Elian sat on the polished living room floor of their new home, surrounded by an organized chaos of boxes filled with cables, microchips, elastic straps, and more than one instruction manual he fully intended to ignore. Jenna, seated comfortably on the couch behind him, had just finished folding the last blanket and was now watching him with thinly veiled amusement, sipping her tea.
"You know," she said, her voice a calm counterpoint to his focused tinkering, "we could've just bought a ready-made EEG headset. Amazon delivers in, what, two days?"
"We could've," Elian replied, not looking up as he meticulously fused a microscopic wire. "But most of those are built for gaming or meditation apps. I need something better. Something with real signal precision. Surgical-grade, not consumer-grade."
"You mean something that lets you risk accidentally zapping yourself while I watch, holding the fire extinguisher?"
"Exactly," he said, a faint grin touching his lips.
She smirked, then went back to sipping her tea, a silent acknowledgment of his particular brand of scientific bravado.
Elian had started the project the day after Muse processed the complete human brain model he'd downloaded from the Catalyst system. It wasn't just shapes and areas like a textbook diagram, but function-by-function blueprints: how neurons behaved, which regions activated when thinking, speaking, dreaming. A comprehensive, real-time guide to the living engine of the human mind.
The data was overwhelming—even Muse, with its new processing power, had taken a few hours just to organize and internalize it.
But it was enough. Enough to begin.
The idea was deceptively simple: a bio-adaptive signal translator—a small, head-mounted device that could read nuanced brain signals and convert them into meaningful, interpretable information a computer could understand. A direct interface.
The real challenge? Building it from scratch.
He spent most of the first day immersed in online catalogs, ordering specialized parts. Not from standard tech shops, either—but directly from niche suppliers known only to high-end research facilities: high-sensitivity electrodes used in medical-grade EEG units, flexible PCB boards for compact signal routing, moisture-resistant skin contact pads for prolonged wear, and a custom 3D-printed frame designed for even, gentle pressure across the scalp.
The physical design wasn't flashy or futuristic. It looked like a soft, padded crown lined with small, rounded metal discs, almost like a minimalist laurel wreath.
"The sensors need to sit just right," Elian explained to Jenna, pointing to a detailed blueprint on his tablet. "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 recall, imagination, spatial awareness."
She leaned in, intrigued. "What about emotions? Thoughts aren't just logical circuits."
He tapped near the sides of his own head. "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, a flicker of awe in her eyes. "So you're literally building a crown to read minds. In Estonia, no less."
Elian grinned, looking up at her. "What's the point of science if it doesn't sound like fantasy at least once a week? Besides, 'reading minds' is an oversimplification. It's about bridging conscious intent to digital action."
The First Link
By the third day, the prototype was nearly complete. He'd hand-wired each sensor channel to a central microcontroller, a tiny puck housed discreetly at the back of the headband. The data would transmit wirelessly to Muse through a private, low-latency protocol. No cloud. No intermediary storage. Just real-time neural translation.
Jenna stood behind him, her presence a quiet anchor, as he tested the fit, making minute adjustments.
"It doesn't look too bad," she said, adjusting one of the elasticized straps. "Kind of like a futuristic headlamp. For people with very complicated thoughts."
Elian exhaled slowly, a mix of anticipation and nerves. "Let's hope it works like one."
He sat down in his research chair, took a deep, steadying breath, and carefully placed the device on his head. The sensors felt cool against his skin—not uncomfortable, but undeniably present. He tapped the side panel twice. A soft, almost imperceptible chime resonated from the device itself.
Muse came online instantly, its voice a soft whisper from the integrated home system speakers.
"Signal input detected. Bio-adaptive interface initialized."
"Okay, Muse," Elian said, his voice a little strained with focus. "You've got access to my thoughts. Be gentle."
"Calibrating neural input… Baseline signal established. Beginning cognitive tagging."
On the tablet in front of him, lines of colored waves began scrolling down the screen—faint at first, then growing stronger, more defined. Patterns formed as Muse identified spikes, rhythms, and pulses across the input channels, mapping them to the theoretical brain architecture.
Jenna crouched next to him, watching the data build, utterly captivated. "What are you thinking about right now?"
"Honestly?" he said, a faint, self-deprecating laugh escaping him. "Lunch. And whether this thing is about to explode, or give me a headache that lasts for three weeks."
Muse responded a moment later, its voice calm, precise:
"Cognitive classification: Thought – Resource Acquisition. Subtext – Hunger. Emotional layer – Mild Anxiety (Device Safety Concern)."
Jenna blinked, her eyes wide. "...It actually knew. Not just the thought, but the underlying emotional subtext."
Elian let out a genuine laugh, a burst of nervous energy and triumph. "Okay. This is good. Really good."
For the next hour, he ran basic tests—counting backwards in multiples of three, visualizing complex geometric shapes, thinking about specific, obscure words. Muse gradually built a mental profile: intricate patterns it could learn from, cross-reference, and translate with increasing accuracy.
But the real goal wasn't just recognition. It was communication. It was bridging the gap.
"Alright," Elian muttered, addressing Muse, "let's try output. Direct thought-to-text."
He opened a simple text box on the screen, a blank canvas. Then, wearing the headset, he closed his eyes and focused intently on a single, powerful word.
Home.
He pictured the front door of their new place. The quiet hum of the superconducting systems. The scent of Jenna's tea. The sound of her laughter in the kitchen. The feeling of peace, a sense of belonging he hadn't realized he'd been missing all his life.
The screen blinked.
One word appeared, instantaneously.
Home.
Jenna inhaled sharply, a soft gasp. "That was… instant."
"Very fast," Elian said, his voice low, filled with profound awe. "It worked. No hesitation. No errors."
Later that night, Jenna found him still in the project lab, the scent of solder faintly clinging to the air. He was hunched over the terminal, still tweaking sensor readings and adjusting calibration variables, lost in the luminous glow of the screens.
"You're pushing yourself, Elian," she said gently, stepping in.
He didn't look away from the data stream. "I need this to work. It's the next logical step. The bottleneck is me."
"I know. But why so hard, so fast? What's the urgency?"
He paused, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. Then he sighed, leaning back in his chair.
"I'm tired of translating and typing myself," he admitted, rubbing his temples. "Also, frankly, my fingers ache from inputting complex theories. This," he tapped the headset on the table, "this might be the first time a machine truly hears me at the speed I think. No filter. No manual input. Just raw, unfiltered thought into the system."
Jenna walked over and gently placed a hand on his, covering his restless fingers.
"You're not alone in your head, Elian. You never are. I'm here. Even when it's messy. Especially when it's messy."
He looked at her, truly looked, and for the first time all day, he stopped tweaking the interface. He squeezed her hand softly.
"Thanks," he said, his voice soft, grateful.
Then he smiled, a genuine, tired, happy smile. "But you're still not allowed to wear this until I've made absolutely sure it doesn't fry your neurons. Or make you think you're a sentient teapot."
"Fair," she replied, a laugh bubbling up. "But I'm calling dibs on version two. With a nicer aesthetic."