Elian sat on the living room floor, surrounded by boxes filled with cables, microchips, elastic straps, and more than one instruction manual he fully intended to ignore. Jenna, seated on the couch behind him, had just finished folding the last blanket and was now watching him with thinly veiled amusement and sipping her tea.
"You know," she said, "we could've just bought a ready-made EEG headset."
"We could've," Elian replied, fiddling with a soldering iron. "But most of those are built for gaming or meditation apps. I need something better. Something with real signal precision."
"You mean something that lets you risk accidentally zapping yourself while I watch?"
"Exactly."
She smirked, then went back to sipping her tea.
Elian had started the project the day after Muse processed the brain model he'd downloaded from the system. It was a full map — not just shapes and areas like a textbook, but function-by-function blueprints: how neurons behaved, which regions activated when thinking, speaking, dreaming. A complete guide to the engine of the human mind.
The data was overwhelming — even Muse had taken a few hours just to organize it.
But it was enough. Enough to begin.
The idea was simple: a bio-adaptive signal translator — a small head-mounted device that could read brain signals and convert them into meaningful information a computer could understand.
The real challenge? Building it.
He spent most of the first day online, ordering parts.
Not from standard tech shops, either — but directly from niche suppliers: high-sensitivity electrodes used in medical-grade EEG units, flexible PCB boards for compact signal routing, moisture-resistant skin contact pads, and a custom 3D-printed frame designed for even pressure across the scalp.
The design wasn't flashy. It looked like a soft, padded crown lined with small, rounded metal discs.
"The sensors need to sit just right," Elian explained to Jenna, pointing to a printout. "You want the main ones over the frontal lobe — here and here — for decisions and motor planning. Then a few at the back, near the visual cortex. That catches memory, imagination, spatial awareness."
She leaned in. "What about emotions?"
He tapped near the sides. "Temporal lobe. Right above the ears. That's where we'll pick up emotional resonance, language structure... even social intent, in theory."
Jenna raised a brow. "So you're literally building a crown to read minds."
Elian grinned. "What's the point of science if it doesn't sound like fantasy at least once a week?"
By the third day, the prototype was nearly complete.
He'd hand-wired each sensor channel to a central microcontroller housed in a little puck at the back of the headband. The data would transmit wirelessly to Muse through a private, low-latency protocol. No cloud. No storage. Just real-time translation.
Jenna stood behind him as he tested the fit.
"It doesn't look too bad," she said, adjusting one of the straps. "Kind of like a futuristic headlamp. For people with very complicated thoughts."
Elian exhaled. "Let's hope it works like one."
He sat down, took a deep breath, and placed the device on his head.
The sensors felt cool against his skin — not uncomfortable, but present. He tapped the side panel twice. A soft chime rang out.
Muse came online instantly.
"Signal input detected. Bio-adaptive interface initialized."
"Okay, Muse," Elian said. "You've got access to my thoughts. Be gentle."
"Calibrating neural input…"
On the tablet in front of him, lines of colored waves began scrolling down the screen — faint, then growing stronger. Patterns formed as Muse identified spikes, rhythms, and pulses across the input channels.
"Baseline signal established. Beginning cognitive tagging."
Jenna crouched next to him, watching the data build. "What are you thinking about?"
"Honestly?" he said. "Lunch. And whether this thing is about to explode."
Muse responded a moment later:
"Cognitive classification: Thought – Resource Acquisition. Subtext – Hunger. Emotional layer – Mild Anxiety (Device Safety)."
Jenna blinked. "...It actually knew."
Elian let out a laugh. "Okay. This is good. Really good."
For the next hour, he ran basic tests — counting backwards, visualizing shapes, thinking about specific words. Muse gradually built a mental profile: patterns it could learn from, cross-reference, and translate.
But the real goal wasn't just recognition. It was communication.
"Alright," Elian muttered, "let's try output."
He opened a simple text box on the screen. Then, wearing the headset, he focused on a word.
Home.
He pictured the front door. The sound of Jenna in the kitchen. The weight of peace he hadn't realized he'd been missing all his life.
The screen blinked.
One word appeared.
Home.
Jenna inhaled sharply. "That was fast"
"Very fast," Elian said, voice low. "It worked"
Later that night, Jenna found him in the lab again, still tweaking sensor readings and adjusting calibration variables.
"You're pushing yourself," she said gently.
He didn't look away. "I need this to work."
"I know. But why so hard, so fast?"
He paused.
Then said, "I'm tired of translating and typing myself. Also because my fingers hurt a lot"
He tapped the headset—"this might be the first time a machine hears me at the speed I think. No filter. Just raw."
Jenna placed a hand on his.
"You're not alone in your head, Elian. I'm here. Even when it's messy."
He looked at her, truly looked, and for the first time all day, he stopped tweaking the interface.
"Thanks," he said softly.
Then smiled. "But you're still not allowed to wear this until I've made sure it doesn't fry your neurons."
"Fair," she replied. "But I'm calling dibs on version two."