61: The Road to Recovery and the Birth of the "Hand-Rubbing" Wheelchair

Excellence had regained consciousness, but the world after waking up felt like an old black-and-white television with terrible signal, full of static and distorted images.

All the scenes were fragmented, the sounds noisy and distant, impossible to piece together into any complete meaning.

His consciousness was like an exquisite garden that had been thoroughly ravaged and ransacked by an unprecedented storm, leaving only messy soil, broken branches, and tattered petals; the Order and prosperity of the past were gone.

His short-term memory had become like a shattered mirror, with fragments scattered everywhere, difficult to pick up, and sharp-edged, often cutting into the coherence of his thoughts.

He might stare at the ordinary metal fire sprinkler on the ceiling, studying it solemnly for half a day with furrowed brows, as if deciphering the ultimate weapon launch device from an alien civilization, while muttering fragmented words about "fluid dynamics," "parabolic coverage," and "non-lethal suppression efficiency."

His logical thinking was as jumpy as an out-of-control pinball; one second his brain might be struggling to redraw the integral form of Maxwell's equations, so full of symmetrical beauty, feeling the rhythm of the electromagnetic field dancing in harmony; the next second, he might suddenly turn his head and ask the nurse who was recording his vital signs in a tone so serious it bordered on academic inquiry: "Excuse me... does the molecular bond energy level contained in the mushroom and vegetable bun provided by the cafeteria today... perhaps... perhaps imply some... mystery of the grand unified theory of the universe?"

The question left the young nurse bewildered and at a loss.

His body was ridiculously weak, as if all his bones and sinews had been drained away, leaving him lying limp on the specially made hospital bed.

Forget about attempting the high-difficulty action of getting out of bed and walking; even lifting a finger felt like fighting the gravitational field of an entire planet, requiring him to summon all his remaining willpower, only to have his fingertip tremble slightly, exhausting all his strength.

His speech was slower than a sloth, every word feeling like it was being arduously fished out from deep water, and he often failed to express his meaning; the chaos in his neural signal transmission caused him to express a simple "I want to drink water" as "I... need to initiate... a request for... the internal oral cavity... circulation irrigation system... for H₂O molecules..." leaving the medical team caring for him both amused and heartbroken.

The National Special Bureau had equipped him with a top-tier, luxury-level rehabilitation medical team, personally led by Academician Chen, who had formulated a comprehensive rehabilitation plan that was extremely scientific, rigorous, and shockingly expensive.

Thus, Excellence's daily life was precisely divided into several modules full of "challenges":

The morning was usually his most "tragic" time.

A Rehabilitation Therapist with a smile as sweet as a girl next door, but with techniques comparable to one of the Eighteen Bronze Men of Shaolin Temple, would appear in his ward on time.

Under her "help," Excellence had to undergo inhuman passive muscle stretching, range of motion maintenance, and core muscle activation training.

The process was often accompanied by his uncontrollable screams and gasps for air, comparable to a slaughterhouse scene.

Because his nervous system signal transmission remained chaotic, his body coordination was extremely poor.

Often, his brain would send a command for his left leg to step forward, but the right leg would receive the wrong signal and insist on a backward kick, an awkward scene that nearly twisted his legs into a pretzel several times, scaring the Rehabilitation Therapist into a cold sweat and forcing her to use restraint straps for protective measures.

The afternoon was the relatively "quiet" but equally torturous cognitive function rehabilitation time.

A cognitive therapist, whose expression was always as serious as if she were verifying nuclear launch codes, would come to his bedside with a pile of brightly colored blocks, pattern cards, and simple logic games.

"Student Excellence, please observe carefully, then place this red triangular block on top of the green circular block."

The therapist's voice was steady and emotionless.

Excellence would stare at the blocks, his eyes unfocused as he fell into a long contemplation: "Red... green... wait, teacher... according to... the classic colorblind paradox philosophical thinking... how can you... how can you objectively prove... that the 'red' within your Perception... and the 'red' my brain interprets... are the same phenomenon in the same physical world? This... this involves the encoding method of visual cortex neural electrical signals... as well as... the subjective interpretation model of the brain's visual center..."

The therapist's cheek muscles began to twitch uncontrollably, and she nearly crushed the clipboard in her hand.

Even the night was not a time for rest.

He still had to undergo repeated scans and continuous monitoring by medical instruments as precise as props from a science fiction movie—high-density EEG caps, functional near-infrared spectroscopy brain imagers, polysomnography systems...

Dense electrodes and sensors covered his head and body, making him look like an alien creature being studied in depth or some kind of humanoid self-walking experimental data generator.

This "infantilized" life of being "served" in every aspect, yet having no autonomy and being unable to complete even the most basic physiological needs independently, made Excellence, who was filled with "salted fish"-style aimlessness and "hand-crafted" spirit of independence, feel deeply stifled and repressed.

Especially the high-tech electric wheelchair equipped for him, which was worth a fortune.

Although it was powerful enough to easily go up and down stairs, turn in a zero radius, and even adjust the seat height and posture, its control interface was as complex as the cockpit of a Boeing 787.

The densely packed touchscreens and joysticks were impossible for his remaining, slow-processing brain to handle.

Several times, during the gap when nurses were changing shifts, he tried to drive the wheelchair to the water dispenser in the corner of the room to get a glass of water, but ended up either accidentally triggering high-speed mode and nearly hitting a wall, or getting stuck on the threshold, and once even nearly drove the wheelchair into the disinfectant supply station next door, causing a small panic.

"System... Brother System? Old pal? Are you there? Still alive? Can you give me a hand?"

After failing to control the wheelchair again one day, Excellence lay limp in the chair, silently calling out in his mind, "Help me... crack the underlying driver code of this broken wheelchair... flash it... install a simplified brain-wave control module, can you? Just use... that simplified protocol we worked out in the dorm before..."

[Warning... System core energy level is severely insufficient... at the minimum maintenance threshold... multiple basic protocol modules are damaged... repairing... computing resources are exhausted... unable to provide... effective support...]

The system's response was as faint as an old transistor radio running out of power, the voice intermittent and mixed with crackling noises as if the signal was bad, [Suggest host... rely on self... self-reliance... attempt... adaptive training...]

"Damn! Really... dropping the ball at a critical moment! Not even as reliable as Pinduoduo's second-hand servers..."

Excellence sighed, a familiar "salted fish" emotion mixed with helplessness and self-mockery slowly reviving in his weak body.

It's better to rely on oneself than others; the ancestors were right.

However, a genius's brain is different from a normal person's.

Even after being smashed into eight pieces by that storm of consciousness and barely glued back together with biological glue, it could still occasionally spark some astonishing, wildly off-the-wall "flashes of inspiration."

One afternoon, during the incredibly boring fine motor training for his fingers, he looked at the pile of discarded parts (mainly various screws, nuts, discarded springs, and a few micro-DC motors taken from old toys) that the Rehabilitation Therapist used for him to exercise finger strength, grasping, and coordination, and then glanced at that annoying, complex wheelchair in the corner that he couldn't tame.

A bold, even absurd idea began to rotate slowly but persistently in his mind, like a whirlpool in a toilet bowl.

He decided to start his "hand-crafted" rehabilitation project!

Goal: Modify the wheelchair to make it "friendly"!

Thus, Excellence began his secret operations like underground work.

He took advantage of the pitifully small gaps when medical staff were changing shifts or briefly away, using the few fingers that could still barely move but were far less nimble than before, and at a speed comparable to a sloth crawling, he arduously and secretly slid those small parts one by one into the large pockets of his hospital gown.

Then, in the dead of night, when only the instruments were humming, he started his "great" project by the dim light of the bedside reading lamp.

No soldering gun or electric iron?

He set his sights on the hot-melt glue sticks that nurses occasionally used to paste dressings, secretly hiding a few, then cleverly heating and softening them in the hot water of his thermos, using them to bond parts and "solder" wires, although the effect was questionable and the smell was terrible.

No ready-made circuit board?

He targeted the spare interface circuit board of the call button at the bedside (he didn't dare touch the Main System).

When no one was looking, he used his fingernails to pry and a spoon handle to lever, stubbornly dismantling that small, low-integration board.

Anyway, he couldn't shout that loudly for the time being, so the demand wasn't high.

Lacking the most critical motion sensor?

He whimsically dismantled the flexible probe of an electronic thermometer, taped it crookedly to his forehead, and attempted to convert it into control signals by monitoring the minute changes in forehead temperature (e.g., heat when thinking?), commanding the wheelchair to move forward and backward...

He worked with such dedication and self-forgetfulness that he temporarily forgot the soreness and weakness of his body, the sluggishness and slowness of his thinking, and the frustration brought by rehabilitation training.

That state of focusing on creation, focusing on solving a specific problem, seemed to instantly return him to those chaotic but free, infinitely possible dormitory days, the golden age belonging to the "King of hand-crafted."

The air seemed to be filled with the smell of rosin and solder again (although now it was just the strange smell of hot-melt glue).

The two agents responsible for guarding his safety via surveillance had long discovered his little actions and reported them to Xiao Zhang.

Xiao Zhang came to check silently once.

He stood outside the ward, looking through the observation window at Excellence's appearance of lying on the bed, focused almost piously on that pile of junk (although his movements were clumsy and ridiculous, and his progress was as slow as a snail), and that pile of junk that looked harmless, even somewhat funny.

He watched silently for a few minutes, rarely not stopping or confiscating it, just nodded slightly, and then left silently.

The next day, on Excellence's bedside table, there was quietly an extra brand-new, opened toolbox, containing some handier entry-level tools (such as a small screwdriver set, needle-nose pliers, wire strippers), as well as some basic electronic components (resistors, capacitors, LED lights, breadboards) and a book "Learning Microcontrollers from Scratch (Illustrated Edition)."

No note was left, as if they were always meant to be there.

A few days later, a personal mobility vehicle with a unique style, a combination of wasteland sci-fi style and kindergarten craft project, was finally born!

Its base was still that expensive high-tech wheelchair, but the upper half had completely changed, full of Excellence-style wild imagination and rough texture: the complex control levers and touchscreens were temporarily bypassed, replaced by a makeshift headband that needed to be worn on the head, made from a bent clothes hanger and a few tension springs, with several coils of fine copper wire of different colors wrapped crookedly on it, connected to the stolen electronic thermometer probe (he insisted that forehead temperature changes could reflect thinking intensity); at the position of the armrest, he installed a simple mechanical hand made of paperclips, small motors, and rubber bands, aiming to help him hold a water cup, but currently it could only perform meaningless, periodic twitching taps, as if practicing some mysterious Morse code; most ridiculously, on the back of the chair, he even used tape to stick several small triangular flags folded from discarded medical record paper.

He explained in all seriousness that this was to "increase aerodynamic efficiency and reduce driving wind resistance"...

Excellence proudly (or so he thought) wore his "brain-wave control headband," his face glowing with a long-lost pride of a creator, attempting to drive this prototype he named "Excellence Mark I" to conduct its first manned operation test—the goal: cross the dozen-meter corridor to the vending machine at the end to buy a bottle of fat-joy water to celebrate his "recovery"!

The result, as one might expect, was a catastrophic, chaotic failure.

"Forward... forward! Concentrate! Think... think about engine power!"

He tried his best to concentrate, his forehead even sweating from the effort (causing the thermometer probe to misjudge the temperature rise, inputting the signal into the wheelchair control chip, and the wheelchair motor suddenly accelerated and rushed out!)

"Turn left! Turn left! Imagine... the differential principle!"

(The headband circuit had a bad contact, the signal recognition was wrong, the wheelchair received chaotic instructions and began to spin clockwise in place crazily, spinning him until he was dizzy and nearly vomited the carefully prepared lunch.)

"Stop! Stop! Brake! Physical brake!"

(In his panic, he tried to use his hands to stop the wheels, but accidentally triggered the switch of the mechanical hand, and that makeshift mechanical hand began to knock on his own head crazily and frequently, as if trying to enlighten him...)

In the end, this "Excellence Mark I" prototype successfully knocked over a medical cart with sterile dressings, nearly broke into the women's restroom, and successfully caused a team of patrolling agents to raise their guns in alert for a long time (thinking they had been attacked by some new type of funny weapon) before being expressionlessly and directly powered off by Xiao Zhang, who had rushed over upon hearing the news.

Excellence, with a gray face and messy hair knocked by the mechanical hand, was "carried" back to his hospital bed like a wet chick and ordered to rest.

But his eyes were bright, shining with a long-lost light belonging to the "King of hand-crafted," mixed with frustration and extreme excitement.

Although the process was funny and the result was a failure, he felt... as if he had really come alive a little.

That feeling of creating with one's own hands, even if what was created was a joke, was far better than passively accepting all treatments.

Xiao Zhang looked at the wreckage of the "masterpiece" that was emitting faint blue smoke (actually the hot-melt glue was overheated and scorched) and giving off a strange smell, and then looked at Excellence, who was disheveled but inexplicably a bit excited and fulfilled.

The corner of his eternally icy face seemed to twitch imperceptibly, as if suppressing a hint of a smile.

He didn't say anything, just waved for people to clean up the wreckage, but the next day, on Excellence's bedside table, next to the "Learning Microcontrollers from Scratch," there was an extra book "Arduino Programming from Beginner to Master" and a brand-new, more powerful Arduino development kit.

The road to recovery was long and painful, but it seemed that because of this little "hand-crafted" privilege tacitly approved by the authorities, it had a little more... strange, unique fun and hope for Excellence.