Chapter 228: Urgently Activated Brainwave Project

The most troublesome issue with keeping a pet at home is still its toileting habits.

Although BB had been upgraded with waste-processing functions, it was impossible to let Katie defecate anywhere inside the house. Figuring out how to train her to use a fixed spot became a minor headache for Henry.

After all, Katie was a tiger—even if only a cub—and there was no way to train her like a cat or dog. Whether a litter box even made sense, Henry only paused after setting it up, holding the box in his hands and staring at it thoughtfully.

Besides, the library had no books on training wild beasts; perhaps consulting a circus animal trainer might work. But Henry had no intention of making Katie perform stunts—why bother finding a trainer?

As for communication…

Anyone who masters training any animal is someone who understands its habits, and can interpret its emotions from its movements and vocalizations.

But if there were a way to directly know an animal's thoughts, wouldn't that eliminate the need to learn how to decode its behavior and sounds?

His prior experience of being violently invaded by Professor X's mind had given Henry some ideas about brainwaves. He hadn't yet built a mental-protection helmet based on his own hypothesis using Faraday cage principles.

But it wasn't practical to design a helmet and then go to Professor X and say, "Hey, baldy, try reading my mind?"

If it worked, fine—but if it failed, he'd be exposing his own underwear to the world. And if his mind got invaded anyway, he couldn't just punch the guy to refuse—after all, he'd invited it himself.

Besides, who was Professor X? Why would he cooperate with Henry? Did Henry think he was that important, or was Professor X just bored out of his mind?

Still, even if he couldn't build a mental-protection helmet, attempting to decode brainwaves was a worthwhile subject. Reading human brains directly might be too difficult. So starting with a tiger's brain wasn't a bad idea.

At least tigers don't have such complicated thoughts… probably.

Men and women were like different species—how could Henry use human thinking to guess a tiger's thoughts? He'd just have to try.

And if he didn't quickly solve the communication problem with Katie, this well-fed little creature would spend every day energetically chasing BB, often running it until the battery died, then biting and gnawing it.

Finally, the consequence of his laziness in using plastic for the casing became apparent here.

The poor core robot, used as a chew toy, was constantly gnawed into dents and scars, so when it rolled, its casing would get stuck. Henry had to repair it frequently, or the little thing would be ruined.

No need to overthink it—just act. The brainwave device wasn't that hard; treat it like another language to decode.

The most important thing was how to collect data correctly, and how to find homogeneity within massive datasets to determine which brainwave patterns corresponded to specific words or emotions.

Perhaps he could combine it with scent—the hormones the body releases in response to emotions—to judge a person's emotional state.

Collecting these micro-scent signals was extremely difficult, no less so than brainwaves, both easily disturbed by environmental interference.

Lowering the sensor's sensitivity might mean missing accurate data, but increasing it would make it even more vulnerable to external interference.

And all of this revolved around using computers to process vast amounts of data. To accelerate his research, Henry had no choice but to turn again to computer hardware, upgrading and improving it.

His target wasn't the processing power most people assumed, but data storage devices, transmission methods, and capacity—namely, hard drives.

The mainstream hard drives of this era were 5400 RPM IDE drives, ATA standard, with capacities ranging from tens to hundreds of MB. If one wanted durability, large capacity, or high speed, one bought SCSI drives.

And with SCSI interfaces supporting them, multiple drives had evolved into various fault-tolerant disk array configurations—known as RAID.

SCSI interfaces weren't limited to hard drives; they could connect to all peripheral devices except the CPU, motherboard, and memory. They primarily featured an independent processor to offload CPU tasks and improve overall system efficiency.

As CPU frequencies continued to rise and performance strengthened, the supplementary need for SCSI devices would eventually vanish. Soon, other peripheral devices would fail to keep up with the CPU's full-speed operation.

That's why CPU frequency eventually stopped advancing toward "faster" and instead shifted toward multi-core, multi-tasking designs, allowing computers to handle more tasks simultaneously.

However, hard drive progress had only advanced from IDE to SATA interfaces. Only with the arrival of solid-state drives did users finally perceive a significant boost in computer performance.

Previously, when Henry hand-built various computer components, his main focus had been on the CPU, motherboard, and memory, aiming for server-grade scalability.

Everything else he bought off-the-shelf—especially hard drives, floppy disks, and optical drives, peripherals that were already mature and lacked major leaps in advancement.

His earlier focus had been helping a group of online enthusiasts build a Linux ecosystem. Henry was like a bricklayer, while someone else served as the planner and engineer.

One major feature of Linux was ensuring it could run smoothly on older computers, extending their useful lifespans.

So chasing computer performance was merely a small sense of accomplishment for a Kryptonian. His own hand-built creations were superior to commercial products—even those from other labs.

In truth, the Linux system barely utilized much performance.

But when he actually tried to use it in practice, Henry realized certain parts were still dragging everything down. Fixing that weakness became unavoidable.

Just then, as he worked at his bench, dismantling and modifying the existing hard drive, Henry pondered NAND-Flash technology used in future SSDs, wondering whether he should build some solid-state drives himself.

BB, only recently upgraded with a metal casing, had again been chased by Katie until its battery died, now lying limp at his feet. Henry had to replace the battery—getting BB to stay calmly on its charging dock was now impossible.

Although he'd made little progress in reading tiger brainwaves, it was good news that the little creature had learned to defecate in a fixed spot. But its boundless energy seemed unsatisfied with just running around indoors.

The house he rented from Old Gary was spacious enough for a small family, yet filled with sound systems, computer equipment, sofas, TVs, and kitchen appliances.

To prevent these devices from being destroyed by the cub, Henry had taken non-harmful protective measures—basically installing protective barriers; if chewed or torn, only the barrier would be damaged, easily replaced.

But this also cramped Katie's movement space. Henry seriously considered building something like a cat tree to give her more vertical space to explore.

While his attention was scattered, the doorbell at the black clinic in South Los Angeles rang again.

More business had arrived. Without hesitation, Henry changed into his repairman's outfit and set out again.

(End of Chapter)