Chapter 93: Chapter 93: Foundation

FIVE DAYS LATER

Orion sat on his bed and closed his eyes.

Five days and five nights. That’s how long he’d been absorbing knowledge.

The library space had become familiar. He’d go in, mentally request topics, grab books, let the information pour into his enhanced memory. Then come back to his room and actually study what he’d downloaded.

It wasn’t instant learning. Each book dumped raw data into his brain like copying files to a hard drive. Perfect storage, complete recall. But he still had to read through it all mentally, understand the concepts, make the connections.

His enhanced brain made it faster. A lot faster. Things that should’ve taken weeks to understand clicked into place in minutes and hours.

Software development. Algorithms. AI architecture. Data compression. Cryptography. Advanced Mathematics. Programming paradigms. Every piece of software knowledge below Type II civilization level now sat organized in his enhanced memory.

He’d mastered it all.

The breathing technique had worked wonders too.

Five days of constant practice. Every breath extracting exotic energy from the air. Every cycle strengthening his cells, expelling impurities.

He felt it in his body. His muscles were denser now. Stronger. He could probably lift twice what he used to. Maybe 5% overall enhancement. His body just worked better. More efficient. More capable.

His reflexes were sharper. He’d caught a falling glass yesterday without thinking—his hand moved before the thought registered.

His brain had improved even more. Maybe 20% additional enhancement on top of the original 200% boost. Faster processing. Deeper comprehension. Better pattern recognition. Like his thoughts had been running through molasses before and someone had cleared it away.

He felt younger too. His skin looked healthier. His eyes clearer. Even his hair seemed shinier, more vibrant.

And every time he used the bathroom… well. His body secreted more dark impurities. Cellular waste being expelled as the exotic energy refined his system.

You didn’t want to know the details. It was deeply unpleasant.

But necessary.

Orion opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

He wanted desperately to share this with Cassia and Nyla.

Watching his mom come home tired from work every day hurt. She was only forty-three, although she looked younger than her age, stress was wearing her down, aging her faster than it should. The breathing technique could reverse that. Make her younger. Healthier.

And Nyla—she was brilliant and energetic now, but everyone aged eventually. The technique could preserve that. Keep her sharp and strong for decades longer than normal.

But when he reviewed the requirements in his mind, his hope died.

The breathing technique demanded precise internal body control. You had to sense your blood flow. Feel it moving through individual vessels. Direct it consciously. Regulate muscle groups separately. Control neural firing patterns with awareness. Feel the exotic energy separating from oxygen at a cellular level.

It also required high comprehension ability. The technique was complex. You had to understand the interactions happening in real-time. Adjust instantly to changing conditions. Maintain perfect focus while managing dozens of simultaneous processes.

Neither Cassia nor Nyla had those capabilities.

They were smart. Brilliant, even. But this required body awareness and mental processing that normal humans simply didn’t possess.

It was only because the system had enhanced his body 100% and his brain 200% that he could use it at all. The beginner’s reward pack hadn’t been generous—it had been necessary. Minimum requirements.

Orion pulled up the library in his mind. Searched for alternatives.

Found a section on gene lock cultivation exercises. Those were simpler. Required less precise control. More forgiving.

But they still needed baseline enhancement to work. A normal human body wasn’t refined enough to sense the subtle energies involved.

Gene enhancement medicine. That could boost someone enough to begin basic cultivation.

He read through the information carefully. The medicine required genetic engineering knowledge—which he’d have to download from the library. Specialized equipment—gene sequencers, cellular manipulation tools, synthesis chambers. Rare materials—exotic compounds that didn’t exist in normal markets.

Things he didn’t have access to yet.

“Later,” Orion muttered. “Once I have money and resources.”

For now, only he could practice cultivation.

He stood up and stretched. His enhanced body moved smoothly, no stiffness despite five days of intense mental work.

Time to put that knowledge to use.

He’d learned software first for a reason. Money.

To build a fusion reactor, he needed capital. Lots of it. Equipment cost money. Materials cost money. Lab space cost money. Labor cost money. Even with revolutionary knowledge, he couldn’t just conjure a reactor from nothing.

Software was the fastest path to capital. Low barrier to entry. Just him, his laptop, and his brain. No expensive materials. No manufacturing costs. Pure intellectual work converted directly to value.

And with the knowledge he now possessed, he could build things that would make the current tech giants look primitive.

Orion sat at his desk and opened his laptop.

The screen showed his usual desktop—standard operating system from one of the big tech companies. Bloated. Slow. Inefficient. He’d been tolerating it because everyone did. It was normal.

Not anymore.

First step: better tools.

His enhanced reflexes let him type fast. Really fast. He’d tested it yesterday—sustained 1500 words per minute without errors. That far exceeded professional stenographer speed.

But his brain could think thousands of concepts per minute. Typing was still the bottleneck.

He needed a Brain-Computer Interface. BCI. Direct connection between his thoughts and the computer. Because to type everything in his mind will take months.

Instead a BCI will let him code at the speed of thought which is 1 billion bits of information per second and is equivalent to 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps), representing a standard high-speed data transfer rate for modern networks and interfaces.

He urgently started researching existing BCI technology.

Most of it was terrible. Medical-grade systems cost hundreds of thousands of credits and required surgery. Electrodes implanted directly into your brain. Invasive. Expensive. Risky.

Consumer versions barely worked. You could maybe move a cursor if you concentrated really hard. Useless for actual work.

He needed something better. Something he could build himself with available parts.

After two hours searching through commercial products and research papers, he found a starting point.

cEEGrid Around-the-Ear EEG Bundle.

EEG meant Electro-Encephalography. Reading brain electricity. The human brain ran on electrical signals—neurons firing created tiny voltages. Those voltages traveled through brain tissue and skull to the skin surface where sensors could detect them.

The cEEGrid was designed for research. Thin flexible electrodes that wrapped around the ear and picked up brain activity through skin contact. Better than a full cap—less bulky, more comfortable, easier to use.

Cost: 800 credits.

Expensive but workable. He had scholarship money.

Problem: it looked medical. Obvious. Bulky. People would ask questions.

Orion grabbed paper and started sketching.

What if he miniaturized everything? Hid the EEG sensors inside something normal-looking?

Earbuds.

Specifically, bone-conducting earbuds. Those worked differently than normal earbuds. Instead of sending sound into your ear canal, they vibrated against your skull. The vibrations traveled through bone directly to your inner ear.

Weird technology. But it meant the ear canal stayed completely open. Room to hide sensors inside the earbud housing.

He could integrate the EEG electrodes into the earbud casing. Position them to touch skin around the ear where brain signals were strongest. From outside, they’d look like premium wireless earbuds. Nobody would know they were reading his brain activity.

But EEG sensors generated massive amounts of data. Raw electrical readings and background data noise that needed processing to make sense of. He’d need computing power close by.

A smartwatch could work. Receive signals from the earbuds wirelessly. Process them in real-time. Send commands to his computer.

Plus the watch could double as a charging dock. When the earbuds ran low on battery, just dock them on the watch to recharge. Convenient. Practical. Normal-looking.

Perfect.

Orion started adding items to his online cart.

cEEGrid Around-the-Ear EEG Bundle—he’d disassemble it for the electrode sensors. Those were the important part. The rest was just research equipment packaging. 800 credits.

Bone-conducting earbud components—housing, speakers, vibration drivers, all the mechanical parts. 200 credits.

Miniature wireless transmitters—to send data from earbuds to watch. Needed low latency and high bandwidth. Bluetooth wasn’t good enough. He’d need something better. 150 credits for the chips.

Micro-batteries—lithium polymer cells small enough to fit in earbuds. These would power the sensors and transmitter. 100 credits for a pack.

Circuit board components—resistors, capacitors, microcontrollers, all the tiny electronic parts needed to make everything work together. 300 credits.

Smartwatch components and casing—processor, memory, battery, touchscreen, wireless receiver module. 450 credits.

Total: 2,000 credits.

That was most of his monthly scholarship stipend. He’d be eating cheap cafeteria food for a while. But not necessarily as he plan to make a bunh of money very soon.

Worth it.

He clicked confirm purchase.

Delivery estimate: 3-5 days.

While waiting for parts to arrive, he could work on software foundations.

Orion stared at his laptop screen.

Current programming languages were built on decades of legacy code. They carried bloat from when computers had kilobytes of memory and processors ran at megahertz speeds. Inefficient. Slow. Outdated.

He needed something better.

From the library knowledge sitting organized in his enhanced memory, he understood exactly what made languages fast. Direct hardware access—talking to the computer’s transistors without layers of abstraction slowing things down. Smart compilation that optimized code automatically. Efficient memory management that didn’t waste resources.

He could build that.

His fingers touched the keyboard.

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