For 3 million spinal cord injuries, he's hacking the wheelchair

Sleepy.md

Interview with Kaori

Ideas. Forward

In April 2026, Zhang Jiang, Shanghai, little red book hackers pine field。

There's a man sitting on the stage. His name is Fat Cow, his real name is Wang Ning, 32 years old, patient with spinal cord damage, wheelchair user. He was wearing a golden ring of the Sun Goku on his head, with several electrodes attached to his scalp and silently reading the telecommunications in his skull。

He then took his hands off the steering panel in the wheelchair。

And then the wheelchair moved。

It wasn't pushed, not by remote control, and there was no physical contact. It's just moving forward, steady. There were more than 200 people down there, developers, investors, workers with little red books, and many people were silent for a few seconds, and applause broke out。

This little red book, hackers pine, is sponsored by Little Red Book, Takashi and Zhang Gang Group, half a million dollars cash pool, 200 young developers, 48 hours of closed limit creation. Fat cow and his wife's mushrooms, two people, no team, no engineer background, one broadcaster, one who was writing a novel on the Internet. They won the first prize on the hardware track。

THE AWARD WAS OVER, THE FAT COW CAME DOWN, AND A DOZEN INVESTORS ADDED HIS TWEETS. HE WAS TOLD THAT YOUR SOCIAL VALUE IS MORE THAN COMMERCIAL. HE SMILED, AND HE DIDN'T CONTRADICT IT, BUT HE KNEW THAT HE HAD NEVER DONE IT FOR "SOCIAL VALUES" WRITTEN ON PPT。

He did it because he knew the feeling that the brain was full, conscious, that what you wanted was right in front of you, but the body didn't listen. That is a dilemma longer than death。

This story begins six years ago。

Wedding Eve

October 2020, Shenzhen。

The fat cow and mushroom wedding reception is due in a few days. Invitations have been sent, drinks have been booked and family and friends have been making arrangements. They've known each other since high school, together for fifteen and six years, and both of them know that their couple who went out together ended up like they were alone。

It is often when fate is prepared to do bad things。

The fat cow's neck began to hurt, and the painkillers couldn't hold. He went to the emergency, filmed. After reading the film, the emergency doctor was silent and said that he had not seen this for 30 years。

The fat cow was scared to start preparing for what happened。

The mushrooms didn't crash. She turned the circle of friends upside down, and the relatives of friends of relatives, who were able to reach out to them in the six-degree artery principle, contacted them all as long as they were medically ill. Nightly, they went to Guangzhou。

The results came out, the tumours in the fat cow spinal cord。

The cervical vertebrae is seven knots, and his tumour is growing from the second to the sixth, 13.5 centimetres and 1.2 centimetres thick. For the first time, he realized that his neck was so long. The tumor squeezed the nerve to the side, full of space that would have belonged to the spinal cord。

The doctor told him that the position between the second and sixth necks had concentrated on his breathing switch, his heartbeat switch, and that all the life-related switches were here, and all of them were pressed by the tumor。

"You sneeze, fall, or brake, you may be gone."

The reaction of the fat cow was: "Can I finish the wedding first?"

The doctor paused and realized that the young man before him had no idea how dangerous his situation was。

Fat cow had surgery soon. First time, there's a shock. The spinal cord was cut off from the back, a dozen centimetres of cuts, the tumor was cut off, the nerve was cut off in part, and the fat cow was paralysed. But three or four months later, he stood up and could go again。

He thought the hardest part was over。

In 2023, he went for a review and, by the way, for a comprehensive examination of the spine and maintenance. He was particularly fond of sports, and before the first operation he asked the doctor two questions: whether the wedding could take place first, and whether he could exercise later. The doctor said yes, but slowly. He remembers that, and he's been waiting for time to start "slow."。

The results came out and the tumors re-emerged。

"From the rest of my life, I went straight to a dead end."

He later told us that if he wanted to do it again, he didn't think he'd make it。

FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE FIRST CALF WAS NOT AFRAID OF THE TIGERS, NOR UNDERSTOOD ANYTHING, BUT FEARED NOTHING. FOR THE SECOND TIME, HE KNEW WHAT HE WAS WAITING FOR, AND WHAT HE WAS WAITING FOR WAS A LONG CUT, A PAIN PUMP, AN ILLUSION THAT HAD BEEN DRUGGED IN THE ICU, AND WHEN HE WAS AWAKE DURING THE DAY, HE COULDN'T TELL IF THE DREAM WAS TRUE。

After the second operation, he was paralysed. This time it was more serious and slower to recover。

It was in 2023, when the arts and culture industry was largely wiped out under the double-cutting policy. He opened more than a dozen chains in Shenzhen, one of which collapsed. The paralysis, the collapse of the company and the crushing debt had taken place simultaneously, without order or room for his breathing。

"The whole person, from will to business to life, is in a state of collapse."

At the time, they were in Shenzhen, in a mess, in the collapse of dozens of institutions, in debt, and in his own 24 hours of nervous pain. The pain happened randomly, probably in the middle of the night, maybe the moment you fell asleep, maybe you woke up in 10 minutes, and it hurt。

He's been with this pain for a long time, so long he'll be able to fight some of his nerve pains, and then he'll focus on other things. But that was a long time later。

In the darkest days, he even struggled。

For some time, the first thing a fat cow does in the morning is to make sure his leg is still there. He had several amputations, so he woke up and looked at them。

Then, the first thing he did in the morning changed and turned into a search for mushrooms。

He said that during that time, if the world gave him two keys, the left was alive and the right was dead, he would have pressed the one that died countless times. All he could try was mushrooms。

Mushroom fat cow

One day, mushrooms borrowed his wheelchair。

It was the day of experience with the president, the day of experience with someone, the day with the mushrooms saying I'll experience your day. She left at 8:30 a.m. and came back at 10:30 p.m。

The fat cow waited all day。

She cried when she got back。

She said that we had travelled so many places, so many cities and so many places in wheelchairs. But today I found out that the two of us are still exploring the world together, but you are not the same as you. The world we see together, my perspective and your perspective are completely different, and there is no overlap。

She said, "You can't get up there if you're over three centimeters. A 3 cm can, you can only ask for help. Turns out you're going through so many eyes on the road, and it's going to make you feel so uncomfortable, and those strangers think they're concerned or curious, but it's a sting for you in a strange environment."

The fat cow said that at that moment he had been dragged from a lonely world to a world where there were people with him。

The mushrooms did not encourage him in words only, "you can." She put herself in the situation of a fat cow and understood his body with her own body。

"She was able to come out of her busy work, stand on my shoulder, stand in my sight, look at the world with me, and love me in it."

He said that that bonding was one of the key points from which he could draw a little bit of pain. It's not an encouragement. It's real. He said that the "you can" kind of encouragement addressed the need that the speaker himself wanted to encourage, and did not solve his problem. The mushrooms didn't do that. She stood in his eyes and looked at the world with him。

"I feel like I'm going to be able to handle this, and I should be coming in that direction. Even if her body was paralysed, she was contained with me. Why can't I do it like she did when she can pull herself out of those messes and look at me?"

And that's how he started to pull himself out of a 24-hour nervous pain, trying to feel the world of mushrooms and her perspective。

DURING THAT TIME, MUSHROOMS WERE WRITING ONLINE NOVELS TO SUPPORT THEIR FAMILIES. IT'S AN INFINITE FLOW OF CUISINE, WITH 4000 WORDS WRITTEN EVERY DAY, READERS RUSHING, SOMETIMES SUFFOCATING, AND THEN RELYING ON AI FOR A FULL-TIME AWARD. SHE SAID THAT WHAT AI WROTE SOMETIMES "DOES LOOK LIKE SHIT", BUT IT CAN SIGNIFICANTLY SHORTEN THE WORKFLOW, "DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE SHIT."。

Now, she's broken for a long time because more and more things are happening. She said she was ashamed to tell people that she was the author and was afraid of being taken out。

The day we interviewed them, they were in the milk and tea shop. The home network is broken, he's out for lunch, and he's in the milk and tea store for an interview。

It's their daily now。

THE MUSHROOM IS A GUEST GIRL, GEMINI, JUMP, THINK TOO MUCH, THE KIND OF PERSON WHO "CAN'T SOLVE THIS PROBLEM, NOT FIRST, SEE IF THERE'S ANY OTHER WAY." THE FAT COW IS A SCORPION, STUBBORN, FRAMEWORK-MINDED, AND IT DOESN'T GO DOWN WITHOUT A CLUE, BUT ONCE IT IS CLEAR, IT GOES DOWN. HE SAID THAT HE MIGHT BE A LITTLE ADHD, THAT HE UNDERSTOOD THE FRAMEWORK VERY QUICKLY, THAT HE COULD QUICKLY STRUCTURE AN IDEA, BUT THAT HE WOULD BE TRAPPED IN LITTLE DETAIL, AND THAT EVERYTHING HAD TO BE CLEAR BEFORE HE TOOK THE NEXT STEP。

The two of them, one for the direction, one for the end。

The fat cows said that they had spent half their lives together, that they had no need to divide their meetings, that they had done their parts and that it was 100 per cent。

LET THE BRAIN FACE TO FACE WITH AI

In 2021, fat cows were still recovering from paralysis, and mushrooms began to help him find rehabilitation. She's sifting from the academic literature, looking for ways to compare with experimental groups, looking for relatively safe solutions that she can try for herself. Some of the equipment could not be bought, and they changed it themselves. Problems, problems, just learning。

Fat cow rehabilitation doctors once told him to do one thing: close his eyes, imagine moving, imagine moving。

When the fat cow felt, "Isn't this causing me a second trauma?"

He said that feeling was like someone told you that you were trying to suck that glass up next to it, to hang it in the air and drink it。

The doctor told him that he thought he could move to help him recover

But then he tried it secretly。

He talks to his leg when there's no one. The nurse told him that your leg was your companion, that he had been with you for so many years, that he was wounded now. Don't blame him. You should encourage him to talk to him more. He thought that suggestion was too weird at the time, but he tried it later, driven by a strong curiosity。

Of course it doesn't work。

But this experience, it planted a seed in his heart — it would be great if it could really be controlled. Not only can he do small things, but he can suddenly become Superman and the Jedi fight back. Such dramas have arisen in his mind and continue to recur。

ChatGPT 3.5 out the next day, mushrooms were used. In the first place, they put AI as a working brother, and left it with nothing important paperwork. And then it became more powerful than I thought, and slowly began to give it something important, as think tank, as CTO. The fat cow said, "When AI was a little brother, we saw it as a big brother."

It's a habit to help them on a hacker pine。

The little Red Book went this time to hack the pine, the fat cow and the mushrooms, and they didn't get a team because they didn't want to "hot somebody else," and they weren't sure they could make it, and if they pulled someone in and didn't do anything, I'm sorry for the 48 hours that people had come so far。

They went to give themselves a "dreaming chance."。

"We have debts, we have pressure to start businesses, we have products to push. And for 48 hours, we put everything else down, vacuum it out, and we're going to live up to what we thought when we were paralyzed. It'll take 48 hours, and if we don't, we won't be able to touch this thing

They have an "unworthy" sense of brain interface. The word is the fat cow himself. They've studied the literature, they know what the brain interface is, but they always think it's something in the lab that's too big, not something they can touch, and they've got some respectable feelings。

On the first day of hacking, they hit the wall, with ideas and wheelchairs。

The brain wave signal, though successfully read, cannot control the wheelchair. The signals are too muffled, too unstable, and every wave read is different, and there is no way to translate them into instructions。

The traditional brain interface study path is to translate the brain waves first, to find out that the waves are "forward", and the waves are "stop" before combining them with instructions and programming. But the problem is, the brain waves are unstable themselves, and when you want to move forward, there are other thoughts in your head, too many waves and bad signals。

So the wheelchair got out of control and hit the wall. The fat cow said that at the time they thought, "It seems like it's good to hit the wall, at least to find a brain wave, control it, hit it." But this thing doesn't work. It seems to have failed。

And then the mushrooms said something and changed the whole direction。

The idea of mushrooms is to skip the translation. This idea, which the fat cow later told repeatedly, said every time, "It's really a genius idea."。

THEY DON'T TRY TO DEFINE WHAT A BRAIN WAVE MEANS, THROW IT DIRECTLY TO AI, LET AI DO ALGORITHMS BETWEEN THE TWO PACKAGES, FIND A COUPLE OF DATA PACKAGES THAT ARE STABLE AND COMBINE THEM DIRECTLY WITH PROGRAMMING INSTRUCTIONS。

"WE DON'T BROKER ANYMORE. LETS THE BRAIN FACE TO FACE WITH AI, AND PEOPLE DON'T PUT A FOOT IN THE MIDDLE

The fat cow said that he had later gone to search for similar studies in a similar direction, but was still trying to translate brain waves, and no one had ever tried to skip the definitional link. He felt that this direction had reached the level of patenting。

With this breakthrough, the next day they were moving at a fast pace. They found several data packages that were stable and combined with the directional control of wheelchairs, and introduced the myioelectric module, which integrated in a multimodular manner to make control more stable。

At the final demonstration, the fat cow took his hands off the control panel and the wheelchair moved smoothly and smoothly。

They used the ring used to control the wheelchairs to make it a "tight spell" on the head of Sun Wu。

The mushrooms said that Sun Wukong was the Great Sage of Zigen until he was defeated, and those who were disabled must have had a wonderful life before they were paralysed. They were the Sages, but the disease gave them a tight spell, which confined them. The four of them went through 81 times and were still trapped with them, but he became the victor。

The fat cow said that he had listened to the metaphor, that he was moved and excited, and that it was difficult to speak。

Thinking about the universe, the bill brings you back to reality

After the first prize, the fat cow went down, and a dozen investors added his tweets。

Some asked him about the path to commercialization, some asked him about his next plan. In one reply, he said that he looked calm, like a man who had been through so many things, not indifferent, but really in the wake of a bigger wind。

But just the night before our interview, they had just been called on. They owed money to a friend whose husband knew and put a lot of pressure on the friend, who had to see it immediately。

The mushrooms said she'd talk to the fat cow for a while and wait for her to get some money back. But friends are pressured to see money today or tomorrow. The pressure, not just the problem of money, the dilemma of friendship and debt, had to be dealt with, but there was no immediate solution。

The fat cow said that it felt like you were thinking about the universe, about the civilization of aliens, about the brain interface that would allow humans to evolve to the next level of civilization. Do you have to pay for electricity this month? Do you have to pay for your recovery

"It will bring you back to reality."

The fat cow is obsessed with the "sensitization" thing. He said that communication between Garvey civilizations might not be a language or a word, but a complete information group would be delivered directly to each other. You don't just know where the restaurant is, you get the taste, price and mood of each other at the same time。

It sounds like science fiction. However, he believes that a person who is unable to speak in a sick bed should at least have the means to tell his family whether he is in pain, anger or calm at this time。

When he said that, he sat in a milk and tea shop, and the mushrooms sat next to him, outside the normal Shenzhen street, the usual afternoon. Those who were once trapped by their bodies are talking about the efficiency of the transfer of consciousness; those who have just been called on by friends and have not slept well last night are thinking about the next leap in human civilization。

But there's no contradiction between these two things here。

He said that at such moments he did not have to choose to be tough with fate when he was in a bad state. You can stay out of this for a while. You can wait until you breathe。

"I think life is a success if I don't let the sadness take control of myself."

The mushrooms say that if you go on this road, you don't have to be left behind. You can go to the light. This is what they say to themselves, and to all those who share similar experiences。

Make a light

During his stay, the fat cow met a master who could not speak and move。

He's 70, 80 years old, has all his hair white, makes acupuncture every day, runs like a water table, sets it up several times a day. Everyone in the ward knew him, knew his name, knew his bed number. One day, the old man looked so red, everyone complimented him and said he'd look so good that he might be able to talk sometime。

The master cannot speak, but his intelligence is normal, he understands what others say, he knows where he is and he knows his situation. In the evening of pre-slept care, the nurse found a needle of acupuncture, stuck it to his leg and was bent。

That needle's been pressed all day。

He felt the needle, he felt the pain all day, but he had no way to tell anyone. His face is red because of the pain, not because he looks good。

THE FAT COW SAID HE HAD A HARD TIME HEARING ABOUT IT. HE SAID HE WANTED TO DO BRAIN INTERFACES THAT WOULD RECOGNIZE EMOTIONAL STATE. HE WANTS TO PUT A COLORED LED LIGHT ON THE HEAD OF THE MASTER'S BED, ANGER IS RED, JOY IS GREEN, IRRITATING IS YELLOW, CALM IS BLUE。

"When he met his family, they were teasing him and they could see the lamp changing. He communicates with his family in light, and in colour

"He can also convey such a feeling when he is desperate."

THIS DETAIL IS ONE OF THE CENTRAL MOTIVATIONS OF FAT COW DOING THIS. NOT THE KIND OF "SOCIAL VALUE" WRITTEN ON A PPT, BUT A SPECIFIC MASTER, A PIN BENT, A PAIN OF SILENCE ALL DAY LONG。

He said that the Grand Master was not a symbol, not a data, a real person, a man with emotions, feelings and dignity, but his dignity was trapped in a body without exit。

China currently has about 3 million patients with spinal cord injuries, most of whom do not even have access to wheelchairs。

The fat cow said that, in this group, it's already Qinghua, Great North, 985, 211, which is relative freedom and relative luck。

More people can only lie on their beds, flipping every two hours to prevent scabs from falling into the bones. They can't wait for the technology's singularities, they can't wait for the future where the brain interface is sufficiently precise and priced. They are in bed right now, and now they need a light that can change colour, and now an interface that can connect them to the world again。

It is also a reality that accessibility in China is now required at the regulatory level, and that accessibility planners must be involved in every public project to be approved. But in real society, how does this demand work? Fat cows and mushrooms only say a "fiction" in private and then laugh and don't continue。

Last year, there was a news story of a wheelchair disabled person who died as a result of a ramp problem. The fat cow said that that was just an example of what had been reported, because he had influence. Such things happen every day, but most of the time nobody knows。

"The people who are left behind too quickly will not wait for the perfect technology. They just want to go back to the beginning of a normal life. We think that the beginning of the Book is the end of what many can hope for, but they cannot reach

Fat cow says。

Wait for a light

IN 1995, JEAN-DOMINIQUE BOBBY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THE FRENCH MAGAZINE ELLE, WAS PARALYSED AFTER A SUDDEN BRAIN HAEMORRHAGE AND WAS ABLE TO MOVE ONLY HIS LEFT EYELID. BY BLINKING, HE WROTE A MEMOIR IN ONE LETTER, CALLED DIVING BELL AND BUTTERFLY。

Diving clock, his body, heavy, sealed, trapped everything. Butterfly, his consciousness, freedom, light, can fly anywhere。

Bobby's way is to spell the letters with the eyelids, and put the perceived butterfly out of the diving clock. It took him 10 months to talk about a book and then died on the tenth day of its publication. The book was then turned into a film and won the Cannes Best Director Award。

What the fat cow is doing is making a key to that diving clock。

His wheelchair, its current precision, can be controlled. He is planning to embed the brain in a barrier-free navigation map so that people who are not at all able to move can enter the destination, correct the route, and control the direction by mind。

He wanted the final product price to be twenty-three thousand plus brain control plus self-drive plus barrier-free navigation. He said that this was not a remote number, that it was now luxuriant in the wheelchairs, amounting to 23,000, and that what they did was integrate technology, not build hardware from scratch. They do not have a technical brevity. They do not exclude the integration of speech control, muscle and electrical control, as long as they are able to land and if they are able to live a little bit free, even if they control a lamp。

They're going to participate in the Hongmong system development competition, and they're trying to make the ecology work. They have a group of sick people, a base, a large amount of real user demand data and a willingness to be a bridge between technocrats and this group。

"In this case, there is no opponent, and we are all teammates, and we are all here to resolve the problems of a group of people."

On the premises of the Harlem, when someone came to experience brain-controlled wheelchairs, they joked that this was all you were giving, and I wanted it, and I didn't want my lights to turn on, and you could use one of them. The fat cow said it was a good joke, of course, not a picture of the user they were expecting. He also said, however, that if the cost of the thing was low enough, he would not exclude the wider use。

He can't forget, it's the boss。

He said he was the miracle of 0.001% of doctors who could stand up. He's a microcosm of this group, but he's the luckiest one. He can sit in a wheelchair, he can stand up, he can participate in hackers, he can win first prizes, he can be trusted by investors。

What are they waiting for

They're waiting for a lamp. Angry is red, happiness is green, irritating is yellow, calm is blue。

You don't have to talk, you don't have to move, you just have to be seen changing the lamp, knowing you're still there, knowing you're emotional, knowing you're a complete person。

This is more urgent and concrete than any grand narrative。