215: Chapter 215 Reverse Infusion: Turning Pilots into Airplanes!

Countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship, seventieth day.

Pangu Laboratory, Level B2, 3:00 PM.

When Su Che spread out the technical framework for the reverse pathway of the bidirectional interaction, Academician Chen Shian was standing right beside him.

The core logic of the framework was not complicated.

The deep space data collected every second by the White Emperor's sensor array was compressed by the main god ai into a neuro-compatible encoding format and injected into the pilot's somatosensory cortex via flexible electrodes in the form of microcurrents.

The pilot would know there was an enemy aircraft at the three o'clock position without looking at the screen, and would know the engine temperature without looking at the instruments; without relying on any visual means, they would simply "feel it."

"Sensory substitution."

Academician Chen Shian pointed to the node labeled "Somatosensory Cortex Mapping Module" in the framework diagram.

"We have studied this concept in the Department of Life Sciences. By installing a tongue tactile board for the blind and converting camera signals into an electrical stimulation dot matrix on the tongue, the blind can 'see' things."

"The principle is the same, but the precision is hundreds of times lower."

Su Che pulled up the data dimension table for the White Emperor's sensor array onto the screen.

"The resolution of a tongue tactile board is a few hundred points. The White Emperor's sensor array outputs over twenty thousand sets of environmental parameters per second, including target position, relative speed, radiation intensity, and gravitational field gradient, all of which need to be mapped onto the pilot's somatosensory nerves."

Xiao Yuan looked up from the collection system side.

"Two thousand sets of parameters mapped to the somatosensory cortex? The neuronal density in the human brain's somatosensory area is limited; if it receives twenty thousand independent stimuli simultaneously, won't it overload?"

"It will." Su Che enlarged the "Information Compression Layer" in the technical framework.

"So it's not flooding all twenty thousand channels. The main god ai performs a round of tactical priority filtering first, compressing the twenty thousand sets down to under three hundred, keeping only the information the pilot needs most to perceive in the current tactical situation."

"Three hundred sets, can the human brain distinguish them?"

"Yes. The human left hand has thousands of tactile receptors; distinguishing three hundred sets of micro-stimuli of different intensities and positions is not a physiological bottleneck."

Academician Chen Shian pulled up a plastic stool and sat down opposite the test bench.

"The bottleneck is in the encoding."

Su Che turned around.

"Regarding the encoding method for electrical stimulation, your framework writes it as frequency modulation, where high frequency represents high priority and low frequency represents low priority."

"This logic is concise in engineering, but in the human brain, frequency modulation and signal intensity are intertwined. If the same cortical area receives high-frequency stimulation for more than two seconds, the human brain will automatically interpret it as persistent pain."

Academician Chen Shian took a thick-tipped marker out of his work uniform pocket and drew a sketch directly on the white surface of the test bench.

"When the pilot just sits in, a high-priority target appears at the three o'clock position, and the electrodes on the right side of the somatosensory cortex begin high-frequency discharge."

"After two seconds, the pilot won't think 'there is a strong enemy in that direction,' they will think 'that patch of skin is being burned by a welding torch.'"

Xiao Yuan subconsciously rubbed his own arm.

Su Che stared at the sketch on the tabletop.

Frequency modulation won't work, and amplitude modulation has similar problems; high-amplitude microcurrents acting continuously on the same area will also cause discomfort.

"Switch to spatial encoding."

Su Che drew a second diagram next to the sketch.

"Don't use frequency to distinguish priority; use position. Artificially divide the somatosensory cortex into sixteen areas, with each area corresponding to an orientation quadrant."

"Whichever orientation the target appears in, the electrodes in the corresponding area provide a standard short pulse; all pulses have identical intensity and frequency, only the position differs."

"Then how is priority expressed?" Academician Chen Shian placed the marker on the tabletop.

"Pulse interval. For high-priority targets, the pulse interval is two hundred milliseconds; for low-priority targets, the interval is eight hundred milliseconds. The human brain's sensitivity to rhythm differences is far higher than to intensity differences."

Academician Chen Shian went over this logic in his mind.

Sixteen orientation areas, each area only performing standard short pulses, no continuous discharge, no overlapping at the same point, relying purely on rhythm to transmit information.

"Let's try it."

Su Che set up the prototype code for the encoder on the main console.

Xiao Yuan changed the interface direction on the collection system side, switching from the original "collecting human brain signals" to "injecting signals into the simulated skin."

The simulated skin was brought by Academician Chen Shian.

It was a silicone skin electrode test board moved from the laboratory, covered with thirty-two miniature electrode points, capable of simulating the electrical conduction characteristics of the human somatosensory cortex.

It wasn't a real person, but the electrophysiological response was not far off from living skin.

Su Che connected the encoder to the main god ai's tactical deduction layer, simulating a scenario where the White Emperor encounters eight maneuvering targets in deep space.

The orientation, distance, and priority of the eight targets changed in real-time. The main god ai compressed the twenty thousand sets of sensor data into three hundred sets, then compressed them further into sixteen-area spatial encoding, outputting them to the simulated skin.

On the test board, thirty-two electrode points began to flash faint indicator lights in an orderly fashion, following the rhythm and position.

Xiao Yuan took an oscilloscope and connected it to read the waveforms.

"The interval distribution is clear; the distinction between two hundred milliseconds and eight hundred milliseconds is significant."

"But there is one problem." He pushed the oscilloscope display to the public large screen.

"When multiple high-priority targets appear in adjacent orientations simultaneously, the electrodes in adjacent areas perform two hundred-millisecond interval pulses at the same time. From the perspective of human perception, two adjacent areas pulsing synchronously might cause the human brain to merge them into a single large area of continuous vibration, losing orientation resolution."

Academician Chen Shian stood up from the stool and walked to the oscilloscope.

"Stagger them." He took over, "Apply a fifty-millisecond offset to the pulses in adjacent areas. Area A pulses first, Area B pulses fifty milliseconds later. The rhythm is the same, but the starting beat is different; the human brain can distinguish two independent signal sources."

Su Che added the adjacent area staggering logic into the encoder.

Re-running.

On the oscilloscope, the pulse waveforms of adjacent areas showed a clear timing misalignment, visually resembling two alternating oscillating curves.

"That works."

Academician Chen Shian returned to the stool and capped the marker.

...

Countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship, sixty-ninth day.

Morning.

Zhao Mingyuan rolled over from his workstation in a swivel chair.

The previous night, he had written a version of the control handover logic between the swarm Cognitive Graph and the Brain-Computer Interface.

When the White Emperor pilot directly commands the Xuan Nü formation via the Brain-Computer Interface, the decision-making authority of the Cognitive Graph must be able to switch between the "pilot's brain" and the "main god ai."

"Su Che, I've compressed the response latency for the control handover to four milliseconds, but there is something you need to decide."

Zhao Mingyuan threw the code window onto the public large screen.

"What happens if the commands issued by the pilot via the Brain-Computer Interface conflict with the commands autonomously deduced by the main god ai? Who do we listen to?"

Su Che pulled himself away from debugging the reverse encoder.

"Listen to the human."

"What if the human's judgment is obviously wrong? For example, the main god ai deduces that the optimal solution is to turn left and flank, but the pilot's conscious command is to turn right and charge head-on."

"Still listen to the human. The AI provides suggestions; the decision-making power lies with the pilot."

Zhao Mingyuan wrote this rule into the top layer of the control handover framework and marked it with the highest priority.

"Alright, the human is in charge, the machine shuts up and does the work."

His chair turned half a circle and then stopped.

"What about Old Su?"

Level B2 went quiet.

Zhao Mingyuan's sentence was abrupt, but everyone understood.

Su Che didn't respond and switched back to the encoder's debugging interface.

...

Afternoon.

The reverse pathway encoder prototype had finished all simulation tests, and Academician Chen Shian requested an additional round of safety verification.

"The safety threshold for the injected current must be locked at the hardware level."

He had Xiao Yuan add a set of physical current-limiting resistors to the electrode driver board.

"No matter how the software runs, the peak current injected by a single electrode must not exceed eighty microamperes. Any command exceeding this value will be directly consumed by the resistors at the hardware layer and cannot pass through."

Su Che did not object.

He also added a limiter at the software layer of the encoder, forming a dual-layer protection with the hardware's physical current limiting.

"Eighty microamperes." Xiao Yuan finished soldering the current-limiting resistors and measured them with a multimeter. "That's thirty percent lower than the safety standard we used in our laboratory for somatosensory experiments on monkeys."

"Monkeys don't fly aircraft."

Academician Chen Shian handed over the multimeter.

"A pilot's cerebral blood flow distribution changes during high-G maneuvers, and the somatosensory threshold changes accordingly; leaving a margin is for saving lives."

Current-limiting test passed.

Su Che merged the human-to-machine decoding algorithm and the machine-to-human reverse encoder into the same framework, setting up a bidirectional closed-loop joint debugging environment.

The logic for the closed-loop test:

The 32-channel collection system reads simulated brain electrical signals (simulating the pilot's control intent) → the decoding algorithm translates them into White Emperor flight control commands → the White Emperor sensor array packages the execution results and external tactical situation → the main god ai compresses and encodes them → the reverse pathway injects them into the simulated skin → the collection system detects whether the electrical response of the simulated skin forms a logically consistent closed loop with the input end.

It was not a live human test; it was a pure equipment-level closed-loop verification.

After running the first set.

Closed-loop latency: eleven milliseconds end-to-end.

"Eleven milliseconds." Su Che posted the number on the public large screen.

Academician Zhang Weide leaned out from behind the supercomputer terminal.

"With the White Emperor maneuvering at high speed in deep space, an eleven-millisecond closed-loop latency means the time from the pilot issuing a conscious command to feeling the aircraft's response is about the snap of a finger. At this speed, the human body cannot distinguish any delay; it is equivalent to real-time."

Academician Qian Zhenhua finalized the final self-inspection report for the quantum-encrypted closed-loop communication protocol on the east side, then walked over to take a look at the large screen.

"Has the external signal isolation test been run?"

Su Che pulled up another set of logs.

"It has. One thousand two hundred sets of random interference signals, including simulated high-dimensional consciousness signals, were injected from the outside into the Brain-Computer Interface communication channel. All were intercepted by the quantum-encrypted closed loop; not a single set entered the internal link."

Academician Qian Zhenhua said nothing, placed the paper copy of the self-inspection report on the table in front of Su Che, and turned back to his workstation.

The remarks column on the last page of the report contained only one line: Channel security level meets Longmai-level application requirements.

...

Countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship, sixty-eighth day.

Level B2, morning.

Su Che sealed the files for the five hundred sets of comprehensive scenario validation data for the bidirectional closed loop.

Closed-loop latency stabilized between nine and twelve milliseconds.

The orientation resolution accuracy of the reverse encoding was 99.7 percent.

The adjacent area staggering logic had zero confusion in extremely dense target environments.

The safety current limit was not breached in any scenario.

Academician Chen Shian removed the simulated skin test board from the collection system, flipped it over to look at the electrode contacts, and found no signs of ablation.

"There are no problems at the equipment level, but you know what needs to be done next."

Su Che closed the last joint debugging log, and the main screen cleared.

"Live subject testing."

Academician Chen Shian placed the test board into an anti-static bag and sealed it.

"For normal people, live subject testing requires ethical approval, informed consent, and risk notification; the fastest it can go through the process is two weeks."

Two weeks.

With sixty-eight days left in the countdown, the development cycle for the Brain-Computer Interface itself had only two days remaining.

Su Che pulled a file from the encrypted storage and pushed it onto the screen in front of Academician Chen Shian.

Lin Weiguo's file.

Academician Chen Shian stared at the smiling face on the file.

"Su Che, you know about Lin Weiguo's EEG state after the primary version test was completed last time."

"I do."

"After that peak appeared, it lasted for one hundred and forty-seven seconds before disappearing; the EEG afterward was even heavier than before."

Su Che compared the performance data table of the upgraded version with the primary version and pushed them side-by-side in front of Academician Chen Shian.

Decoding precision improved by two orders of magnitude.

Bidirectional closed-loop latency compressed from three hundred milliseconds to eleven milliseconds.

External signal isolation improved from zero to one hundred percent.

Dual protection for safety current limiting.

Academician Chen Shian read it line by line.

He placed the anti-static bag on the table, took the thick-tipped marker out of his work uniform pocket, capped it, opened it, and repeated this twice.

"Tomorrow," Su Che said, standing by the main console. "Have Lin Weiguo come over."

All keyboard sounds on Level B2 stopped.

Academician Chen Shian capped the marker and put it back in his pocket.

"I will contact the medical team at Longmai Base this afternoon to arrange the transfer."

He picked up the black document bag and paused when he reached the door.

"Su Che, the effectiveness of the upgraded version on Lin Weiguo will not be exactly the same as its effect on your grandfather."

"I know."

"Lin Weiguo's brain damage pattern is radiation-induced neuronal necrosis, while Old Su's is functional inhibition caused by long-term cognitive load. The former is hardware damage; the latter is a system crash."

Academician Chen Shian switched the document bag to his other hand.

"If Lin Weiguo's test proves that the hardware layer can be awakened, then for Old Su, it's just a matter of finding the reboot button."

He pushed the door open and walked out.

The door closed.

The sound of the air conditioning on Level B2 filled the space once again.

Xiao Yuan was organizing cables next to the collection system, his movements slower than usual.

Su Che sat back at the main console.

In the corner of the main screen, the countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship.

Sixty-eight days.