Chapter 182
Translator: Dreamscribe
['Brain of the Century' Yu Seo-ha Enlists at Last; Branch and Posting Top Secret]
-Yu Seo-ha (19, MIT), who stunned the world by proving the Riemann Hypothesis, will fulfill his military duty as research personnel under a special law instead of through active-duty enlistment.
On the 13th, the Military Manpower Administration and the Ministry of National Defense announced that, in connection with the military service determination examination Yu had applied for, they had designated him as the first subject of the "Separate Fulfillment System for Core National Security Research Personnel". This is read as a measure reflecting the recently amended Military Service Act and the outcome of high-level military talks between South Korea and the United States.
Yu was reportedly inclined at first to enlist as an active-duty soldier and serve out his time. However, with strong opposition from the scientific community at home and abroad and from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), coupled with the management burden on the Ministry of National Defense, the alternative service was settled on at an unusual speed.
└Why am I the one who doesn't get this? High-level military talks? The NSA? Why would any of that be necessary? And why's the posting top secret on top of that?
└ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└When you think about what a grunt like that could actually do ㅋㅋㅋ
└"Private Yu Seo-ha! By when can you decrypt the White House's codes?" Maybe they were worried about a situation like that?
└As if that's all there is to it. Honestly, I'm kinda curious what would come out if they really put him through the grinder.
└Active-duty enlistment ㅋㅋ like that was ever gonna happen ㅋㅋ The Defense Ministry would've gotten roasted to death.
└I've been watching him since he was in elementary school, and he's already off to the army. Our Seo-ha's all grown up, huh?
└Active duty is kinda yikes. If I were his senior, the pressure would be real.
└First subject ㅋㅋㅋ Will there even ever be a No. 2?
Ji-yoon set the tablet down with a satisfied expression. She'd put in a fair amount of effort one way and another, but even she hadn't expected things to work out this well.
"Hey, Park, you genius of Nowon-gu! Let's go ahead and put you in here as No. 2."
The assistant, who'd been tidying up some documents, glanced at the screen and grumbled as if to say, here we go again.
"Give it a rest. I'm about to be a Ph.D. now! And how long has it been since I finished my military service!"
"Yeah, yeah. Pretty soon you'll be talking to me as an equal. Once that degree of yours comes through, are you going to start calling me 'Professor Kim' like we're on the same level?"
"There you go again! If it weren't for me, there'd be nobody left to put up with your temper, Professor."
"Argh! If only I'd held onto Su-jeong properly.... I let my guard down, thinking she was a fish I'd already caught."
"She's off flying high at MIT now, isn't she? There are loads of undergrads looking into transferring to MIT, but you think that's easy? I hear the dream of freshmen these days is getting into Apex Lab."
Ji-yoon gazed at the photo of Seo-ha with a wistful look.
Even five years ago, math students in Korea had had nothing they could really call a dream. Their most common career paths were a job in finance, a teaching gig at some famous exam-prep academy, or an open-ended postdoc life, and that was about it.
But after the appearance of a superstar named Seo-ha, the landscape of the math world changed completely.
For starters, the admission cutoffs for math departments had risen noticeably. Team Apex had become the dream workplace that every math student longed for.
"That is, if you can pass the test."
The level of the problems that had leaked out from the failed applicants surpassed all imagination. Topics of a difficulty that looked like they could be submitted to a major journal on the spot, quite literally.
"I heard it's insanely hard. They say Theodore in particular is a real stickler? But Seo-ha's posting will be with the PQC lab, right?"
"Probably."
"Then we might actually be the ones to lock down the next standard, huh?"
There had never once been a case where Seo-ha put his hand to something and failed to get results. Yet Ji-yoon's expression didn't look all that relieved.
"Who knows."
"Right? Even for Seo-ha, cryptography isn't an easy field!"
"No, Seo-ha will do fine. The thing is, there's a monster on this side too...."
Assistant Park Hyung-joo made a face like he'd let something slip.
As is probably true of any field, the world of cryptography has its own legendary genius. His affiliation is UW (University of Waterloo), and he is five years older than Seo-ha. When it comes strictly to cryptography, the University of Waterloo doesn't fall the slightest bit behind MIT or Stanford.
The world's first research institute dedicated to quantum computing, the IQC, is located there, and the university whose research teams contributed the most to developing post-quantum cryptography is that one as well.
He nodded and said.
"The SIKE (* Supersingular Isogeny Key Encapsulation) affair was a real shock."
Three years ago, there were seven finalists in all recognized as candidates for the next-generation post-quantum cryptography standard.
CRYSTALS-Kyber, Falcon, SPHINCS+, NTRU, BIKE, Classic McEliece, and SIKE.
Of these, NTRU withdrew on its own over patent issues, while Classic McEliece and BIKE were dropped midway on the grounds that they were far too impractical.
Among the four remaining candidates, SIKE was by far the one drawing the most attention.
Its key size was so small it didn't even compare to its rivals, and its implementation efficiency was outstanding as well. In the industry, there was even talk that it was practically a lock. All that was left was to wait for NIST's final announcement.
That was when a single paper went up.
The author was Damian Lowe, who at the time was an undergraduate at the University of Waterloo.
It wasn't a short paper, but the conclusion was simple.
'SIKE can be broken. On an ordinary laptop, in under an hour.'
No one believed it.
This was, after all, a cryptosystem that dozens of experts had pored over and verified for years.
That, of course, was the story up until Damian Lowe walked over with a single beat-up laptop and smashed it to bits. He entered the presentation hall and cracked the encryption in 47 minutes and 12 seconds flat.
'RIP SIKE'
That was the one line he left on the slide as he walked out of the hall.
It was only natural that companies fell over one another trying to recruit Damian; he wrapped up his master's program in short order, then joined the CRYSTALS-Kyber team, which at the time wasn't all that high a priority.
And Kyber has now become the next-generation standard candidate that the NSA and NIST trust the most.
"Damian is a ridiculous monster.
If Seo-ha has talent across every field of mathematics, then Damian is freakishly brilliant in the single field of cryptography. Even to me, someone who's dug into cryptography for a solid twenty years, he's an unfathomable being."
Talent is such an unreasonable thing.
After meeting Seo-ha, Ji-yoon had come to accept the reality that there are realms effort alone could never reach. What angered her was that the talented didn't even slack on their effort.
They all walked the same road, yet some went on two feet while others spread enormous wings and took flight. And even knowing she had no wings, she had to keep walking.
'I know I'm small-minded.'
Still, she wanted to see it.
The sight of a genius's wings being broken.
She wanted to confirm with her own eyes that they too were people who despaired just the same as her. But Ji-yoon couldn't begin to picture such a thing from either of them.
* * *
"Alright, just sign here for me."
Scratch.
Seo-ha picked up the pen with a blank look and wrote his name. The lab's name was familiar.
[Apex Lab KOREA]
"Thank you. Don't worry about the administrative procedures. We'll take care of everything ourselves."
A man said to be the deputy director of the Ministry of Science and ICT had come out to collect the signature in person.
The site, the equipment, and the capital from Korea; the core personnel from MIT; and the United States demanded that the PQC produced as a result be made an open standard by NIST. In return, Korea would secure a portion of the rights to the design and production of the chips carrying that encryption.
Encryption isn't finished just because it's been made. It has to be managed and updated without end, and if a problem arises, responsibility has to be taken as well.
The Korean government acknowledged that NIST had carried out that work successfully for decades.
In a twist that made things even more of a spectacle, MIT caught wind of the situation and belatedly jumped in, volunteering itself as Seo-ha's representative.
They allowed the Team Apex name to be used for the research institute just as the Korean government had requested, and negotiated so that Seo-ha and the team would split the royalties from any patents derived from it.
The Korean government was happy.
Not only had they managed to attract the Korean branch of the world's finest research institute, but merely by putting up the site and the capital, they had gotten a foot in the door of the astronomically large future semiconductor market.
The United States was satisfied too.
Taking the standard's management rights is enormous power. On top of that, they'd been able to secure a strong candidate without spending a single cent on development, so there was nothing to lose. And they were relieved that they'd kept Seo-ha out of enlistment and could keep him within their sights the whole time.
For MIT, too, it was a decent deal.
They had taken part in the negotiations on the condition that their name be listed as a joint operating institution of Apex Lab Korea. On top of that, they'd receive a share of the royalties as well.
The completion of a world where everyone was happy. Everyone, that is, except Seo-ha.
"And I wanted to go active duty...."
Seo-ha muttered with a dazed look.
Smack-
"Ow!"
A stinging palm came flying at his back.
"This kid has no filter. Do you have any idea how relieved your mother is that it worked out this way!"
Mi-young pressed a hand to her chest in relief. From the moment her son had said he wanted to enlist as an active-duty soldier, she hadn't had a single peaceful day.
"I'm sorry."
At the prickling pain he hadn't felt in ages, Seo-ha let a few stray tears slip out.
Watching his family's relieved faces, he reflected on whether he'd been stubborn over nothing.
There was another reason he'd accepted the offer. It was because the research institute would be located in Daejeon.
For the length of his service, the whole family could live together back in their hometown. The fact that his teammates fervently wanted to come to Korea was one of the reasons too.
"Of course I'm going too. Our team only puts out a proper performance when you're around, Seo-ha."
Theo, hearing the offer, accepted it without a second's hesitation. From where he stood, it wasn't even a question of choosing or not.
"Finally! I've really wanted to go to Korea. Thanks, Seo-ha!"
Cecilia, who was big into subculture, jumped up and down with delight.
"Me too. Heh heh. Honestly, I'm looking forward to other things more than the cryptography research."
"Really? What a relief. I was about to come down with homesickness!"
"The food Seo-ha's mother used to bring over was so good, wasn't it. And we'll get to catch K-pop performances too."
Seo-ha and Su-jeong had finally graduated from undergrad. Theo, on the strength of the research he'd been doing all this time, safely earned his doctorate.
Before anyone knew it, winter had come and the year was drawing to a close. And in earnest, the preparations for the move began.
* * *
"You're crying?"
Seo-ha had taken a long bus ride to come to Curtis to see Gyeo-ul. His hair, cut short ahead of time, felt unfamiliar, and his hand kept drifting up toward it.
"...."
When Gyeo-ul saw Seo-ha, she couldn't manage a word for the longest time.
She only looked back and forth between his cropped hair and his guileless face, her eyes reddening.
Swish.
Gyeo-ul, who had grown into a woman beautiful enough to dazzle, slowly reached out a hand and stroked Seo-ha's hair. Gyeo-ul's hand, colder than the chilly weather itself. Seo-ha couldn't stop himself from being bothered by it.
"Do I look really weird?"
She shook her head.
"No, you look good. You really seem like a proper adult now."
She tried hard to put on a smile, but the tears brimming in her eyes finally spilled down her cheeks. Students passing by shot Seo-ha disapproving looks. Gyeo-ul was a well-known figure that everyone at Curtis recognized.
"Let's walk a little."
She started off ahead of him.
Her light brown hair fluttered and swayed in the wind. All of a sudden, her hand caught his eye. A white hand, frozen pale, not even wearing a glove.
Seo-ha took her slender hand in his own as well.
"Huh?"
Gyeo-ul stopped short in surprise.
Through Seo-ha's hand, warmth spread into her body that had been like a block of ice. Without a word, Seo-ha pushed Gyeo-ul's hand straight into his coat pocket.
"A pianist's hands are important, after all."
Gyeo-ul's face flushed hot all at once.
The two of them walked the beautiful Curtis campus for a long while with no destination in mind. Before she knew it, she was clasping Seo-ha's hand tightly inside the pocket.
From their clasped hands came a pleasant pulsing.
Thump.
Thump.
Gyeo-ul couldn't tell whose heartbeat it was.
*****
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