207: Chapter 207 Postoperative Recovery

By the time Lin Yue woke up again, it was already evening.

The hospital room was very quiet, with only the occasional "beep" from the monitor.

The sky outside the window had darkened, and the streetlights were on, casting a dim yellow glow on the ground.

The door was pushed open.

Li Wei walked in, holding a tablet computer. She was still wearing her white lab coat and looked like she had just finished work.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"A bit of swelling," Lin Yue said. "Like wearing a pair of shoes that are too tight."

Li Wei nodded, sat down in the chair by the bed, and placed the tablet on her lap.

"That's normal. Your nerve endings are still adapting, and your brain is remapping new signal pathways. It'll be better in a few days."

She pulled up a set of data on the tablet and handed it to Lin Yue to see.

"This is the recording of your neural signals from this afternoon."

On the screen was a row of waveforms, densely packed, like an ECG but more complex.

Some peaks were very high, some were flat, arranged in a pattern that Lin Yue couldn't understand.

"What does this mean?" he asked.

"It shows that your nerves are establishing a connection with the interface," Li Wei said, pointing to several dots on the screen with her finger.

"Look here, the frequency and intensity of these peaks are very stable, indicating that at least five to six nerve bundles have already started signal conduction."

"Five to six?" Lin Yue frowned. "Weren't fifteen connected?"

"Fifteen were connected, but not all nerves can start working immediately." Li Wei took the tablet back.

"Some nerves need time to recover, and some need the brain to relearn how to use them. It's like a road that hasn't been used for a long time; it's suddenly open, but the surface still needs repair, and the road signs need to be repainted."

Lin Yue was silent for a while, then asked, "How long will it take?"

"It varies from person to person. For some, it might be one or two weeks; for others, it could take one or two months." Li Wei stood up.

"But don't worry, your nerve condition is very good. Recovery shouldn't be too slow."

She walked to the door, then stopped and looked back, saying:

"By the way, the prosthetic is already prepared. Once the wound heals and the neural signals stabilize, we can attach it for testing."

"What kind is it?" Lin Yue asked.

Li Wei thought for a moment and said, "Silver-gray. A streamlined casing, bionic joints, and a built-in miniature drive unit. It weighs about two kilograms, slightly lighter than your original leg."

She paused and added, "The surface treatment has a skin-like texture. From up close, you can tell it's a mechanical structure, but from a distance, it looks almost like a real leg."

Lin Yue nodded and didn't ask anything else.

After Li Wei left, the hospital room became quiet again.

He thought about the prosthetic Li Wei mentioned—silver-gray, streamlined, bionic joints—he couldn't imagine what it would look like.

In his mind, a prosthetic was something flesh-colored, stiff, and made a clicking sound whenever it moved.

But the one Li Wei described sounded completely different.

Two kilograms. Slightly lighter than his original leg.

He subconsciously touched the gauze on his right leg.

It was hard beneath the gauze, but not a cold hardness; it was a warm hardness with a slight elasticity.

He didn't know if that feeling was real or an illusion. But he hoped it was real.

...

On the third day after the operation, Li Wei came for rounds with a tablet computer.

"Let me show you something," she said, propping the tablet on the bedside table.

A video was playing on the screen.

In the footage, a Rhesus Monkey sat on a specially made chair, its right arm connected to a silver-gray mechanical prosthetic. A grape was placed in front of the monkey.

"This is Experimental Monkey M09," Li Wei said. "Its neural interface uses the same system as yours."

The video began to play. The monkey's mechanical fingers opened, then closed, pinching the grape.

The pressure control was very precise; the grape didn't break. It brought the grape to its mouth and took a bite, the juice running down the mechanical fingers and dripping onto the table.

"Look at its movements," Li Wei rewound the video a bit and slowed it down. "Grasping, moving, bringing it to the mouth—the whole process took less than two seconds. The delay is about fifteen milliseconds, almost imperceptible."

Lin Yue watched the monkey on the screen.

Its mechanical arm moved very fluidly without any stiffness; the rotation of the joints was very natural, as if it were controlling its own original arm.

"Can it feel the texture of the grape?" Lin Yue asked.

"Yes," Li Wei said. "The interface is bidirectional. Motor signals travel from the brain to the prosthetic, and tactile signals travel from the prosthetic back to the brain. It can feel that it has pinched something, and it can also feel the hardness or softness of the object."

She paused and added, "Of course, the precision is still being optimized. It can distinguish between a grape and a stone, but it can't yet tell a grape from a blueberry. That's the next problem to solve."

Lin Yue stared at the monkey on the screen, watching it finish the grape and reach for a second one.

Its movements were so natural that he felt it wasn't a prosthetic, but its own hand.

"How long did it practice?" he asked.

"This one practiced for about six weeks," Li Wei said. "The movements were very clumsy for the first two weeks, often missing the target or using too much force. It started to improve in the third week and basically stabilized by the fourth. By the sixth week, it reached the level you see now."

Six weeks, Lin Yue repeated the number in his mind.

"And mine?" he asked. "Will it be faster or slower than that?"

Li Wei didn't answer immediately. She thought for a moment and said, "Theoretically, it will be faster. Humans have a stronger learning ability than monkeys, and your nerves are better preserved than those of most experimental animals. But individual differences are significant, so I can't give you an exact time."

She put the tablet away and looked into Lin Yue's eyes. "I can only tell you that as long as you persist in training, functional recovery is just a matter of time."

Lin Yue nodded. He looked out the window; the sky was very blue, with a few clouds drifting slowly.

"Researcher Li," he suddenly asked, "that prosthetic... can I see it?"

Li Wei was taken aback for a moment, then smiled. "Curious?"

"Yes."

"Alright. I'll go get it."

...

When Li Wei returned, she was carrying a silver-gray case.

The case wasn't large, about thirty centimeters long and twenty centimeters wide, similar to a laptop computer.

The surface had a matte metallic texture with reinforced strips at the corners. A blue flame logo was printed on the front, which was the project's emblem.

She placed the case on the bed and pressed the latch. The lid popped open, revealing the contents inside.

Lin Yue's first reaction was: this doesn't look like a prosthetic leg.

It was too exquisite.

The casing was silver-gray, its streamlined surfaces gleaming softly under the light. It didn't look like metal, but rather like some kind of ceramic.

The structure at the joints was very complex, layered and intricate, like a precision mechanical watch that had been magnified.