92: A hand-rubbed brainwave imaging device and an unexpected "spying"

Under the unremitting efforts of Evelyn and Su Mu, these two dedicated "knowledge curators," Excellence's rehabilitation life seemed, on the surface, to be gradually guided onto a stable, even slightly upward, trajectory. His physical functions were recovering quite well; he was already able to walk short distances slowly without assistance, and his fine motor control in his arms had improved significantly. Although he was still far from being able to perform complex experimental operations, at least holding a soldering gun steadily was no longer an unreachable dream. A series of standardized neuropsychological and cognitive function tests showed that while his scores hovered at the lower limit of the normal range, the overall trend was climbing slowly but firmly, like a seedling tenaciously seeking sunlight under the pressure of a giant boulder.

The most gratifying change lay in the subtle shift of his mental state. The frequency of that unsettling, absolute rational coldness he had previously exhibited—which seemed detached from human emotion—had significantly decreased. In its place was a more age-appropriate, slightly silly, and stubborn curiosity, along with... his signature, never-ending impulse for "mischief" and whimsical creativity. He would be as happy as a child for solving a simple logic puzzle, or sulk with puffed-out cheeks because he failed to build an "edible architectural model" out of yogurt and cereal. This return of "human warmth" allowed Su Mu and the medical team to breathe a sigh of relief in secret.

However, beneath this surface calm, hidden undercurrents never truly vanished. The "concept implantation" conducted by Morpheus Li through high-end academic channels acted like a low-dose chronic radiation, continuously and covertly affecting Excellence's field of consciousness. Meanwhile, the tangled fusion of the "pandora" fragment deep within Excellence's brain was a time bomb, its influence ready to manifest at an unknown time and in an unknown way.

One afternoon, sunlight filtered through the reinforced glass windows, casting mottled shadows on the floor of the rehabilitation room. Excellence was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, flipping through a quaintly bound popular science book Su Mu had specially found for him—"Exploring the Waves of Consciousness: A History of Early EEG Research." The book was filled with old photographs from the last century and hand-drawn, now seemingly crude, brainwave recording curves. These squiggly lines, resembling electrocardiograms, unexpectedly caught Excellence's attention firmly.

He pointed to a picture recording alpha waves (which appear during eyes-closed relaxation), his eyes shining like a child who had discovered a new continent. He excitedly tugged at the hem of Su Mu's clothes as she was organizing notes nearby: "Class Monitor! Class Monitor! Look at this! Fun! So much fun!" His voice rose slightly with excitement. "By sticking a few tiny electrodes on the head, you can 'see' the current inside the brain dancing! It's like... like installing an oscilloscope for thoughts! Let's make one too! Let's make our own brainwave 'telescope'!"

Su Mu put down her pen and looked at Excellence's eyes, filled with longing and pure curiosity, and her heart softened. She carefully weighed the idea: making a simple, science-demonstration-level brainwave detector wasn't out of line. In fact, it could be considered a very good rehabilitation project—it would exercise his manual skills, patience, and focus, while allowing him to intuitively understand basic bioelectric signals and electronics. As long as the voltage and current were strictly controlled (definitely low-voltage DC within a safe range) and it was made clear that this was only a "toy-level" exploration and not for any medical diagnosis, the risks should be manageable.

"Sure," Su Mu nodded with a smile, deciding to support this seemingly "normal" whim. "But we have to agree on three rules: first, only absolutely safe low-voltage electricity can be used, and I'll vet all the components; second, this thing is just for fun once it's built—no matter what strange waveforms you see, you can't take them seriously, and definitely don't overthink them yourself; third, you must rest when you're tired, no staying up late to tinker!"

"I promise to obey!" Excellence immediately raised his hand in a swearing gesture, his face beaming with a smile. He looked so impatient that it seemed he would dive into the pile of parts the very next second.

Upon learning of Excellence's new project, Evelyn also showed great interest. From a professional perspective, she believed that if guided properly, such practical exploration could indeed have potential benefits for stimulating neural network activity and cognitive function integration. She proactively offered many professional suggestions, such as how to choose more suitable surface electrode materials to reduce impedance, how to design simple RC low-pass filter circuits to suppress power line interference and environmental noise, and even recommended several open-source signal processing algorithms for preliminary waveform smoothing and feature extraction. Thus, the rehabilitation room once again saw the scene of the three of them sitting together, discussing over circuit diagrams, parts, and computer screens, with the air filled with the smell of soldering paste and a rare, collaborative warmth.

A few days later, after several small short-circuits and smoke (without danger), late-night program bug debugging (mostly relying on Su Mu), and countless "reinforcements" with hot melt glue, the "Excellence Brand Brainwave Imager 1.0," a model of "cyber-wasteland aesthetics," was finally born. Its main "helmet" was made of cardboard cut and repeatedly wrapped with transparent tape, its shape irregular and looking precarious. Several strictly disinfected, old Ag/AgCl surface electrodes were crookedly fixed to preset positions inside the helmet with conductive gel and more tape. Colorful wires hung from the helmet like jungle vines, connecting to an open-source hardware motherboard (an upgraded version of Arduino) with red and green LED indicators constantly flashing. Finally, the processed signal was output to a palm-sized LCD screen with impressive resolution, displaying a constantly scrolling waveform curve with obvious jaggedness and noise almost as high as the signal.

"Success! Let the ignition ceremony begin!" Excellence shouted excitedly, carefully placing this post-modern art-style helmet on his head. Because the size wasn't quite right, it slid down, covering half his vision and making him look incredibly ridiculous. He strained his eyes to look at the screen. As he deliberately blinked, frowned, and grinned, although the waveforms on the screen were drowned in a massive amount of noise, some synchronized, faint fluctuations could indeed be seen.

"Look! Look! When I think hard about 'Class Monitor is really pretty today,' the waveform jumps right here!" He pointed excitedly to a sudden spike on the screen—however, Su Mu saw clearly that the spike appeared just as he subconsciously shook his head because the helmet was too heavy, scratching an itch on his neck.

Su Mu and Evelyn exchanged a look, both seeing suppressed laughter in each other's eyes. Evelyn coughed lightly, trying to maintain a professional tone as she suggested: "Pure muscle movement artifacts are too disruptive. Perhaps we could try designing some standardized cognitive tasks for testing, such as mental arithmetic, recalling specific images or sequences, or listening to different styles of music, to see if more regular, repeatable patterns emerge in the brainwave signals under different cognitive loads."

This proposal was met with everyone's approval. Thus, a slightly crude but ceremonial "brain science experiment" began. Su Mu acted as the "Mission Commander," responsible for setting questions ("What is 100 minus 7 successively?" "Please recall and describe that complex maze pattern you saw yesterday"). Evelyn held a notebook, responsible for recording test conditions, observing Excellence's behavioral reactions, and roughly marking the general characteristics of the screen's waveforms. Excellence, wearing that ridiculous helmet, worked hard to concentrate on completing the tasks, while the waveforms on the screen remained a mess most of the time, difficult to interpret.

During a seemingly ordinary graphic memory test, an unexpected, fleeting anomaly occurred. Evelyn displayed an extremely complex abstract pattern on a tablet—composed of countless irregular geometric shapes nested, rotated, and intertwined (selected from a set of standardized cognitive assessment images). She asked Excellence to focus on it for 10 seconds and then try to draw it from memory as accurately as possible on paper.

The moment that visually striking pattern appeared clearly on the screen, Evelyn, who had been closely monitoring the brainwave display, had her pupils suddenly contract! She saw it clearly—during those few seconds when Excellence was staring intently at the pattern, amidst the chaotic background waveforms originally drowned in noise, an exceptionally clear, sharp spike pulse with an amplitude far exceeding the background noise suddenly and briefly erupted! The morphology of this pulse was very unique, with a very fast rising edge and a falling edge carrying a subtle, damped oscillation-like tail. It may have lasted only dozens of milliseconds, but its features were as distinct as a sudden bolt of lightning across the night sky!

Following that, what alarmed Evelyn even more was that when Excellence looked away and began to clumsily draw on the paper from memory, at several key Nodes where his pen fell to outline a specific shape, pulses of slightly smaller amplitude but similar morphology appeared synchronously in the brainwave signal! There was an indescribable, non-random synchronization between these fluctuations and the rhythm of his movements!

This series of abnormal waveforms appeared extremely suddenly and disappeared just as quickly, soon being completely drowned out by the surging noise again, as if it were just an occasional instrument malfunction or interference. In subsequent tests, no matter how Evelyn changed to more complex or simpler patterns, this characteristic waveform never appeared again. And the pattern Excellence eventually drew from memory remained crooked, out of proportion, and miles away from the original, with nothing remarkable about it.

However, Evelyn's heart was pounding wildly at 그 moment, and a chill ran from the soles of her feet to the top of her head! She was almost certain she hadn't seen it wrong! That distinctly characterized spike pulse pattern... she had once caught a glimpse of similar fragments in the highly confidential original experimental data archives of The Foundation's "pandora" project, accessible only to core researchers! Those data were usually marked as related to high-level cognitive activities, especially when subjects were performing intense visual imagery generation, extraordinary memory retrieval, or solving extremely complex spatial reasoning problems. Occasionally, this brief high-frequency discharge pattern, known as a "Cognitive Gamma Burst," would be recorded! This was considered a potential physiological marker of highly focused consciousness and information processing efficiency reaching a certain critical state!

Could it be... that in that moment, Excellence had unconsciously mobilized some deep, usually dormant cognitive resource? Was this merely an extremely accidental, meaningless neural discharge coincidence? Or... did it indicate that the deep fusion of the "pandora" fragment with his consciousness had begun to quietly unlock or influence some of his basic neural processing functions, allowing him, under specific conditions, to touch upon some... extraordinary cognitive level?

This discovery was too shocking and too dangerous. Evelyn suppressed the storm in her heart, showing no abnormality on her face. She only silently noted the approximate time the abnormal waveform appeared and the corresponding task content in her notebook using symbols only she could understand. She didn't speak up immediately, deciding to keep this matter to herself for the time being. She needed more observation, more solid and repeatable evidence. Before the situation was clear, reporting it rashly would only cause unnecessary panic and might even bring excessive attention and pressure to Excellence, interfering with his already fragile recovery process. She knew well that in this sensitive base, any "abnormal" discovery regarding Excellence's abilities could be like a stone thrown into a calm lake, stirring up unpredictable ripples.

The subsequent tests were uneventful, and Excellence seemed completely unaware of what unusual brain activity he might have just experienced. He took off the heavy helmet, rubbed his forehead which had been pressed red, and looked at the still-chaotic waveforms on the screen and his own messy drawing on the paper, muttering somewhat dejectedly: "Seems... not very useful... the noise is bigger than the signal, I can't see anything."

Su Mu quickly stepped forward to comfort him, patting his shoulder: "For the first time making such a complex bioelectric instrument yourself, being able to detect waveforms is already a huge success! Next time we'll find a way to improve the filtering algorithm and do better shielding, it will definitely be clearer!"

Evelyn also composed herself, a gentle smile appearing on her face as she echoed: "Yes, Excellence, this is a very interesting and creative attempt. Your ideas on how to combine simple electronic components with biological signal capture always bring surprises."

However, the seeds of doubt and vigilance in Evelyn's heart had been deeply planted. From that day on, she began to observe Excellence's various subtle performances in daily activities more meticulously and systematically. She noticed that sometimes when Excellence stared at the changing clouds outside the window for a long time, or immersed himself in a piece of structurally complex electronic music, or even just seemed to be spacing out, his pupils would have extremely tiny but seemingly regular scaling changes, and his breathing rhythm would become unusually slow and deep, as if he had entered some kind of meditative state... Did these subtle, easily overlooked physiological indicator changes also have some connection with those unknown "undercurrents" surging deep in his consciousness?

Morpheus Li's carefully planned "open scheme" might not have directly triggered a loss of control or "awakening" of Excellence's consciousness as he expected, but it acted like a potent catalyst, invisibly accelerating the deep-seated neural remodeling and potential functional changes within Excellence's brain caused by the fusion of the "pandora" fragment. And Evelyn, because of this accidental glimpse of the abnormal brainwaves, became the first person to catch a faint sight of this tip of the iceberg.

Holding this discovery that could be crucial or bring immense risk, her heart was filled with unprecedented conflict and struggle. Report it to Wang Jianguo immediately? That would align with her responsibilities and the base's security protocols, but what consequences would it bring to Excellence? More experiments, stricter monitoring, or even being further restricted in freedom as a higher-risk "asset"? She couldn't bear it. But not report it? What if this really was an early sign of some dangerous change, such as a precursor to neural overload, or worse, an initial response to some remote activation mechanism of The Foundation? She also couldn't bear the consequences of concealment.

This suddenly arrived, heavy right to know was like a piece of glowing charcoal in Evelyn's hand, making her feel unprecedentedly isolated and pressured. For the first time, she deeply realized that in this base that guarded hope but also hid secrets, knowledge itself was sometimes the hottest potato, and the boundaries between trust and betrayal, protection and control, were so blurred and difficult to grasp. She kept this secret alone, waiting in the midst of close observation and inner torment for the next sign that might confirm or refute her hypothesis.