Pathway to the Stars Book 1, page 1
PATHWAY TO THE STARS BOOK 1
D. LEVESQUE
Edited by
TIFFANIE BELKIN
CONTENTS
Info
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
About the Author
Where to find me
LitRPG
Pathway to the Stars
Book 1
By D. Levesque
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Copyright © 2026 by D. Levesque
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CHAPTER ONE
Ididn’t feel quite right when I woke up. My body was sluggish, and my head felt strangely detached from the rest of me, as if I’d left some part of myself behind on the mountain. After yawning and stretching, I slowly sat up and glanced around at the unfamiliar room, trying to make sense of my surroundings. The walls were an odd shade of white. The final thing I could recall was tumbling off a cliff, the sharp rush of wind, and the sickening sensation of falling, twisting in my memory like a half-remembered nightmare.
Mountain climbing has always been my passion, a way to challenge myself and push beyond my limits. I’ve spent countless weekends scaling crags and traversing icy ridges, always searching for the next thrill. But my recent ascent of Mount Robson in the Canadian Rockies was viewed as risky, even by my friends, who were no strangers to adventure. The mountain’s reputation preceded it: Mount Robson, located deep within British Columbia’s Mount Robson Provincial Park, was notorious for its daunting, ever-changing weather and technical climbing conditions.
The combination of sheer cliffs, hidden crevasses, and unpredictable storms made it a formidable adversary, even for experienced climbers like myself. I remembered studying the route for weeks, preparing my gear, and reassuring everyone that I’d be fine. But waking up now, in a place I couldn’t recognize, I began to wonder if I’d underestimated the mountain, or perhaps overestimated myself.
The peak rose over 12,000 feet, the tallest in the Canadian Rockies, an expanse of ice and snow still vivid in my mind. I scanned my surroundings, confused. I remembered reaching for an ice outcropping, then falling. How did I get here?
“Hello?” I called, receiving only a strange echo from the walls in response.
Suddenly, a deep male voice with an unidentifiable accent spoke overhead, “Ah, you’re awake.”
I looked up, searching for a speaker, but saw only a white ceiling.
I asked, “Hey, where am I? Is this a hospital?” My voice sounded shaky, uncertain even to my own ears as it bounced around the room.
“Not quite. How do you feel?” the voice responded, sounding calm yet somehow evasive. There was a strange undertone to his words, one I couldn’t quite place—like someone trying to avoid giving a straight answer.
“Not quite? What happened? Did I fall and get rescued?” My mind raced with possibilities. I held up my hands instinctively, expecting to see the usual roughness and scars I’d grown accustomed to from years of mountain climbing and endless hours working in noisy machine rooms. But instead, my hands were… soft. I stared at them in shock, bewildered. Gone were the hardened calluses and scrapes that marked my days of scaling cliffs and repairing engines. The knuckles were smooth, the nails clean, almost delicate.
I was an engineer by trade, the kind of person who never shied away from getting his hands dirty. I’d spent countless hours fixing massive, grimy machines, the kind that roar and grind beneath your feet in a factory. My hands were supposed to tell my story; of labor, of adventure, of risk. Yet now, looking down, they seemed more suited to a programmer’s life, my second passion. I’d always enjoyed the rhythm of keys beneath my fingers, but even then, my hands never lost their toughness. Now, all the calluses, even the stubborn little scars from my last job, were gone. It was unsettling, as if someone had replaced my hands while I slept.
“What the hell is going on here?” I thought to myself, feeling a wave of confusion and apprehension. Was I dreaming? Had I been unconscious for so long that my body had somehow healed itself completely? That didn’t seem possible, but nothing about this place felt normal.
I glanced up at the ceiling, from where the disembodied voice seemed to originate, and asked quickly, trying to mask my fear, “How long was I out? Was it days? Weeks? Did something happen to me?”
The voice hesitated, and I could sense a hint of uncertainty.
“Ah,” he replied, his tone softer now.
“That is hard to explain. For now, how do you feel?” His answer offered no real comfort and only deepened the sense of mystery. I realized then that wherever I was, whatever had happened, things were far from ordinary.
I clenched and unclenched my soft hands, trying to convince myself that this was reality and not some elaborate dream. The unfamiliar surroundings, the strange voice, and the transformation of my body all seemed to conspire against my sense of certainty. I took a deep breath, determined to get to the bottom of this, even if I had to start with the simplest question: “Why are my hands like this? What happened to me?”
“What do you remember last?” the calm, measured voice inquired, sidestepping my earlier desperation for answers.
I frowned, concentrating, and was surprised by how sharply the memory returned, clear as daylight. I could almost feel the chill biting into my skin again, the wetness of rain clinging to my jacket. I was out on a climb, pushing myself up an unforgiving rock face. The wind had picked up, making it hard to keep my balance, and the rain had come without warning, the dark clouds rolling in over the mountain like a curtain drawn across the sky.
I squinted up, and spotted an outcropping maybe twenty feet above—a slanted shelf that promised temporary shelter from the downpour. I was determined to reach it, to get out of the open and wait for the worst of the weather to pass. The rock was slick. I remember stretching my arm, my hand grasping for a hold I thought was within reach. My foot slipped first, then my fingers lost their grip, and the world spun. After that, just a rush of cold air and a blur of gray and green. The memory faded into blackness.
My voice trembled slightly as I recounted it, “I was mountain climbing, and I was reaching for an outcropping to get to a higher section of the rock. It was cold, windy, and wet. The rain had come out of nowhere, and I saw there was an overhang about twenty feet above me. I figured I could get there and hide until the rain stopped. But I misjudged the distance, and I guess I fell. I assume I was rescued?” I tried to inject a hopeful note into my words, clinging to the idea that someone had found me, that help had arrived just in time.
There was a moment of silence that felt almost respectful. Then the voice spoke, its tone tinged with regret, “Unfortunately, you were not rescued.” The words hung heavily in the air, followed by a long sigh. “You died.”
I blinked, the statement not fully registering at first. I barked out a laugh, trying to shake off the chill that crept into my bones. “Very funny,” I said, a forced chuckle escaping me. “How many times have you used that line with patients?” I wanted so badly for him to join in, to tell me it was all a strange misunderstanding, a joke to break the tension.
But the voice didn’t laugh. There was no reassurance, no hint of amusement. Only silence, which pressed in from every direction, making the stark white room feel even larger and emptier.
I glanced around, really seeing the space for the first time. The walls were bright, sterile white, stretching up and out—no marks, no decorations, no indication of where I was. I realized with a jolt that I hadn’t noticed any doors or windows. I leaped from the bed, the thin sheet trailing behind me and nearly wrapping around my legs. I rushed to the closest wall, running my hands over its surface and searching for a seam, a handle, anything that would offer a way out. The wall was perfectly smooth, and warm to the touch in a way that felt unnatural. My palms—my soft, unscarred palms—slid over it, finding nothing. No grooves, not even the faintest hint of a crack.
Panic bubbled up as I moved to the next wall, then the third, repeating the frantic search. Each time, the result was the same: a flat, featureless expanse that offered no escape. My breath came faster, heart thudding in my chest. Desperation overtook me, and I scrambled onto the bed, stretching up to reach the wall above it, tracing every inch I could reach with trembling fingers. Still nothing, not even a shadow of a doorway.
My composure finally broke, and I shouted, my voice raw with fear, “Why am I locked up? Where’s the door? Let me out!” I didn’t care if I sounded hysterical; all I wanted was an answer, any answer, and a way out of this impossible place.
Suddenly, the room was swallowed in darkness. The transition was abrupt, the white walls and ceiling vanishing as if someone had switched off reality itself. My limbs suddenly felt heavy, a drowsiness flooding over me that I couldn’t fight. I staggered backward, collapsing onto the bed as a thick wave of sleepiness crashed over me. I was unconscious before I even felt the mattress beneath me, falling into oblivion once more.
CHAPTER TWO
The world came into being once more, and with a snap of vertigo, I was back in the same white room.
Before I could panic or yell out, a voice that seemed to come from everywhere said, “Please. You need to calm yourself, Jax. We are trying to make you understand the situation you are in.”
“What situation?” I cried out, panicked almost to the verge of breaking once more. I don’t know what the hell was going on, but I was not happy with whoever it was being able to “turn me off” like that.
“I can understand your fear. Let me explain. If you can stay calm?”
“And if I don’t you will, what? Turn me off again?”
Just saying it sounded weird. How the hell were they doing that?
“If you promise to stay calm, I will explain. I had hoped to run more testing, but we never expected you to react that way.”
“That way? Dude! You just somehow turned my brain off!”
“Technically,” the voice said evenly, “we didn’t turn your brain off. But I understand how it must have felt. Please, let me continue explaining before you panic again. So tell me, what’s the absolute last thing you remember before waking up here?”
I frowned, rubbing my temples as a dull ache pulsed behind my eyes. “Like I said, I fell off a cliff,” I said slowly. “Mount Robson. I remember the fall, the air rushing past me, and then... nothing. You said I didn’t survive?”
“That is correct,” the voice replied, calm and precise, and I could swear there was something almost human beneath the tone—like sympathy carefully programmed into its cadence. “Well, in a way you did survive. But your body was damaged beyond repair. You were recovered, barely alive, and placed into medical care. You remained in a coma for over three years.”
“Three years?” I repeated, my voice cracking. The number hit me like a physical blow. I tried to stand but felt disoriented, unsteady. “That’s impossible.”
“That will make more sense soon,” the voice assured me. “But first, do you remember the name Novamind?”
I blinked. The word triggered an uncomfortable rush of memories.
“Yeah,” I said with a scowl. “Of course I do. Cost me over a hundred grand.” I crossed my arms, glaring up at the ceiling as if it could see me. “They were one of those cutting-edge biotech firms selling ‘cryonic peace of mind.’ I only did it because I could afford it. I’d made a killing on a big project at work—got a fat bonus, didn’t have kids, wasn’t married, already had the house, the car, all that crap. I figured, hell, why not? I liked climbing, hiking, taking risks. If I ever got hurt doing something stupid, at least they’d have my brain on ice. A weird kind of insurance policy.”
“Indeed,” the voice said, the faintest hint of approval in its tone. “Your decision was... fortuitous. Because that is partly why you are here now.”
Something in its phrasing made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “What do you mean, partly?” I asked warily.
A pause followed. When the voice spoke again, it was slower, as if weighing each word. “After three years in your coma, your body failed. Cardiac arrest. Medically speaking, you died. But your agreement with Novamind required that, upon your death, your head be preserved under cryonic suspension. Which was completed successfully.”
I felt my stomach turn. “My... head?” I whispered. The word tasted wrong in my mouth. “You’re saying they froze my head?”
I knew that was included in the contract I’d signed with them, but actually hearing it spoken out loud hit me in a way I wasn’t prepared for. The idea that someone had taken a saw to my neck, removed my head, and sealed it away like some piece of preserved lab equipment was horrifying. A cold shiver crept up my spine as I imagined sterile lights, masked technicians, and the sound of machinery humming in the background while I lay there, already dead, reduced to an experiment. I’d known the terms. I’d read every page, told myself it was all just science, just procedure. But now, the reality of it felt sickening. Gruesome.
“Yes,” the voice confirmed matter-of-factly. “And approximately 200 years after that procedure, Novamind was acquired by a different organization. Ours. Along with all their assets, which included their research archives, patents, and of course, the preserved subjects.”
I sank down onto the edge of the bed, struggling to process it all. “You’re telling me I died. Then someone cut off my head, froze it, and then you bought me? What the hell kind of nightmare is this?”
The voice didn’t answer right away. I could almost feel it hesitating, as if choosing how much truth to reveal at once.
“Jax,” it said finally, its tone softer. “This isn’t a nightmare. This is continuation. But how, and why—you are awake now... that is what I will explain next.”
Suddenly, something he had said passed through the fog.
“Wait, did you say 200 years?”
“What year do you remember last, in your memories?” the voice asked, cutting through the silence that hung heavily in the room.
I focused on the question, trying to pull something solid from the fog of my thoughts. “It was March, 2026,” I said finally. “I remember that because it was one of my buddy’s birthdays on March first. Bill.” I paused, seeing his face in my mind, the scruffy beard, the crooked smile that showed up in every picture we took. “I think the day I went to Mount Robson was the fifth, and I started my climb on the sixth. I figured since I was only a couple of hours away from the mountain at Bill’s place, it would be stupid not to try it.”
Bill had been one of my closest friends, the kind of guy who always laughed at my impulsive ideas but went along with them anyway. He lived out in British Columbia, a quiet town with mountains in every direction and air so clean it hurt your lungs for the first few breaths. I could still picture his driveway; the old pickup he refused to get rid of, the snow melting off the roof that morning as I loaded my gear. I had waved at him from the driver’s seat and told him I’d be back in two days. He had grinned and said I was crazy. I never saw him again.
“It is currently January 17th, 2234, ECT,” the voice said calmly.
For a moment, I thought I had misheard. The words didn’t register. “ECT?” I repeated, frowning at the strange term.
“ECT stands for Earth Central Time.”
I stared blankly at the ceiling. My pulse quickened as the meaning sank in. 2234. More than two hundred years. The weight of it hit me like gravity doubling all at once. Everyone I knew, everyone I had ever talked to, laughed with, or cared about was long gone. My old life, my friends, my world—it was ancient history.
“So, I’m what? Just a headless brain somewhere?” I finally asked, the words coming out sharper than I intended.
“No,” the voice replied evenly. “You are no longer a brain. Your original brain was destroyed when we transferred you to our Computer Generated Environment, or CGE for short.”
I blinked, trying to process what I had just heard. “Wait,” I said slowly. “You’re telling me I’m… what, a computer program?” The words felt ridiculous, like something out of an old science fiction movie, but the silence that followed told me it wasn’t a joke.
“Not quite,” the voice said, and to my surprise, there was a hint of amusement in its tone. “You are a digital construct of what Jax Sterling was. Since you were not alive when the technology was developed, let me explain.”
