Chapter 170
Translator: Dreamscribe
During the ICM, the Fields Prize laureate was given a number of official engagements.
A commemorative interview for the laureate, attendance at panel discussions, meetings with young students of mathematics from countries around the world. Seo-ha showed up faithfully at every one of them and carried out the duties assigned to him.
Hanover City Hall.
It was one of the most beautiful buildings in all of Europe. It had been completed in 1913, and because the ground was so marshy, 6,026 beech-wood piles had been driven into the earth to bear the building's weight.
"What an incredible building."
"One of Germany's points of pride."
At Seo-ha's admiration, his guide gave a proud smile.
Its exterior looked like a medieval castle, and yet inside was installed the only arched elevator in the world. Elevators normally rose straight up, but the one in Hanover City Hall curved upward at a seventeen-degree angle, following the dome's curve.
Whirrr-
'An optimal solution within geometric constraint conditions?'
The Germans had built this with science and technology from more than a century ago.
While he was working out the conditions for distributing the elevator's load and keeping it balanced, they arrived at the banquet hall.
Clap clap clap!
As Seo-ha, the guest of honor, entered the hall, applause poured in from every direction.
The elders of the mathematical world, MIT figures including Dean Whitman, the members of Team Apex, the President of Germany and the chairman of the International Mathematical Union, and even past Fields Prize laureates had come, their medals hung around their necks.
The President clasped Seo-ha's hand and offered heartfelt praise.
"To think that the frontier of human intellect is this young... It's moving. I do hope you will go on producing astonishing achievements."
"Thank you."
Click.
Click.
As the two of them shook hands, flashes went off here and there.
Reporters dispatched not only from Korea but from all over the world roamed the venue. The soft melody of a string quartet flowed through the hall. Waiters in tuxedos moved busily about, carrying German Riesling wine and canapés.
"Su-jeong! That's wine. You're not supposed to drink that."
In the United States, one couldn't drink until the age of twenty-one. But this place was Germany.
At Theo's reproach, Su-jeong stuck out her tongue.
"In Germany you can do it at sixteen, you know? Haven't you heard of territorial jurisdiction?"
"These canapés are incredibly good. They've got caviar on them. Ben, this is your first time having caviar too, right?"
"Okay, okay. It's embarrassing, so please, just keep it down..."
While cheerful conversation passed back and forth all around, a white-haired gentleman approached Seo-ha's side.
"Seo-ha, it is an honor to meet you like this."
He greeted Seo-ha in fluent English and held out his hand.
"My name is Karl-Heinz Brenner. I serve as President of the University of Göttingen."
The president of another university, but why?
Seo-ha was briefly taken aback, but assumed it was just a customary greeting.
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Yu Seo-ha."
"I've heard you have a great interest in Riemann. Is that correct?"
Seo-ha looked at him with puzzled eyes.
"That's right."
"In that case, this should be of help to you."
He drew a card from his breast pocket and pressed it into Seo-ha's hand. A luxurious yet weighty card. On its face, the figure of Athena, goddess of wisdom, was engraved in gold leaf.
"Our university library houses the Riemann Archive. The materials he left behind in his lifetime have been preserved exactly as they were. Including the very paper in which he raised that famous hypothesis.
Because they are historical materials, even a professor must obtain permission to view them. But with that card, it's another matter entirely. It's a pass that grants entry to every area of the university."
At Seo-ha's astonished face, he wore a satisfied expression.
"What is more, our university still preserves, in its original form, the observatory where Gauss spent his whole life. Hilbert is buried in the Göttingen municipal cemetery. On his gravestone is engraved that famous phrase he spoke at the Paris congress."
Seo-ha gulped, an entranced look on his face.
"Göttingen is the homeland and the holy land of mathematics. The doctoral dissertation Gödel published at our school was a masterpiece. After all, it was the theory that changed the history of mathematics: the Incompleteness Theorem.
Minkowski, Ackermann, Max Born, Felix Klein, Emmy Noether, von Neumann, Edmund Landau. All of them geniuses who passed through Göttingen. Are they not the very history of modern mathematics itself? You could say ours is the university with the dignity most befitting your doctoral thesis, Seo-ha."
Thud, thud.
"How shamelessly you reel off the names of the very mathematicians you drove out with your own hands."
At the cold voice coming from behind him, President Brenner's expression hardened.
"Whitman."
"I'd rather not dredge up tragic history, but I simply can't hold my tongue. Edmund was my teacher's teacher. That master of number theory was humiliated by his own students in his own lecture hall and driven out."
Clack!
He set his champagne glass down roughly on the table.
"After they expelled everyone, the Nazi minister of education asked Hilbert, didn't he? Whether the mathematics department had gotten any cleaner now that the Jews had been driven out."
As if it were a story he knew well too, Brenner's face flushed red.
"Hilbert answered like this, they say. That there was no longer any such thing as mathematics in Göttingen."
"How rude of you."
"You're the one being rude. The nerve, to Seo-ha of all people! Do you have any idea what he is at MIT?"
The two old men's auras clashed, taut against each other.
While the two of them waged their war of words, Seo-ha quietly extricated himself and slipped out of the hall.
'Lucky!'
Seo-ha stroked the card he had tucked away, over the fabric of his clothes.
He'd had no idea where to begin, and the timing was perfect.
On the way to the hotel, inside the car, Seo-ha sank into thought.
Back in his room, he paced for a long while, and then, as though he had made up his mind, he gathered his teammates. They had come in lightheartedly, but at Seo-ha's grim face they sensed something was off.
Rustle.
Everyone sat down on the floor without a sound. After a brief silence, Seo-ha spoke.
"I'm sorry to ask, but after the closing ceremony, would you all come with me to Göttingen?"
This was different from his days at the gifted academy.
They had striven together for a long time. They had the right to witness the moment of proof.
Theo was the first to catch on.
"Are you finally ready?"
Nod.
Theo didn't ask Seo-ha why he wasn't carrying out the work in his lab at MIT. The Seo-ha he knew had a sentimental side when it came to mathematics.
'There might be inspiration that comes only here.'
"Whoa! I've got chills..."
Sri rubbed his arms roughly.
"I figured it wasn't far off, but I never imagined we'd solve it in a faraway land like this."
"Have you decided on the place?"
"I-Is there something for me to do too?"
Su-jeong, Cecilia, and Ben looked at Seo-ha with tense faces.
Seo-ha drew out the golden card and showed it to them.
"All right. Leave the preparations to us."
Theo said with a cool expression.
This was, perhaps, a historic duty entrusted to him; he had the illusion that the goddess drawn on the card was smiling.
"Thank you."
The next day, under Theo's command, the team began to move.
"First, let's get a read on the site."
Seo-ha wanted to do the proof without any commotion.
Sri opened his laptop. A map of the University of Göttingen campus appeared on the screen.
"What about a lecture hall?"
"There are a few large lecture halls built in the early twentieth century. Of those, this one would be best."
The Auditorium Maximum, a tiered grand lecture hall, capacity six hundred.
It was the very space where Riemann and Hilbert had lectured. As it happened to be the school break, hardly anyone would be coming around.
"Cecilia, if any problems come up, could I ask you to handle things on the ground here?"
"Of course."
Even beyond England, the power of the Ashley Family held firm.
"Ben and Su-jeong, I'll leave the supplies to you. There's no telling how many days this will take. Get the things Seo-ha is most familiar with."
"Got it."
"That's the thing I'm best at."
Theo nodded as he looked at his teammates.
"This will surely become a historic scene. I'll take charge of Seo-ha's health and the record-keeping."
Theo rented a high-end van.
Inside it, the supplies Su-jeong and Ben brought were stacked neatly, one by one. Hagoromo Chalk, A3 paper, spare clothes, the various snacks Seo-ha liked, a CD player, and so on.
Everyone wore a grim, resolute expression, as if they had become a special forces unit heading out on an operation.
"It won't do us any good to be spotted by people. Let's keep our movements to a minimum. We may have to eat and sleep in the lecture hall."
Keeping Seo-ha's concentration from breaking was the top priority. Theo intended to arrange everything according to Seo-ha's wishes.
Su-jeong spoke with an expectant look on her face.
"This is kind of thrilling, isn't it?"
"We're not going camping!"
"But you went and bought a tent and sleeping bags and stuck them in the back?"
The ICM closing ceremony ended without incident.
Seo-ha kept his composure in front of everyone right to the end.
Vroom-
Göttingen was an hour and a half away by car.
While they sped along the road, the inside of the car was quiet. Outside the window, the green plains of northern Germany stretched on endlessly. Beneath a gloomy sky, wheat fields and birch forests appeared in turn.
Seo-ha sat in the passenger seat with his eyes closed.
'Has he already started?'
Theo glanced at Seo-ha. His fingers were moving faintly on top of his knees.
The car turned into downtown Göttingen.
Low modern buildings, students on bicycles, moss clinging to the stone walls.
"Huh? Look at that."
Su-jeong said, peering out the window.
[Gauss Street]
[Riemann Street]
[Dirichlet Square]
It struck them afresh that they had truly come to the stage of history.
It was evening by the time they reached the campus.
The streets had grown dim; Cecilia got out of the car and walked toward the building. It was to meet the administrator she had contacted in advance.
Ben and Su-jeong began unloading the luggage from the trunk.
"You okay?"
Theo asked in a low voice.
"Yes. I want to get started as soon as possible."
The waters were overflowing.
Seo-ha felt as if he could no longer hold his heart in check.
"Got it!"
Cecilia laughed, the golden card tucked between her fingers.
Creak-
The Auditorium Maximum.
When the heavy oak door opened, the smell of ages past rushed in along with the cool air. Chalk dust, an old floor, the traces of a space where the great minds of the century had once dwelled.
Seo-ha stood in the corridor and gazed ahead.
It was the place he had seen in his dreams. He was surely standing there, up ahead. As though he had been waiting for a very, very long time.
"Riemann."
When Seo-ha stepped into the place the figure guided him to, a vast lecture hall unfolded before him.
It was a space with an enormous blackboard running across three walls, hundreds of seats fanning out in a semicircle.
Thud, thud.
Seo-ha slowly descended the steps.
No one followed him.
He stood at the lectern and looked out.
The countless scholars who had lectured in this place. When he closed his eyes, scenes of history he had only ever imagined through books were drawn vividly in his mind.
A shiver.
Ducky was overjoyed.
It was crying out to be set free at once.
'All right. I'll give you some praise. You held out a long time, for you.'
Seo-ha took a deep breath, then murmured softly.
"Let's begin, Ducky."
Ducky laughed. Silently, with its whole body.
Seo-ha's pupils contracted. As if a dam had burst, the longing he had held down exploded all at once. Tens of thousands of formulas and geometric fragments rose up and circled the Auditorium.
His field of vision narrowed.
Every sense unnecessary to the proof was shut off.
All he could see was the blackboard. It was a thrill of liberation he hadn't felt in a very long time.
"So this is the real Seo-ha..."
"Oh, my God."
The teammates murmured as they stood there, dazed.
This was on an entirely different level from the hyper-focused state he showed now and then. Right now, he was probably incapable of even basic communication.
Theo instinctively knew that this was a dangerous state.
'Seo-ha, you're all right, aren't you?'
On the way here, he had heard, over and over, Seo-ha's promise not to worry even if he seemed like a stranger. For now, all he could do was trust Seo-ha.
* * *
The lights of the Auditorium showed no sign of going out, even as the night deepened.
Sven, the night security guard patrolling the campus, tilted his head at the light spilling from the second floor. Due to a mix-up, word of the situation hadn't reached him.
"Who's there?"
He cautiously opened the door and went in.
Creak-
"Good heavens."
The sight that unfolded before his eyes stirred a feeling at once bizarre and sacred.
One of the three enormous blackboards was filled to the brim with white formulas. A boy in a shirt was writing something as though possessed.
Around him were a tent and sleeping bags, and a group of foreigners he couldn't place, watching it all with grim expressions.
Tap, tap.
They had mobilized cameras and laptops, recording something.
Sven realized intuitively that this was something major.
Click!
With trembling hands, he pulled out his phone and photographed the scene. Then he sent a message to Professor Meyer of the mathematics department, an acquaintance of his.
-Professor, someone's come into the Auditorium. He's writing down a whole bunch of strange equations. Do you happen to know who he is?
A moment later, a reply came back from him.
-Don't do anything, just stay put!
Professor Meyer, who had been at the ICM closing after-party, nearly tumbled out of his chair when he saw the photo.
The one holding the chalk was unmistakably Seo-ha. And what he was writing right now was something to do with the Riemann Zeta Function.
He hurriedly shared this with other mathematicians.
[Urgent! It looks like Yu Seo-ha is solving the Riemann Hypothesis in Göttingen right now.]
-Photo attached
The message spread.
Ding!
Ding!
Mathematicians from all over the world, heading home from Hanover or off to the airport or the train station, checked it all at the same moment.
Their astonishment was brief; then great chaos broke out.
"Cancel my train ticket, please. Taxi!"
"Stop! Please, stop. No, I know it's not easy, but I'm telling you I have to get off right now!"
"Turn the car around! To Göttingen! Hurry!"
Thousands of cars racing down the autobahn changed direction all at once, as though by prior agreement.
*****
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