Chapter 196
Translator: Dreamscribe
"...Damian."
Victor called him in a small voice from beside him. His face was one of utter confusion and despair.
Damian didn't answer.
He was feeling a very strange sensation.
'Why am I not angry?'
Years of effort had crumbled overnight. It would be normal to feel rage, or at least pain.
But the emotion he actually felt was entirely different.
Damian stared blankly up at the podium. Seo-ha was explaining Utopia. At first, he tried to look at it with a cryptographer's eyes.
What is the structure like, where are the vulnerabilities, what problems could arise in implementation environments.
It was a habit ingrained over years. But each time Seo-ha moved to the next slide, the questions Damian had raised found their answers one by one and faded away.
'It's on a whole different level.'
How long it takes to crack, how the seed is hidden. It's not that kind of level.
The age-old proposition of physics that observation changes the observed. Seo-ha had actually implemented it mathematically. The very act of an attacker peering into a space transforms that space into an entirely different place.
Until now, cryptography had always been a game of buying time.
Holding out until the attacker gives up. Gradually stretching that holding time was, in itself, the history of cryptography.
But today, the rules of a game that had lasted for centuries were rewritten. By a single genius.
"Victor. Do you realize how incredible that cipher is?"
"Does that matter? We're ruined!"
Watching Victor despair, Damian smiled faintly. From today onward, cryptography would be divided into before Utopia and after.
"But the world has become safer."
Crack-
The ticklish sensation he had been feeling for a while now. Damian quietly closed his eyes.
Light poured out from inside the broken shell.
The inside of his eyelids grew bright. Damian didn't open his eyes. He felt as if the sensation might vanish.
The light began to take shape. It was a bird.
Its folded wings unfolded. Very slowly. As if something long confined inside a shell were meeting open space for the first time, the light spread wider and wider as the wings unfurled.
And the bird flew.
Over walls and boundaries, high into the sky.
"Ah..."
Damian gazed at it blankly.
When he opened his eyes, what he saw was Utopia. A bird was flying through the undulating, multidimensional space.
"The bird was never me."
Damian finally understood. The solid egg he had nurtured had not existed to be completed in itself. It was the soil that had to exist for the bird called Utopia to hatch.
Before the paradox that the egg he had made must break for the bird to fly, that cruel and beautiful providence, Damian felt true freedom for the first time in his life.
Clap clap clap-
A wave of applause rippled through the hall.
The generals who had been sitting so solemnly rose from their seats, applauding fervently. The White House aides and Wall Street heavyweights, who had worn grave expressions before the evaluation, were now all smiling warmly.
"This concludes my presentation."
On the podium, Seo-ha raised his head. Not a trace of a victor's arrogance could be found on his face. There was only the refreshed look of someone who had just solved a problem.
His eyes met Damian's.
Seo-ha walked over to him and bowed deeply. Damian felt as though he understood what that bow meant. Tears welled up in his eyes.
He looked at Seo-ha and said,
"If Kyber had to break for Utopia to take flight, then I gladly accept that role."
Seo-ha smiled shyly and clasped Damian's hand.
Herbert, NIST's top official, walked slowly to the center of the podium. He folded the scoring sheet he had been holding and slipped it into his pocket. Scores and rankings had lost all meaning today. Gripping the microphone firmly, he said,
"This committee intends to make a momentous decision."
The audience in their seats straightened their backs.
"As of this moment, NIST is forming an emergency Utopia standardization task force. Formal procedures are not what matters right now. Ordinarily this would take years, but building on the theory proven today, we will complete the review of implementation stability as quickly as possible."
It was an unprecedented measure.
Gasps burst out across the hall in unison. The hands of the reporters covering the event grew busy. A few minutes later, breaking news began pouring out of the major outlets.
[The New Standard of Cryptography, Utopia]
[The SS Algorithm Panic Is Over. The Unbreakable Cipher Utopia, Is the Age of Absolute Security Dawning?]
[Hopes Rise for Market Stabilization. American Bank and Major Banks Reviewing Early Adoption of Utopia for Their Networks]
A reporter delivered the news with an excited face.
"An unbelievable event has just taken place at NIST headquarters in Maryland. Utopia, the cipher designed by MIT's genius mathematician Yu Seo-ha, has overwhelmed every competitor and been selected as the sole standard. Director Herbert said it was a decision that put humanity's safety above everything else."
└Can we finally breathe now? I was going crazy not being able to log into my banking app.
└You never know. That one might get cracked too.
└They said it's not like that. Apparently it works in a totally different way?
└Seo-ha obviously knew what he was doing. Is that kid seriously an alien?
└My math teacher says Seo-ha has to be from the future. He's just handing out the answers to problems that get solved a thousand years from now, one by one, like he solved them himself.
└My crypto! Am I finally getting it back?
└Yeah, right. The terrorists have already pocketed it as their retirement fund.
└What the hell are the police even doing? They seriously can't catch these guys?
└I heard that algorithm hacks the tracking too?
The basis of any trace is figuring out who sent data, from where, and to where. But because the SS Algorithm attacked the encryption system itself, the existing secure communication networks couldn't catch them.
The agencies were pouring every effort into catching them, but they had yet to find a solution.
* * *
After the event ended, Seo-ha was swamped.
The moment he stepped down from the podium, dozens of people surrounded him. From every direction, people offered handshakes and introduced themselves.
"I'm with the Wall Street Journal. Could you give us a word on the impact Utopia will have on financial security?"
"Seo-ha! We're from Google's technical team. We'd like to discuss Utopia's implementation environment!"
"S-Seo-ha! Would you please attend the next cryptography conference? If you'd like, we're even willing to host it in Korea!"
Agents from governments around the world and Silicon Valley heavyweights were also watching for any chance to approach him.
Minister Lee Hyun-seok, who had meant to coordinate the return trip with Seo-ha, awkwardly stepped back. He looked at Ji-yoon and spoke with a pleased expression.
"I'm glad I took your advice to heart, Professor. If I had made some misguided proposal, my relationship with Yu-gun wouldn't be what it is now."
"Seo-ha is simply a mathematician who wants to see the world more clearly. Even I didn't expect the government to accept that."
The Minister smiled with a wry expression.
"Hahaha! If Seo-ha-gun had ended up choosing to naturalize, the criticism would have been hard to bear. You can think of this as a result that grew out of that process."
Ji-yoon smiled warmly.
"It doesn't change the fact that you accomplished something great, Minister. Thanks to you, Korea will enjoy enormous benefits from here on."
"I never imagined that day would come this quickly."
The two of them looked over at Seo-ha, surrounded by the crowd in the distance. Keeping her eyes fixed on Seo-ha, Ji-yoon warned him.
"But Minister, don't forget."
"Forget what?"
"Seo-ha can leave at any time. The government doesn't even have anything left to negotiate with now, does it?"
The Minister's expression stiffened.
"I will make absolutely certain Yu-gun never has any reason to feel slighted."
Having pushed his way out of the crowd, Seo-ha looked around. Then, spotting one particular figure, he headed straight toward him.
Murphy spoke to him with a look of surprise.
"Do you have business with me?"
"Yes, there's something I'd like to discuss. Just the two of us."
A lean build, hair tinged with gray, and the distinctively impassive eyes of a man who had spent long years working for an agency. Murphy shrugged.
"Very well."
* * *
Out the back door of the NIST building, three black SUVs were waiting in a row.
As Seo-ha approached, an agent opened the rear door.
Thunk-
With the door closed, the noise outside was completely shut out.
Murphy sat beside him with his arms crossed.
'What is he thinking?'
Out of nowhere, Seo-ha had asked him about the status of the cyberterrorism investigation. When asked why, he had answered like this.
"Because I think I might be able to help."
Murphy snorted.
The FBI was currently in charge of the investigation. More than five hundred personnel had been deployed, the largest ever for a dedicated cyberterrorism team. Supercomputers, of course, along with every kind of cutting-edge equipment. On top of that, intelligence support from the NSA and the CIA. However brilliant he might be, it was no place for a civilian.
'And a foreigner, at that.'
But there was a reason he hadn't been able to turn down Seo-ha's offer.
A month had passed since the attack, and the investigative authorities still hadn't caught so much as the culprits' tail.
One side had radar; the other had to search with the naked eye. That was how absurdly lopsided it was to go up against an algorithm a generation ahead.
Once the car passed Baltimore and crossed into New Jersey, the air changed. Across the river, the silhouette of Manhattan loomed faintly.
"Huh?"
The agent at the wheel tilted his head.
"What is it?"
"Traffic's unusually good today. Lucky us."
At Murphy's question, he answered while glancing at the rearview mirror.
Congestion had eased considerably since Oracle's introduction, but New York was, by nature, a city packed with cars and people. And the bottleneck at the Lincoln Tunnel, the gateway in from the outskirts, was one of New York's chronic ailments.
Vroom-
In better spirits, the agent stepped hard on the accelerator.
The car came to a stop at Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, the FBI's New York field office. It was the largest of the FBI's fifty-six offices in the United States.
"Follow me."
Murphy walked ahead.
It was a separate entrance set into the side of the building. A guard checked Murphy's badge and saluted. His eyes swept over Seo-ha once.
"Consultant."
The guard nodded and held out a temporary pass. Seo-ha took it and hung it around his neck.
Inside was a security checkpoint. Seo-ha took off his coat and placed it on the tray. His wallet, a pen, his phone, and the laptop from his bag.
When they reached the twenty-third floor, they came to an area lined with offices.
"Please wait here a moment."
A room that looked just like an interrogation room.
The arrangements apparently weren't finished yet; Murphy checked his watch as he spoke.
Nod.
Seo-ha entered the room and sat down in a chair. A surveillance camera was visible in the corner of the ceiling. It was a spare space with nothing but a table and chairs.
Shff.
Seo-ha took the laptop out of his bag and opened it.
"Daisy."
[It's been a while since you called on me, Master. GPS confirms our location as New York. The distance to Oracle is 1.3 kilometers.]
Seo-ha had preserved Daisy, Oracle's prototype model.
Her main job was serving as Seo-ha's scheduling secretary; she also analyzed the nutritional content of his meals and told him when the bus or subway would arrive.
"External network connection?"
[Blocked. This device is currently fully offline.]
"There's something I need to do. I might need Oracle's help."
The avatar of Daisy, a white-haired beauty, made an openly displeased face.
[Ughh. I don't want to be hooked up to some mere signal controller.]
Perhaps from trading jokes with Seo-ha so often, Daisy's language model had somehow changed from what it once was.
*****
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