s small hometown was being upgraded and beautified in every awe-inspiringly possible way, and it seemed the sentiments of the townsfolk were actually registering as excited and gracious, but they weren’t sure to whom. When they were to fall asleep that night, they would find out, because Sky had scheduled that time for their Virtual Universe training. Everyone was still themselves in every way, but their wounds would begin to heal, the scars in their minds would be filled with joy from lessons learned and misery would be remembered as challenges overcome. They would think and recall everything needed precisely and clearly as needed. No more would they be frustrated for that forgotten word or memory or study, now they would feel a resurgence of clarity of every science and mathematical formula they’d ever learned, and with that, innovation and ingenuity and even gratitude that would be properly placed, given time.

  They walked by her old junior and senior high school, and Joanne marveled at the artistic creativity, ingenuity, beauty, and even utility of every aspect of its design, where just moments ago it had been an aged and drab set of buildings with little creativity at all. Not a single life was in danger at any moment through these changes. Sky was serenely aware of every person, every creature, every molecule, and every particle and had structured every bit of it to preserve life, increase the quality with which it was experienced, and in a lovely way.

  They continued their walk and turned on to Valley View Road, and Erin and Joanne beheld the beautiful and useful changes that took place, down to every detail, where very little would be noticed until the haze of what was once reality wore off the next morning. People would rise up and find new meaning and purpose in life each and every day. Slowly, her town was becoming a small, vibrant, and unique town unlike any other, and Joanne was pleased.

  After turning on to Highway 26, Joanne saw as the road there had lost its typical narrow aspect, and became wide, with octagonal shapes fitted together providing centuries of use, lighting, warning displays, and even vehicle tune-ups for passers-by, as they drove over and then hovered over until they left the areas affected by Sky’s changes, landing smoothly without need for concern for safety. People passing through town would similar repairs being made constantly and updates to their vehicles, similar in mechanics and enjoyment, yet unique to their thoughts. Their minds and bodies would be healed, and the beauty of life would spread far and wide.

  “You are my sisters in so many ways, Erin and Joanne. It truly is beautiful here.” Sky would say this, and Joanne would see blossoms and flowers sprout within the evergreens, maple trees, the cottonwood, and many other types of fruit trees nearby. Sky was something else. At one point, when they were passing the homes of a couple of men who had been on the football team, Sky had rendered herself, Erin, and Joanne invisible, floated them above their homes, scanned their minds for memories, kept obvious memories to themselves, and they had each found that none of them had been involved in Thomas’ murder. Following which Sky updated and healed every home, part of the environment, and physiological and neurological construct in town. No one would be left behind.

  Walking now, for about an hour, they were on the outskirts of town, about a mile and a half from Joanne’s childhood home. The three young ladies, who appeared to be about twenty-two years old, each, had enjoyed their conversations with Jordan and they had reflected on them often while walking, sometimes in shared conve
rsation, sometimes in shared thought, and at other times privately. At one point, Joanne shared her archives of memory footage of the football games where Joanne had attended and watched her brother and Jordan on the field playing a home game against a visiting team. This was during one of the stops they made during their walk which took much longer than Joanne’s typical jaunt from school to home. They could tell that he enjoyed conversing with them as well. He was impressed with how well Joanne had aged, despite traveling the world and entertaining the masses. In all actuality, Erin was nineteen years old, Sky was one year and a couple of months old, and Joanne was thirty-three. Jordan was thirty-five. Each of their minds had the maturity, the mental capacity, and the clarity that billions of years in the Virtual Universe and dilated time would have given to someone with an optimized neurological capacity, and physiologically optimized further than before. They linked with Jordan every now and then because they’d taught him how to do it before they left the coffee shop, just to pass some time as they walked, and then returned to talk amongst themselves.

  Ever since they had been read-in, each of the young ladies had also been upgraded with many amazing powers beyond the scope of what they had prior to optimization. For the last year, Sky had been the only one, outside of the optimized and neurologically-linked individuals that could tap into and read each other’s minds, as permitted by each other. She was the only one, except her daughters, who could actually interface someone else to the Virtual Universe or fly like a superhero. At least that used to be the case. Now she had bestowed that power upon Erin and Joanne. It wasn’t a sudden quickening; however, they would learn each power as they walked along the highway. They had an hour and time to spare, and they would be in town for a week.

  Sky’s brain was so sophisticated and with so much voluminous capacity that all of the information Pathway had access to was also contained within her mind. This meant that the information of every computer, every supercomputer, every satellite, and every frequency and wavelength, to include the information and capabilities within the Twelve Database Moons were stored and readily accessible to her at any time. She could process the complexity of everything within her mind in milliseconds and decipher every plausible outcome for every given action and reaction, and then decide the correct action before a normal human being could blink. She could simultaneously hold conversations with every linked individual throughout Pathway and the world at the same time and with pinpoint accuracy, relevance, and a devoted sense of attention.

  Her daughters could do likewise. Rarely did they need to talk with everyone at once, but they had the ability to do so. The billions of people they had healed and the trillions of creatures that were now sentient and healed, from the Sun to the outer reaches of the Oort Cloud, where galactic radiation winds and bursts were tamed by Eliza’s ever-improving solar system protection shielding and countless nano cloud systems could tap in to Sky or any of her daughters or sons, and they likewise to anyone else, at any time. Yet only Sky, her daughters and sons, and now Eliza, Yesha, James, and Vesha, as well as Erin and Joanne would know they also had the ability to engage neurologically with someone else at the opposite side of the Oort Cloud-Solar Orbit.

  Sky had revealed to Erin and Joanne the fact that Vesha Celeste, Yesha Alevtina, James Cooper, and Eliza Williams had also been imbued with shared qualities and abilities. Amber Blythe, Najem Grace, and Jasmine Belle would soon follow Erin and Joanne. Finally, Sky let Erin and Joanne know that she and her family would do likewise for Matzu Kashi, James Wilhelm, Yon Forall, Malinda Jefferson, Melissa Asher, Rebecca Knight, Mett Dormer, Luís Rodriguez, Scarlett Hart, Anastasia Renae, Shayeena Arezo, Khalim Aliah, Lucia Tsu, Stafford Gaines, Hanz Schultz, Ariel Boshka, Laetitia Zemani, TJ Demitri, Bobbi Gahan, Jeremiah Voltaire, Chris/Lexi Lancaster, Ariela Reina, Christian Coriolis, Katya Brightway, Evan Bauer, and Yesenia Alevtina. She even had done this for Ariela Zemani, the Zemani family, and the 20 former cartel members during her mission phase, each of whom had since been healed in every way and were now building similar beauty around the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, in much the same manner as Sky was doing for South Otselic. “Each of these individuals, including you, will be playing fundamental roles in the exploration and colonization of the Cosmos and in leadership positions on this world, on the IMC, throughout the Universe, and eventually beyond.”

  After Sky’s journey around the world, half of the population of Earth had been read-in and had dual citizenships in their home countries and on any of twenty-thousand tech cities of their choice throughout the solar system. When Sky went on her missions in April of 2022, Earth’s public population was at eight billion, and now four billion more had seamlessly joined the ranks of Pathway. Pathway’s population was now at seven billion and growing, with three billion engaged in projects that would be of major support to the Universal preservation of life and its abundance and were living happily outside of Earth’s gravity well. Four billion members of the public still on Earth knew very little or nothing about Pathway, yet there were optimized individuals who may or may not have walked by them each and every day.

  In stark contrast to the world population, the population of the United States was three-hundred-fifty-million citizens and only fifty-million-US citizens were members of Pathway. Only 15% of the US had joined the ranks of Pathway, while 6.95 billion Pathway members were from more than one-hundred-eighty other countries throughout the world, and out of a total population of eleven-billion solar-system-wide, almost eighty-five percent of the Pathway population was from outside the US. The US had a very small portion of its population in Pathway as compared to other countries, yet many eyes still turned their direction toward the US as a beacon of technology and as a statistical representation of modern ethics throughout the public world. Fortunately, as of 2023, fifty percent of the US Electoral College happened to consist of members who were Delegates of the UP.

  Reading the growing numbers in her mind, Joanne knew that it was no wonder why so many places, to include her own hometown and everyone in it, her parents and possibly her brother’s killers, or killer, had never even heard of Pathway, before today. In some ways, this had been a uniquely marvelous reality, because it gave all three of them a chance to share organic moments with each other. Joanne had held back on using her newfound abilities and visiting this location, apparently as needed. Sky was now tapping the minds of the townsfolk and had gifted Erin and Joanne the ability to do so as well. Controlling what Joanne saw and heard was quite a task. Sky could process it all at once because of what she was made of, but Joanne knew that she wasn’t made of the same material and felt she couldn’t exactly work in an exponential manner that Sky could. Still, Joanne could turn things on as she visited people alone or en masse and could listen to them live; later she would be able to see visualizations within the Virtual Universe with time dilation, or sooner if Sky interfaced her mind with Erin’s and Joanne’s.

  For now, they were back on the ground walking and approaching the scene of the crime. All along the path on their way there, things had been upbeat, joyful, jolly, and pleasant. Crazy things that seemed almost supernatural were taking place before Erin and Joanne’s eyes. For Sky, this was the norm. Everyone shared a sense of harmony as they walked together. Then, Joanne saw the edge of the forest beyond the clearing, and her nerves picked up again, and they were too much to ignore. Fifteen years had gone by since this horrible deed, and her memories filled the minds of Sky and Erin too. She tried to think of her parents instead.

  Joanne had kept in touch with her parents, with an occasional call, snail mail, or a text, but not much more than that. Over the last four years, she had secretly been paying the bills of her parents and every person in town with the exception of one or two dollars per bill. She had done this since she had been fully read-in. She wanted to help in whatever way she could but do it in a manner so that people would assume the typical cost of living there had decreased. The quantity she paid had grown subtly over the weeks, months, and y
ears, and they never knew who or why their bills had shown one-hundred-fifty out of one-hundred-fifty-two dollars paid, but they never questioned it either. It was convenient not to. Tonight, after going to bed, once interfacing with the Virtual Universe, Joanne realized that all would be revealed and the people in town would be aware. Sky assured her that with their training and the quickening of the awareness of the fullness of the realities around them, they would be discrete about Pathway and all things necessary. Those who wished to live naturally only, without optimizations, wouldn’t be able to conceive of that reality, they would see something different and their minds would justify what they witnessed as something they deemed rational, and nothing else.

  As they sauntered on, Joanne realized there it was, they were here. Right before them, in this seemingly pleasant location, now recently bequeathed and impossibly blossomed evergreen trees and a pleasant highway with a large shoulder of the road for walking, cycling, and walking dogs was the location of the scene of the crime. She then looked behind the gathering of trees, where enough evidence had been destroyed to render the case cold in a very short period of time, and Joanne noticed something she hadn’t before. The burn barrel was still there like always, but it had been turned into a shrine. A larger than life statue of Thomas was positioned such that his hands were hovering over the barrel, which had been bronzed with a continuously and nicely scented fire burning from it as if to warm his hands. Someone had left a bronze plaque on the front of the barrel that read, “No matter what, warm your hearts and your hands with love.”

  That had been something that Thomas had said often when he was alive. This was usually what he said to those who had helped emotionally after helping them to confront their bullies. He’d do so, typically, with an arm around the shoulder. Surrounding the shrine were arrays of beautiful and undying bouquets of flowers in a gorgeous arrangement of almost every sort of flower imaginable. “This wasn’t me, Joanne,” said Sky. “This comes from Martha and everyone who attended your funeral.” Sky then put her arm around Joanne at the same time that Erin did the same from the other side. It was as if for a moment her brother were there, consoling her.