Chapter 194
Translator: Dreamscribe
Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA.
The area in front of NIST headquarters was absolute chaos. Seo-ha looked out the window, and his eyes went wide.
"Theo! Look over there. They've even got armored vehicles standing by."
It was the first time he had seen combat-deployed armored vehicles this close up. Three military vehicles were lined up side by side in front of the NIST headquarters' main gate. The sight of fully armed soldiers surrounding the building entrance stirred a palpable tension.
"Those are NSA agents. Looks like CIA too."
Su-jeong said, watching the men in black suits.
Whump-whump-whump-whump-whump-whump.
A helicopter circled overhead on patrol. Beyond the barricades, broadcast vans and civilians were tangled together, camped out in place. The world economy was grinding to a halt. The fervor of the press and the public had gone past desperation and edged into madness.
"Only natural. Think about how much money is evaporating every single day. And with the Pentagon's comms network under threat on top of that, it's no surprise the military's been called in."
Theo said it calmly as he straightened his tie.
Escorted by armed guards, Team Apex and the researchers stepped out of the vehicles.
Click!
Click!
A blinding storm of flashes poured down, so intense it was impossible to keep one's eyes open. From beyond the barricades, reporters shouted at Seo-ha at the top of their lungs.
"Seo-ha! What's your response to the criticism that you're the one to blame for the SS Algorithm?"
"Can Utopia really resolve the current situation? There are claims that it hasn't undergone any real-world testing!"
Seo-ha's body stiffened at the reporters' questions. Cecilia noticed and took his hand, gently guiding him along.
"Ignore them. They just want a scapegoat right now."
Seo-ha dropped his head.
"Which means the situation is desperate enough that they need someone to blame."
To Seo-ha, the microphones thrust toward him felt like swords and spears leveled at him. A clamor of anger, desperation, and a single thread of hope, all mixed together. Perhaps because the meaning of the SS Algorithm had become widely known, some of the civilians even hurled crude insults at him.
"Step back! Step back right now unless you want to get hurt!"
Burly armed agents shoved the reporters back roughly, clearing a path. Theo quickly moved in front of Seo-ha, making himself a shield.
"Head down and walk fast. You don't have to answer them!"
"Okay."
Seo-ha felt wretched.
The more it went on, the more his anger swelled toward whoever had created the SS Algorithm. Whoever they were, they had dragged mathematics, which was supposed to enrich humanity, down into a tool of evil.
Ji-hye, Hyung-joo, and the rest of the Korean researchers walked at nearly a run toward the security checkpoint, their faces drained white.
"Now that we're in America, I can see how serious this really is."
"Tell me about it. It's a war zone out there."
Only after they passed into the secure area and the heavy control doors sealed shut did the noise from outside die down. Ji-hye let out a rough breath, hand pressed to her chest in relief.
Seo-ha thought about the people who had been screaming at him outside. The fear and rage in their eyes. His clenched fists trembled. It was the first time he had ever felt hatred this intense toward another human being.
"Nervous?"
Su-jeong looked at him with worried eyes. He was silent for a moment, then shook his head with a faint smile.
"No. I just want to get this over with."
He smoothed his clothes and started walking toward the hall.
"So that starting tonight, people can sleep easy."
A set expression and clear, unwavering eyes.
Su-jeong's face turned wistful. They were the same eyes she had seen in Seo-ha when they were children.
'You really haven't changed one bit, have you?'
People tended to see Seo-ha as nothing more than a kind but fragile genius. But Su-jeong, who had known him since childhood, understood better than anyone.
Seo-ha was a person with a strong heart.
Not once had he run from a problem that stood in front of him. More than anything, Seo-ha was stubborn, and utterly relentless.
The words he had said not long ago echoed in her ears.
'Let's call it Utopia. To mean that mathematics can make everyone happy.'
Su-jeong swore to herself that she would never forgive the terrorist who had put that expression on the face of Seo-ha, who loved people more than anyone.
"All right, let's go in."
Theo opened the door.
The air inside the hall was suffocating, though in an entirely different way from outside. Ordinarily the seats would have been filled with bespectacled academics. Today, however, the faces occupying them were profoundly out of place.
Generals with medals hanging in clusters across their chests, the White House National Security Advisor with a grim expression, and Wall Street's heavyweight bank presidents, eyes wide and glaring, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Desperation radiated from every one of their eyes.
"You can hardly breathe in here."
Ben shook his head and took his seat.
Four ciphers were under review for standardization today. CRYSTALS-Kyber, Falcon, SPHINCS+, and Team Apex's cipher, Utopia.
Normally the cipher standardization review process was conducted behind closed doors. Naturally, the logic of lobbying and politics tended to work its way in. But the present crisis had left NIST no room for such luxuries.
Herbert, NIST's top official, his hair thoroughly white, limped up onto the platform. As he took hold of the microphone, deep exhaustion and grim resolve sat heavy on his face.
Tap.
Tap.
He tapped the microphone lightly, and the noisy hall fell silent as if by magic.
"Ladies and gentlemen. Given the circumstances, I'll skip the customary opening remarks. Even at this very moment, the crisis continues. No, it's getting worse.
Over the past three weeks, 1.2 trillion dollars in assets have evaporated from the global financial system. The networks of government agencies in fifteen countries have been penetrated. And last night, there was an attempted attack on Europe's power grid control system. We managed to stop it this time, but...."
He paused for a moment.
"There's no guarantee we'll stop it the next time. All it takes is one insider to render a physical key meaningless."
A heavy silence settled over the hall.
He looked over the faces of the four research teams seated in the front row, one after another.
"It is my hope that you will become humanity's last shield. Let us begin the review."
The order of presentations had been fixed. The three existing candidate ciphers would be evaluated first, and Utopia, the last to join, would come at the very end.
Damian took the platform first.
He wasn't nervous. He had spent years running toward this moment. He had already mapped out exactly how he needed to look on that stage and exactly what he needed to say.
"CRYSTALS-Kyber is a lattice-based cipher."
His composed voice inspired confidence in the audience.
"The SS Algorithm attacks integer factorization and the Discrete Logarithm Problem. Lattice problems don't fall into that category. It has been mathematically proven that the Shortest Vector Problem cannot be efficiently solved by any computer or algorithm currently in existence."
He advanced the slide.
"Kyber is currently the only cipher adopted as a NIST first-round standard. It also has real-world deployment cases. Google, Amazon, and parts of the U.S. Department of Defense's communications network are already running pilots with it."
He took a long stretch of time explaining how Kyber worked and what verification processes it had gone through to this point.
More than ten years of preparation, and the dramatic gains in stability and efficiency after Damian joined the project. In every respect, Kyber was a cipher that met the criteria NIST had laid out.
Damian put weight behind his closing line, his expression confident.
"Kyber's greatest strength is that it could be designated a Federal Information Processing Standard tomorrow and put straight to work. Universal compatibility across software and hardware, and overwhelming defensive strength proven through millions of simulations over the past several years."
He looked the officials straight in the eye.
"A burglar is trying to get into the house. And we need a thick, sturdy steel door to keep him out. Kyber is fully prepared."
A low murmur rose from the seats. Relief began to spread across the faces of an audience that had wanted an immediate solution. Here and there, heads were nodding.
Among the academics, there was no dissent either. Kyber was the strongest fortress wall humanity currently had to lean on.
Damian turned his head slightly as he came down from the platform.
It was the first time he had seen Seo-ha in person. Those mysterious eyes were looking straight at him. Damian felt a violent impulse. He wanted to run over to him right then and ask what he thought of the cipher he had built. But that was out of the question.
"...."
The Falcon and SPHINCS+ presentations followed.
Both ciphers had solid theoretical foundations, but the response in the room was lukewarm. Real-world data, stability, efficiency. In every category, there was nothing where they held an edge over Kyber.
And then, the last one.
"Team Apex, Utopia."
The moderator called the name of the final candidate.
* * *
Seo-ha sat in his chair, lost in thought.
Damian's presentation had been extraordinarily impressive. A design with nothing wasted, stability reinforced in double and triple layers. And within all that, he hadn't forgotten to pursue maximum efficiency.
It was probably the finest PQC in existence. But the part that actually amazed Seo-ha was somewhere else entirely.
'It's like a very pretty concrete egg.'
Looking at Kyber's structure, Seo-ha felt as if he were catching a glimpse into the inner world of the man named Damian.
Was it the product of an unconscious compulsion that it must never, ever break? Defensive layers stacked one on top of another, safety margins designed thicker than they needed to be.
He could feel a ferocious desire for control that refused to permit even the smallest variable. At the same time, he saw a fragile self that so dreaded unknown attacks that it had hardened its shell tight around itself inside the egg.
Seo-ha felt conflicted.
Everything about Damian was contained in Kyber. Seo-ha didn't want to tear down the world that man was so desperately trying to protect. But...
"Seo-ha."
In the seat beside him, Su-jeong quietly tugged at his sleeve.
"You're up."
Seo-ha nodded and rose from his seat.
The gazes of the generals, the bank presidents, and the White House staffers all fell on him at once. Utopia was a candidate that had joined far too late, and it carried the fatal weakness of having no real-world data whatsoever. They looked at Seo-ha with doubt written on their faces.
"Hmm."
Murphy, the NSA Director, had received real-time reports from David on Utopia's development. David's lavish praise had naturally raised his expectations. But his feelings were complicated.
'Too brilliant. There's no telling when he'll hand the villains another seed of catastrophe....'
If it were possible, he wanted to keep him held in place and put him to work on the research the country needed.
Seo-ha picked up the microphone and slowly opened his mouth.
"I don't intend to stand here today and explain how impressive Utopia is."
A space whose curvature shifted ceaselessly according to the wave functions of prime numbers. In Utopia, an attacker and a user holding the key were fundamentally in different spaces.
A dimension that changed with every step an attacker took. In that space, they would never obtain what they were after. But Seo-ha didn't bother explaining any of it. It was all written out in detail in the booklets that had been distributed.
"Then what exactly do you intend to talk about?"
A general with four stars on his shoulders raised a hand and asked.
All manner of thoughts churned through Seo-ha's mind. But the conclusion was only one. Seo-ha bit down hard on his lip, then spoke in a calm voice.
"...I can break Kyber."
The air in the hall froze cold.
People sat there with blank faces, unable to comprehend what they had just heard.
*****
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