Chapter 178
Translator: Dreamscribe
Ding-
Ding-
All across the MIT campus, smartphone notifications went off simultaneously.
In the dorms, the library, the dining halls, even down on the banks of the Charles River where couples were out on dates. The students who checked the message froze for an instant, then lit up with an excitement that seemed ready to burst.
[Apex Lab Emergency Assembly]
-Attendees: Refer to roster
-Location: Conference Room 3
The most brilliant prodigies even by MIT's standards, they were also the talents who, while verifying Felix's paper, had built up a deep understanding of the key points of the Riemann Hypothesis.
"Hugo! Did you get it too?"
"Of course! Let's go, right now!"
Hugo flung aside his half-eaten sandwich and grabbed Laura by the hand.
The name "512 Brigade" was like a proud badge of honor to them. The pride of standing at the very front line of the new mathematical paradigm that Seo-ha was leading. They had even gone so far as to set up their own regular meetings.
Crash-bang-!
The conference room door swung open and dozens of students came pouring in, panting and gasping for breath. At the front of the room stood a large board.
Once he had confirmed that everyone was present, Theo stepped forward. Normally he would have started off with a light joke, but today his expression was as grim and resolute as a commander facing wartime.
"As of this moment, MIT and Apex Lab are entering a state of emergency."
Gulp.
The thirty-some students gathered in the conference room swallowed hard all at once.
"It's been barely any time since we registered the paper, and already the inbox is on the verge of collapse. The questions come in all kinds. Some carry sharp insight, but plenty of people don't even grasp the basic axioms of the new geometry."
Theo looked around at everyone gathered in the room.
"Our mission is to build the first line of defense against these questions on Seo-ha's behalf. We have to convince them using the grammar that Seo-ha created.
But keep this in mind. Every single email you send, every single answer you give, goes out in the name of Apex Lab. Which means mathematicians all over the world will be dissecting your answers as if under a microscope."
Hugo's hand shot up.
"Theo. Could I take a look at the list of who's been asking?"
"Here."
Hugo's hands trembled as he took the tablet.
The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Clay Mathematics Institute, Stanford's graduate school, the Max Planck Institute, École Polytechnique, Peking University.... They were the most formidable mathematics institutes in the world.
"These people are asking us questions?"
"A lot of questions have already come in. We can't afford to lose their trust before the theory is even verified. Once you make a bad impression, it takes a long time to recover from it. So...."
Theo pointed at the printouts piled up like a mountain on the table.
"We'd better study up first, wouldn't we? If any of you thinks this is too heavy a burden to carry, you're free to quietly get up and leave."
A heavy silence settled over the conference room. But not a single person rose from their seat. If anything, their eyes burned with fighting spirit.
Hugo pushed his glasses up and let out a snort of a laugh.
"Hahaha! With a face like that, and you crack jokes too. This is the chance to get in on the greatest moment in the history of mathematics. What fool would walk out of here?"
Laughter burst out here and there.
Those gathered here held strong confidence in their own abilities. Many of them were being courted by the world's leading companies and research institutes, and quite a few had already won major awards in academia.
But what truly set their hearts racing was not their careers or their credentials.
The event unfolding right now, at this very moment, at the center of the world's mathematical community. The pride of standing in the thick of it stirred a burning passion in their hearts. On top of that, there was the thrill of knowing that the authors of the papers they had always looked up to and studied would now be the ones throwing questions back at them.
"Let's get started. We can't keep the elders waiting too long."
"Where's the fun without a little pressure like this? Let's do this properly!"
Rustle.
Soon the sound of pages turning filled the conference room.
Some went up to the board and grabbed markers, while others typed equations into their laptops in a frenzy.
Rattle.
Just then the back door of the conference room opened and Seo-ha came in. Dressed casually, Seo-ha had bloodshot eyes as though he'd been up all night, but his expression looked bright.
"You all came. Thank you, truly."
When Seo-ha bowed his head, his seniors, flustered instead, waved their hands in protest.
"We call ourselves a Brigade, so of course we'd come!"
"Right, right! You just hurry up and go write your book. And you'd better sign a copy for each of us, got it?"
"Yeah! This is a matter of MIT's pride too. We won't let a single blemish stain the historic paper our junior wrote, so don't you worry!"
Something hot surged up in his chest.
The enormous door that he had thrown open. Before it, these people were willingly covering themselves in dust, ready to become the bridge between him and the world. Without any reward, purely out of academic passion and a sense of duty.
Seo-ha clenched his fists tightly.
'Let's make the clearest map possible.'
So that everyone could fully take in the vast, dazzling universe he had seen.
He resolved to draw it out, without the slightest error, in a language everyone could understand.
* * *
On the outskirts of Munich, Germany.
While the theoretical mathematicians were wrestling with Seo-ha's paper, the fields of applied mathematics and computer science were moving more quickly.
Inside a massive cube-shaped building, machines hummed in a low drone.
The LRZ (Leibniz Supercomputing Centre), a colossal facility boasting the finest computing power in Europe. A group of scientists had gathered here.
"Preparations are complete."
After several sleepless nights, they had converted the equations of the operator that Seo-ha had proposed into code a computer could understand.
"Run it."
The instant the director gave the command, the LRZ's overwhelming computational resources began racing toward a single point.
Whirr-
Data poured down the screen without pause.
The trillionth zero, the ten-trillionth zero....
Computations that had taken more than several months with Felix's method, once they passed through the new equation Seo-ha had devised, began stretching out at an unbelievable speed.
"My God."
"So this is the true power the operator holds."
The researchers watching the monitor gaped, mouths hanging open.
"One hundred percent match rate!"
"And the error rate is zero."
"This fast, and not a single zero strays off the critical line. This is like...."
The lead researcher muttered with a dazed look on his face.
"It's as if someone copied down the exact code God used when He created the universe."
The director chewed at his lip.
"This is bad. Post-Quantum Cryptography can't be ready yet."
The LRZ wanted to keep the results of the experiment hidden, but not everything went the way they intended. That was because similar experiments, varying in scale, were being carried out all over the world.
It was backed not only by flawless logic but now by physical simulation as well.
This news completely extinguished even the tiniest ember of doubt that had lingered in the hearts of the mathematical community's leading figures. They now sought to dissect the paper with all their might, not to verify it but to understand its principles. The Riemann Hypothesis had now shed the label of "hypothesis" and finished its preparations to ascend to the ranks of an eternal, immortal "theorem."
* * *
A run-down house on the outskirts of Boston.
Mikhail Orsen lay on an old bed, drawing ragged breaths. The cancer cells had already eaten away at his body, leaving him barely able to move a single fingertip. All he could do was gaze out the window and wait for the last day allotted to him to arrive.
"Cough, cough!"
Each time he coughed, a pain as if his chest were tearing apart came over him.
The relationship between quantum chaos and the Riemann zeta function, which he had studied his whole life, had been rejected time and again, dismissed as irreproducible and lacking grounds. It was a death befitting a life spent as a thorough outsider to academia, he thought.
'I shouldn't have given him the box.'
Had he, perhaps, handed over his own wretched fate along with the box to a boy destined for a brilliant future?
'Please, let me live just long enough to see that boy grow.'
Perhaps it was thanks to that desperate prayer.
He had clung tenaciously to his breath at death's threshold. For a few years he used to search for academic news, wondering what had become of the boy, but in recent days, with his body so frail, even that had become difficult. Orsen sensed instinctively that little of his life remained.
Clunk!
A heavy sound came from the mailbox.
Normally he would have ignored it. But that day, a strange premonition came over him. Mustering all his strength, he made his way toward the front door, all but crawling along the floor. What sat before the door was a single thick parcel. The sender was Yu Seo-ha.
Riiip-
With trembling hands he carefully tore open the packaging.
Inside was a heavy paper running four hundred pages.
「On the Geometric Structure of Primes and the Zeros of the Zeta Function」
There was no special letter or note.
Normally he could barely even read a newspaper, so where had this strength come from? He adjusted his magnifying glass and began reading down through the paper.
The sun set and night came. He forgot completely, even the pain that had been gnawing at his body.
"Remarkable."
Seo-ha's proof was wonder itself.
He had expanded the integers into the space of noncommutative geometry and transplanted the dynamic laws of quantum mechanics onto it. The phenomenon Orsen had devoted his entire life to chasing yet had never managed to prove. In the instant of quantum annihilation, the wave of the zeta function was meshing and turning in perfect order within Seo-ha's equations.
"What I saw was not a delusion."
It was dazzling.
The order of the universe he had so longed to find seemed to pulse within those equations.
He quietly closed his eyes.
His life had not been a failure. The footprints he had left while groping through the darkness had become a fine stepping stone on the path by which the genius named Seo-ha advanced toward the truth. For that alone, it had been a life worth living.
Slip.
Just as he moved to close the paper in satisfaction, a passage written on the final page caught his eye.
[References]
A page where hundreds of illustrious names and excellent papers would be listed. Orsen doubted his own eyes. Because there, on the very first line of that brilliant list, a name far too familiar was stamped.
1. Mikhail Orsen.
-Statistical Correlation Between Quantum Chaotic Systems and the Zeros of the Zeta Function (Unpublished)
"Ahh...."
With violently trembling hands he stroked his own name. Below it was written a short dedication from Seo-ha.
「To Professor Orsen, who was the first to hear the wave of the universe in the darkness. The signpost you left behind gave me great strength. With deep respect and gratitude.」
Drip, drip-drip.
Thick tears poured from the eyes of the old scholar who had thought himself withered dry.
A lonely life in which he had walked the right path yet no one had recognized him. But the short passage the boy had left behind compensated, fully, for all that injustice and sorrow.
Orsen cradled the paper close with his bony arms. The pain that had felt like his body burning was nowhere to be found, and an indescribable peace and fullness filled his whole being.
"It's enough."
Tweet, tweet!
Warm sunlight shone in from outside the window.
For the first time in decades, Orsen smiled with an expression as innocent as a child's.
He was not the least bit afraid of the death that was coming. Because his scholarship would live and breathe forever within the proof of that radiant boy.
*****
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