Chapter Forty-Three: Awesome Bo

The next afternoon.

Shen Jiang arrived at the electromagnetic shielding room for her routine adaptive training. She relaxed her body and sat down in the armchair as Shang Lu remotely lowered the scanner into position.

"Supervisor," she called out to Shang Lu.

"Hmm? What is it, Leader?" Shang Lu looked up, holding a tablet in his hand.

"How long will this adaptive training take to finish?"

"Based on the current progress, it should be wrapped up in a week or two. The adaptive training mainly serves two purposes: first, to filter out the noise from the electrodes implanted in your brain; second, to get you familiar with the operating paradigm of the MEG system." Shang Lu tapped his temple with his index finger. "MEG and iEEG are still quite different in actual practice, aren't they?"

Shen Jiang nodded.

There are significant differences in signal recognition between MEG and iEEG. Although they both identify the same signals—the mu rhythms and beta waves of the left and right cerebral hemispheres—in different ways, Shang Lu often referred to them collectively as the "mu-beta waves." Those with a heavier accent might call them "awesome waves." Awesome waves are truly awesome because they form the foundation of all motor-imagery-based brain-computer limb-control technologies. Regardless of which BCI pathway you use, if you want to know which arm or leg the brain is commanding, you have to honestly look at the changes in the awesome waves.

This is the control mechanism that the human brain has evolved over hundreds of millions of years to govern its own flesh-and-blood vessel. The brain is like a driver equipped with a soft carbon-based armor containing over 90% water, using a language no one truly understands to pilot it. Now, humanity is attempting to encase the brain in a fifty-meter-tall rigid steel armor, yet still expects the brain to steer it just as it would flesh and bone. This is why the most advanced giant mechanical structures tend to resemble the human body—the brain's native operating system can only adapt to human anatomy.

"The filtering phase is progressing smoothly so far. The Operation Engineering Office handles feature extraction, and the Science City handles signal decoding. Once the adaptive training is complete, I estimate we can achieve basic motor imagery functions," Shang Lu continued. "The real difficulty lies ahead. If we fail to break through the Rabin-Shang number of 0.12, the resolution and granularity of the MEG system won't meet the requirements for your complex calculations."

"How is the Rabin-Shang value calculated?"

"A very complex set of equations. You don't need to calculate that number; that's the job of our technical department." Shang Lu shrugged. "The iEEG-BCI system you are currently using can stabilize at around 0.10. For every 0.01 decrease in the RS number, the sensitivity increases by a factor of ln10."

"Are Rabin and Shang two different people's names?"

"They are two people," Shang Lu replied. "They were the main pioneers back when BCI was first commercialized. You've surely heard the saying: 'BCI is a miraculous technology.' It truly is a technological marvel. People managed to develop a slow system with a maximum output of 60 bits per minute into a super brain-computer capable of numerical relativistic calculations within a decade. The most optimistic original estimate for this process was twenty years, yet someone forcibly shortened it by a full decade."

With that, he left the shielding room and pulled the door shut behind him.

The shielding room fell silent, and Shen Jiang braced herself for the impending torture.

It felt less like she was sitting in an MEG machine and more like an electric chair.

"Let's continue today's training subjects. The usual rules apply: failure to complete the task within the allotted time means you have to sing a song by Wang Feng," Shang Lu's voice echoed through her headphones.

"Damn it, Supervisor, can we please skip the singing?" Shen Jiang's scalp tightened.

"You've never seen a training method like this?"

"No... never," Shen Jiang said. "Isn't this terribly inefficient?"

"You aren't living your life for the sake of efficiency, are you?" Shang Lu asked.

Shen Jiang was momentarily taken aback.

"I know you're always trying to save time, Leader, but efficiency isn't everything during training. Your brain needs rest. No one ever told you this before because, in their subconscious, they didn't treat you as a human being," Shang Lu said.

"If I'm not human, what am I?" Shen Jiang wondered why this guy was beating around the bush to insult her.

"A superman, a genius, a monster, a psychiatric patient, a cyborg, a steel warrior, a cyberpunk, a ghost in the shell, or some other bizarre entity," Shang Lu said. "The public often assumes that because you're extraordinary, everything you accomplish is just expected of you."

"Then I suppose I should thank you?" Shen Jiang said. "For treating me like a human."

"No."

Shen Jiang looked slightly bewildered. "Then what am I in your eyes?"

"One-Punch Man."

· · ·

"Using the time dilation formula, τ/τ₀ = √(1 - v²/c²) = 1/n, the mass should be... m = m₀ / √(1 - v²/c²) = nm, and the kinetic energy is E - E₀. The final answer is mc²(n - 1). This is a very simple special relativity problem, Supervisor, have you exhausted your tricks?"

Shang Lu applauded from the control room.

"Truly remarkable. Before meeting you, I wouldn't have believed a human could possess such astonishing speed."

As expected of the chief pilot of the Crimson Lotus, once Shen Jiang adapted to Shang Lu's rhythm, she immediately demonstrated reaction speeds and computational abilities far surpassing ordinary people. If an ordinary person could improve their calculation levels through training, then Shen Jiang's supreme reaction times, sharp insight, and innate sensitivity to numbers were a gift of nature. Several guys from the Operation Engineering Office stared blankly at the data on the monitors in the office, and Bai Tree even called Shang Lu to say it was terrifying—she was a multi-threaded parallel processing computer!

"Then let's move on to the next question..."

"Wait," Shen Jiang suddenly stopped him.

"What is it?" Shang Lu asked. "Is there something else, Leader?"

"Why should I have to sing if I fail? That's not fair, Supervisor. We need to change the rules. If I successfully solve the problem you pose, then I have the right to ask you a question in return," Shen Jiang said. "Do you agree or not?"

Shang Lu pondered for a moment and nodded:

"Fine, go ahead and ask. I have an answer for everything."

"Good, Supervisor, please answer my question." The corners of Shen Jiang's mouth curled up into a little-demon-like smile. "Describe the difference between Fermi coordinates and Riemann normal coordinates."

Shang Lu: What the hell.

"Choose any Wang Feng song you like," Shen Jiang said coldly. "Please."

Shen Jiang quickly found a way to counter this smart-aleck supervisor. She was truly clever; she realized that in fields like differential geometry and numerical relativistic calculations, the supervisor was a complete beginner, whereas she had immersed herself in them for years. Thus, the simple questions Shang Lu threw at her were easily resolved. However, the general relativity problems she posed to him—no matter how simple—were completely beyond Shang Lu's ability to answer.

How dared he challenge her in her own professional domain?

Left with no choice, Shang Lu sang two lines of "Vanishing," and the guys from the Operation Engineering Office specifically called afterward to remark that his singing wasn't half bad.

Bai Tree acted as the designated hype person responsible for screaming in the peanut gallery.

"Hey Supervisor, once the adaptive training is over, we can check out the preliminary performance of the MEG system," Shen Jiang suggested near the end of her shift. "Let's pit it against iEEG in terms of sensitivity for motor imagery signal recognition, and let me witness what your system is truly capable of."

"Alright," Shang Lu readily agreed.

This was less of a comparison between MEG and iEEG and more of a contest between the Operation Engineering Office and the Computation Engineering Office for the core dominance of Workshop 110. Unit 1047 showed immense enthusiasm for this, securing a dedicated large space from old man Ji and spending a week acquiring two seven-axis robotic arms, debugging them until they were ready as backups.

They needed a comprehensive comparison of how MEG and iEEG controlled the trajectory, movement distance, and gripping force of the robotic arms. Precision, strength, and flexibility were all indispensable. For tests of this caliber, Workshop 151 relied on some old-school yet useful traditional exercises—picking up pebbles, throwing darts, and carving patterns on orange peels.