Chapter 257

Translator: Dreamscribe

An empty main lecture hall.

Seo-ha stood on the podium and looked up at the enormous blackboard. It stretched more than ten meters across, with multiple sliding panels reaching all the way to the ceiling.

Whenever his mind was troubled, he liked standing in front of a blackboard.

Once he poured out everything in his head, it felt as though his tangled thoughts found their proper places among the equations and diagrams.

‘Complex System.’

It was the source of Seo-ha’s turmoil.

Modern civilization was, in fact, built on the premise that ‘some things cannot be calculated’. Capitalism and financial markets operated on mechanisms of uncertainty and risk distribution.

The stock market, the flow of commodities.

What would happen to human society the moment a model capable of perfectly predicting the macroeconomy appeared? A corporation or nation that secured the Complex System equations first could endlessly multiply its wealth in a zero-risk environment.

The Butterfly Effect was another concern.

If it became possible to focus attacks solely on the areas that would bring about the most catastrophic consequences, what use would national defense or warfare even serve?

Once his thoughts reached that point, Seo-ha could no longer tell whether developing the theory of computation was truly the right decision.

“What do you think, Daisy?”

The screen flickered, and Daisy appeared.

[Master’s concerns are entirely valid. A Complex System in which the balance of power has broken down will ultimately collapse. However, even if Master stops, humanity will eventually continue racing toward that destination.]

“I think so too.”

Daisy was worried about her Master.

It was far too heavy a burden for one human being to bear.

No one would ever know. That somewhere, in an empty lecture hall, there was a mathematician standing alone with a piece of chalk, weighing the future of humanity.

[There is a way. Would a society in which Master controls everything not become a perfect ideal society? Master would surely be able to construct a system capable of functioning even thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of years into the future.]

Seo-ha grimaced deeply.

“No. Human choices must always be accompanied by uncertainty.”

Then, as though he had made up his mind, he spoke quietly.

“I’ve decided. I’ll just have to raise the world’s defenses high enough to withstand these destructive equations.”

They could not stop using fire simply because arson was frightening.

If they could build an effective warning system and respond accordingly, the problem could be solved. So,

‘Fear not the truth.’

Scratch scratch.

The chalk raced across the blackboard without hesitation.

Professor Cronen’s advice continued to push him firmly forward. That did not mean he intended to shirk his responsibility.

‘Before this power falls into the hands of greedy people in authority, I’ll create an order myself, in a form the world can handle.’

Seo-ha made his decision.

‘Ah, that feels better.’

His mind felt clear.

The longing for truth that he had kept forcefully suppressed all this time burst forth like a dam breaking.

Step 1.

「The density of branch points in a continuous topological space cannot be measured countably.」

It was a proposition that had been generally accepted after verification by the joint Harvard-MIT research team, but a proof still remained far out of reach.

A Turing Machine calculated the branch points of a problem one after another in sequence, as though advancing along a tape. But the infinitely branching values of a Complex System could never be divided into a finite number of pieces and measured.

This was Seo-ha’s first declaration of war, one that pointed directly at the fundamental limitations of Turing’s Computational Complexity Theory.

Scratch scratch.

White chalk dust scattered like snowflakes across the enormous sliding blackboard.

The equations honed at his fingertips lightly mocked Turing’s discrete computational structure as they elegantly expanded into the dimension of the Yu-Riemann Matrix.

It was a new continent no one in the history of mathematics had ever dared to reach. Seo-ha boldly threw himself beyond the cliff where the tape of the Turing Machine came to a halt.

***

Hugo walked down the corridor, rubbing his hollow eyes.

“Haah.... Where did it all go wrong?”

Task Force 13, the joint Harvard-MIT research team.

A long time had passed since the project ended, but he still had not escaped the specter of the Step 1 Hypothesis.

「The density of branch points in a continuous topological space cannot be measured countably.」

After intense verification by the joint team, the validity of the proposition had largely been accepted, but proving it with a complete mathematical formulation was an entirely different matter.

He had spent the past year clinging to this problem.

He had studied Turing Machines and dug through every paper he could find on Complex System theory. Recently, he had been trying to draw on the concept of countability from Measure Theory and divide the set of branch points into a finite number of pieces.

It was a desperate struggle to somehow force infinitely branching variables into the existing discrete computational structure.

He had even managed to publish a paper in a major journal. Yet the path to an actual proof still seemed endlessly distant.

“There has to be an answer....”

Every time he extended the dimensionality, his equations struck the wall of topological constraints and diverged into imaginary numbers.

It was an insurmountable wall no amount of struggling could overcome. It felt as though the confidence he had once possessed as a man called a genius was being torn out by the roots.

‘Hm?’

Scratch, scratch.

As he passed through the corridor, the sound of chalk drifted through a crack in a door. Hugo opened it without thinking.

“Seo-ha?”

Inside the dark main lecture hall.

Under the lights shining down on the podium, Seo-ha was covering the enormous blackboard with equations. Hugo’s gaze locked onto it.

Thump.

For a moment, his heart pounded as though it might burst.

“Is he trying to prove Step 1?”

It was the problem he had spent countless sleepless nights tearing his hair out over for months.

As though entranced, Hugo walked into the lecture hall. He sat in a corner so he would not disturb Seo-ha and stared at the blackboard.

‘Wait, that’s....’

The logic that had hit a dead end was unraveling before his eyes in real time.

The gap in talent was vast enough to drive him to despair, but Hugo had long since stopped feeling anything like jealousy toward Seo-ha.

It felt as though the massive blockage that had been weighing on his mind was finally clearing away. A chilling sense of catharsis swept through his entire body.

‘...That’s from our paper.’

The core equation the joint team had published in an academic journal. Hugo’s eyes widened until they seemed ready to pop out.

“We weren’t wrong.”

Seo-ha had taken the point of collapse the joint team had considered a limitation, turned it on its head, and used it as the entrance to the Yu-Riemann Matrix. Hugo unconsciously let out a cry of admiration at the sheer creativity of the idea.

With trembling hands, he took out his phone. The group chat had remained active even after the project ended.

-Get to the MIT math department’s main lecture hall right now. Seo-ha is solving the Step 1 Hypothesis. He’s using the equations we made!

The moment he sent the message, the group chat that had been as silent as the grave exploded into activity.

Had even ten minutes passed? Hurried footsteps began echoing from the far end of the corridor. Dennis, who had been having a late lunch in his lab, and the other researchers from the joint task force rushed into the lecture hall, panting heavily.

“Huff, huff! What the hell is going on all of a sudden?”

“Shh! Be quiet and sit down.”

The seats quickly filled with dozens of TF members. Every one of them had been unable to let go of the specter of the Step 1 theory.

A theorem they had seen countless times.

The wall of topological constraints that had blocked them at every turn was being dismantled before their eyes in real time.

“My God....”

Dennis’s voice trembled.

Their year of frustration was being transformed into the building blocks of the proof Seo-ha was writing. Not a single member of the TF could bring themselves to speak as they were drawn deeper and deeper into the equations Seo-ha wrote.

***

The Dean’s office of the mathematics department.

“Have some.”

Whitman set a steaming teacup on the table.

Silver hair and gray eyes.

Cronen picked up the cup with a displeased expression.

“Tea isn’t really my preference.”

“Looking at the state of you, I doubt more coffee would do you any good. This should be better, at least. You’ve come a long way. Sorry for dragging someone who had been living in seclusion all the way out here.”

Slurp-

Cronen took a sip of tea and frowned.

“It wasn’t anything that dramatic. Once I stopped going out for a while, it just became a hassle. The university told me to take as much sabbatical as I wanted, so I don’t have to worry about lectures either.”

“Have you finished the proof?”

“I’ve done everything I can on my end. The rest is up to Seo-ha.”

“....”

The Dean’s expression darkened. He gave a bitter smile.

“I’m ashamed.”

Whitman lowered his head as he spoke.

“I knew something had been troubling Seo-ha recently. Whenever I asked about the progress of the 13-Step Hypothesis, he kept dodging the question. That’s why I called you here.”

“I know.”

“In the end, is it greed....? Perhaps it’s nothing more than my personal desire to witness the advancement of human intellect.”

Cronen chuckled and shook his head.

“Who doesn’t know how much you care about Seo-ha, Old Man? You were worried about him.”

Grothendieck, one of the greatest geniuses in the history of mathematics, had completely abandoned academia after learning that the institute he had founded was receiving funding from the Ministry of Defense. Afterward, he moved to a remote rural village, cut off all contact with the world, and lived there raising goats.

“I’m afraid Seo-ha’s purity will be compromised.”

“You don’t need to worry so much.”

“Hm?”

“The life of a genius is harsh by nature. The Seo-ha I saw was a child who understood that better than anyone. Old Man, all you need to do is keep watching over him like you have been, and make sure the flies don’t swarm around him.”

Whitman had been working in every way he could to prevent Seo-ha’s passion from cooling, but he always felt as though he were walking on thin ice.

That was when it happened.

Murmur murmur-

A commotion came from outside. Just as Whitman frowned and began to rise-

Bang!

The door flew open, and a Teaching Assistant rushed inside.

“Dean! I think you need to come out right now.”

“What is it?”

“Professor Yu Seo-ha is in the main lecture hall....”

The moment Seo-ha’s name was mentioned, both men rose from their seats at the same time. Students passing through the corridor stared in surprise and hurriedly moved aside at the sight of the elderly Dean running with such urgency.

A short while later, the two men arrived at the lecture hall and had no choice but to stop where they stood.

“What in the world....”

Whitman swallowed dryly.

‘The joint task force?’

And they were not the only ones. Even though it was not class time, every seat in the lecture hall was occupied.

Undergraduates who had been passing through the corridor, Postdocs who had been writing papers in their labs, professors from the mathematics department and even other fields.

Scratch scratch.

The proof was racing toward its conclusion.

Seo-ha thought,

‘It was a simple problem.’

All he had to do was possess and control the entire theory. Then he could release only the information that benefited humanity.

When it came to mathematics, he had never once desired rights such as patents. Not for the Minimum Energy Theory, nor for the Life Matrix.

But this was different.

‘It is the correct decision, Master.’

Her Master had always wanted to remain free from politics and capital. Daisy had already drawn up the entire blueprint.

A nonprofit foundation where mathematicians from around the world could gather and solve humanity’s great mathematical problems together.

That would provide all the justification they needed.

‘Funding is already more than sufficient. I have also designed a revenue structure so it can eventually operate independently.’

Seo-ha had chosen the name.

‘House of Mathematics.’

*****

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