But Aris knew the Signa Horizon LX 8.2 had a soul of raw power hidden beneath its sleek casing. It possessed a gradient system that, if pushed to its absolute theoretical limits, could map the brain's diffusion pathways with staggering fidelity. He flipped the intercom switch. "Elena, can you hear me?"

He sat at the console and began to build the sequence. He wasn’t using the standard clinical presets. He was writing a custom pulse sequence, pushing the 1.5-Tesla magnet to listen to the whisper of water molecules moving along the white matter tracts of Elena's motor cortex.

Aris sat back in his chair, exhaling a breath he didn't know he was holding. He looked through the glass at the glowing ring of the Signa Horizon.

The machine was silent now, its job done. Across the globe, thousands of these scanners were looking into the darkness of the human body, but tonight, in this quiet room in Geneva, one had just found the lost music.