69: An exceptional "boredom" and hand-crafted "emotional visualization" device

To Excellence, the days of rehabilitation still felt mostly like crawling slowly through a thick, almost stagnant amber of time—repetitive, monotonous, and... filled with an indescribable, bone-deep sense of boredom.

He was surrounded by a seemingly "meticulous" medical team: Dr. Chen, the Chinese female doctor whose smile was always gentle and phrasing always professional; "Xiao Lin," the nurse whose eyes sparkled and who always slipped him an extra piece of cake; and "Old Wu," the honest and simple security uncle who made one feel safe. Yet his brain—that precision instrument once capable of overturning physical Perceptions—was now like a pile of heavily rusted, severely misaligned gears. Every attempt to think brought a harsh metallic grinding and frustrating lag. His thoughts would abruptly disconnect at simple logical Nodes, and his memories were like a cracked mirror, flickering with fragmented images that were hard to piece together into a complete picture.

That peak experience of effortless mastery, of controlling knowledge and creating at will as if touching the strings of the universe, was long gone. It had been replaced by a near-childish ignorance, clumsiness, and a deep sense of powerlessness. This vast, world-shaking disparity often surged over him like a cold tide during his occasional moments of clarity, drowning him and bringing waves of inexplicable irritability and unshakeable frustration.

Physical therapy was an ordeal of pain and sweat; every stretch and every attempt to control trembling muscles felt like a desperate struggle against his own heavy shell. Cognitive training was so dull it made his scalp tingle. Facing bright children's puzzles and simple graphic logic cards, he would often fall into a long daze, feeling like a fool forced into a kindergarten classroom who couldn't even understand the basic rules of the game. The humiliation brought by this subversion of self-Perception was far worse than physical pain.

The warm-smiling and extremely patient Dr. Chen (The Foundation's behavioral guide) would always appear at the right time, using her voice—so soft it could practically drip water—to guide and encourage him, attempting to rebuild his cognitive circuits. But Excellence's remaining, yet exceptionally sharp, intuition could always vaguely sense that behind her flawless professional smile lay a very thin, cold glass mask. Deep in her eyes was a detached, observational calmness, as if she were recording the growth data of a rare plant rather than treating a living person.

The nurse "Xiao Lin" (The Foundation's emotional mapping agent), who always brought desserts, was lively and cute, like a chirping little sparrow trying to infect him with her youthful energy. But Excellence occasionally caught the look in her eyes—beneath that carefully crafted friendliness, a tiny, calculating gaze would flash by, as if evaluating experimental progress. It wasn't like she was looking at a person with emotions, but more like observing an... interesting experimental specimen with behavioral patterns worth recording? This made him instinctively want to withdraw.

Only the new, taciturn security uncle "Old Wu" (National Special Bureau's ace agent "Shadow") made him feel most relaxed and at ease. The uncle didn't talk much, but his eyes held a down-to-earth sincerity. He was quick with his hands and would secretly place a clean, bright red apple on Excellence's nightstand during routine patrols. Or, in a heavily accented and occasionally grammatically clunky Mandarin, he would tell old stories about farming or working in the countryside. Although Excellence often missed the punchlines, that simple concern—devoid of judgment or ulterior motives—gave him a long-lost, almost instinctive comfort and peace of mind. (He had no idea that this "comfort," which precisely hit his subconscious needs, was a perfect role-play by agent "Shadow" based on massive behavioral psychology analysis reports, combined with the "trust anchor" previously planted by the psychiatrist.)

To combat the boundless boredom and the frustration of a lost sense of self-worth that threatened to consume him, Excellence stubbornly and almost instinctively poured his remaining, flickering brainpower—which acted like a faulty old lightbulb—back into his "old trade": tinkering, pondering, and creating aimlessly.

Wang Jianguo seemed to permit or even secretly encourage this seemingly meaningless behavior, likely based on some "behavioral therapy" considerations, believing it could effectively exercise his hand-brain coordination and focus. Thus, in a corner of his ward, a pile of strictly security-vetted basic electronic components, an entry-level tool kit, and that somewhat worn Arduino starter kit he had disassembled and reassembled countless times began to accumulate.

However, perhaps due to the unconventional reorganization of neural connections after his brain damage, his thinking became more divergent and jumpy, filled with non-logical, almost dream-like associations. The things he tinkered with became increasingly... eerie and... philosophical?

One afternoon, he stared blankly at a withered leaf swirling down in the autumn wind and suddenly muttered to himself, his voice blurred yet carrying a strange focus: "...Does emotion... have weight? A happy laugh... is it... slightly lighter... than a sad tear? ...Can I... make something... like a scale... to weigh the heart?"

On another day, seeing Xiao Zhang—who had come for a security inspection with his usual stiff face and cold aura—he suddenly blurted out with extreme seriousness: "Brother Zhang... when you're always... so stiff-faced... does the magnetic field... around your body... get pressed... until it bends?" (Xiao Zhang's eternal iceberg face seemed to twitch imperceptibly, becoming even more rigid.)

Finally, on an afternoon when sunlight cut bright and dark stripes across the floor through the blinds, he suddenly had a flash of inspiration (or perhaps his cranial nerves had another unpredictable random discharge) and decided to build an "Emotion-Visualization Real-time Monitoring and Feedback Device." The source of inspiration? Even he couldn't say; it might have been an abnormal connection from a damaged neuron, or simply... because he was too bored.

His design logic was full of postmodern and deconstructivist "Excellence-style": he found a highly sensitive miniature pressure sensor (scavenged from a scrapped electronic kitchen scale) and taped it to his left chest with medical tape, trying to measure changes in heartbeat intensity and rhythm—he vaguely felt heartbeats were related to emotions. He hand-crafted a galvanic skin response sensor (using two discarded ECG electrode pads connected to a mess of haphazardly soldered resistors and capacitors, plugged into the Arduino's analog input) and clipped it to his right index finger to measure skin conductivity—he dimly remembered that people sweat when nervous or excited, and sweat increases conductivity. Then, using a low-sensitivity electret microphone from an old pair of headphones, he taped it to his collar near his mouth to collect the frequency and amplitude of his sighs, giggles, unconscious murmurs, and even yawns...

Then, he took these three streams of analog input from different dimensions, with mismatched units and terrible signal quality, and shoved them all into the Arduino UNO's pitiful processing power. He wrote a piece of chaotic code that he himself didn't understand—logic messy enough to give any programmer a heart attack—attempting to use a metaphysical weighted average algorithm to mix these three unrelated physical quantities (heartbeat strength, skin resistance changes, and sound volume) into a so-called "Comprehensive Emotion Index."

Finally, he used a common cathode RGB LED as the output display: a faint green represented "calm as water," a light blue represented "a bit gloomy," and a bright red represented "super happy" (this was his most simple description of an "extremely excited" state after racking his brains).

The entire process was, naturally, a chaotic mess filled with laughable accidents. His solder joints were crooked, looking like clumps of frozen metallic tears; short circuits and cold joints were common. The code was riddled with bugs; during debugging, the indicator lights on the Arduino board flashed wildly, and several times it nearly smoked from current overload. Wires of various colors tangled together like a mess of wildly growing vines, and he often couldn't tell which was which himself.

The debugging process was even more prone to issues: sometimes he just yawned, and while the chest sensor didn't detect a heartbeat change, the microphone caught the sound of the airflow, causing the LED to suddenly jump to red as if he were ecstatic over a yawn. Other times, he just stared blankly at the circuit board, and the skin sensor's resistance would spike because his fingers were dry, making the light flicker blue as if he had fallen into a baseless melancholy...

When Dr. Chen, the Chinese female doctor, "accidentally" checked his ward and saw this strange-looking, wire-exposed, tape-covered device, her perfectly groomed eyebrows twitched imperceptibly. A flash of surprise and... an extremely intense, researcher-like interest crossed her eyes. She tried to guide him into explaining the principles and design logic with her gentlest tone. Excellence blinked his dazed yet slightly excited eyes, tilted his head and thought for a full minute, then squeezed out: "...It... it might think... the circuit board... smells quite tasty?" The perfect professional smile on Dr. Chen's face froze for a moment, nearly breaking.

Nurse "Xiao Lin" always acted extremely "curious," hopping over to ask this and that, trying to fish for the "source of inspiration" and "underlying logic" of his design. Excellence, with a serious face, pointed at the tangled mess of wires and explained: "...I was thinking... if every ant... was fitted with this... would we know... if they're happy... when they queue up to carry rice... which ant... is carrying it most happily..." The sweet smile on "Xiao Lin's" face instantly became very complex, her eyes a mix of shock, confusion, and a forcedly suppressed evaluative look.

Only Uncle "Old Wu" would stop his patrol whenever he saw Excellence buried in tinkering with this device that looked like it could fall apart or short-circuit at any moment. He would give a simple smile, ask no questions, and just hand him a peeled apple or a glass of warm water, saying in his accented Mandarin: "Take your time, it's fun, just don't burn your hands." This non-judgmental, pure, and simple care actually made Excellence feel the most relaxed and at ease, as if he were back in the good old days of messing around in his dorm with no one to bother him.

After countless failures, nearly bricking the Arduino board, and successfully tripping the ward's leakage protector twice, this crude, almost performance-art, "Cyberpunk Ultra-Budget Edition" of an "Emotion-Visualization Device"... actually... barely... worked!

When Excellence first successfully attached all the sensors to himself and saw that RGB LED flicker a dim red as he forced a laugh, and a faint blue as he mimicked a sigh, he was so excited he nearly jumped (causing the red light to flash wildly)! Like a child who had just discovered the most wonderful toy in the world, he couldn't wait (red light glowing slightly) to wear this wretched-looking device wrapped in tape and wires. Like an elementary student with a homemade medal pinned to his chest, he walked around the ward, constantly conducting his "experiments."

Seeing the sunlight outside was good, the red light glowed weakly; thinking about how the chicken leg at lunch was a bit tough and got stuck in his teeth, the blue light began to flicker; accidentally stubbing his toe on the bed frame, he gasped in pain, and the red light instantly flared (was this measuring emotion or pain?)...

He was completely immersed in this self-entertaining, clumsy, and pure joy, temporarily forgetting the hardships of rehabilitation and the frustration of cognitive impairment. The device was scientifically meaningless, its results random and comical, but it was like a small, distorted window that allowed him to glimpse a bit of the fun of interacting with the outside world (even if distorted) and a... very crude and primitive "sense of control" over his own internal state.

He had no idea that his appearance—wearing the strange device, acting childishly, and entertaining himself like a fool—along with his incoherent, illogical mutterings about design ideas and inspirations, were being recorded and analyzed in detail by "eyes" and "ears" from different angles and for different purposes. This information was being transmitted through encrypted channels in two completely different directions.

To Wang Jianguo at the National Special Bureau command center, this was a positive, encouraging sign of recovery. It was a manifestation of Excellence's heavily damaged creativity still stubbornly sprouting under extremely difficult conditions, or perhaps even some kind of... subconscious projection in an unconscious state? It was an effective way to release pressure and rebuild confidence. He instructed: "Support it as long as safety is ensured, observe closely, and record all data."

Meanwhile, at the "Prophet Foundation" headquarters in the Free Confederacy, Morpheus Li watched the descriptions and scattered images of this "device" sent back by the "gardener" and the "Stand-in" (as he thought). A completely different light sparkled in his eyes. To him, this was undoubtedly "strong evidence" of the "pandora fragment" continuing to ferment in the depths of Excellence's consciousness, triggering unconventional thinking and Perception patterns! That irrational, almost shamanic way of thinking that forced an association between abstract emotions and physical sensors was exactly the manifestation of "higher-dimensional" information eroding lower-dimensional logic that he expected to see! Those fragmented, seemingly nonsensical bits of inspiration (weighing emotions, the happiness of ants) were interpreted by him as distorted metaphors touching upon some deeper universal truths! This further confirmed Excellence's unique value and the... necessity of continued in-depth research.

And in the eyes of someone (Evelyn Li) who could occasionally catch a glimpse of vague images and snippets of words through an extremely secretive, one-way channel, this scene made her heart ache, yet she also gained a faint, cold comfort from it. She felt heartache for his child-like ignorance and his need to rely on such crude self-stimulation for joy; she felt comfort that atop those cognitive ruins, he still stubbornly and clumsily maintained that unique, misunderstood, glimmering spark of whim. That was perhaps the fire in the deepest part of his soul, not yet completely extinguished.

Excellence's crude work, originally intended only to combat boredom, had once again inadvertently become a subtle and key ripple that stirred the minds of all parties and influenced strategic judgments, spreading toward unknown directions beneath the calm surface.