I Got an Omnipotent Brain

Whitman had found a new joy in life lately.

He had thought he was already passing through the winter of his life.

A life defined by lectures and research, years he did not regret.

But at some point, all of it had become routine. After receiving the Abel Prize, he felt even his life’s purpose growing dim.

Yet over the past year, an astonishing change had come to him.

That change arrived quietly, breathing new vitality into his life.

”Is it time?”

He glanced at his wristwatch and straightened his back.

Whitman took walks often these days.

His doctor had recommended exercise, and at his age, he knew he needed to look after his health.

But that was only half the reason. The other half lay elsewhere.

Swish-

He reached out and picked up the fedora hanging on the coat rack.

He lightly dusted it off and placed it on his head with a practiced motion. It was an old habit of his. Others might call it old-fashioned, but to him the act held a meaning he cherished.

Rustle.

His fingertips traced along the brim of the hat. The sound stirred a deep nostalgia within him.

’My mentor.’

He recalled the past from decades ago.

In his youth,

back when he had yet to achieve anything in mathematics, there had been someone who guided him.

That person always wore the same style of fedora.

A medium-height crown, a brim slightly curved forward, the kind of hat middle-class men commonly wore just after the end of the Second World War.

His mentor used to wear that hat and watch over his students from the back of the lecture hall.

Whether it was winter or summer, even on days when blizzards swallowed Killian Court in white, he always stood in the same spot.

One day, Whitman asked him.

”Why do you always stand here?”

His mentor smiled and answered.

”It’s my own little pleasure.

There’s no greater joy in this world than watching someone grasp a new truth for the first time.”

At the time, Whitman could not understand what he meant.

Step, step.

He had been strolling through campus when he changed direction.

As he drew closer to Seo-ha’s lab, Whitman’s steps slowed.

He stopped in front of the glass window, and the scene inside the lab came into sharp focus.

Team Apex had been hitting an invisible wall for weeks.

Their simulation kept collapsing past a certain point, no matter what they did.

The models proposed by various papers had all failed to explain this phenomenon.

”Ah! It’s doing it again.”

Sri clutched his head.

Whenever they passed the critical threshold, the values invariably diverged (divergence * a phenomenon where values exceed a certain range and grow infinitely or spiral out of control), and even the slightest variable introduced would cause functions that should have converged to fluctuate wildly and produce strange patterns.

Team Apex had been pouring everything they had into solving this problem for weeks.

Seo-ha had filled the chalkboard with equations and was continuing his explanation to Theo and Sri.

He rolled a piece of chalk between his fingers, then drew a large curve in the lower right corner of the board.

”The energy function isn’t just about the points where the gradient hits zero.”

Seo-ha tapped the chalk sharply on both sides of the curve.

”What we need to focus on isn’t the moment the energy stops, but how the world behaves after it stops.”

Theo raised his hand.

”So you’re saying the function heading toward the minimum isn’t what matters, but rather the flow, the field itself near that point? Like those strange oscillations we’ve been seeing....

If those weren’t just noise but were actually caused by an unstable fixed point?”

Seo-ha’s eyes lit up.

”Exactly! That’s it!”

He pointed again to the center of the curve.

”This point where the gradient reaches zero may look like a classical extremum, but its nature changes entirely depending on the curvature of the surface.”

Sri shot to his feet as if something had just clicked.

”Then the pattern we’ve been agonizing over wasn’t the model breaking down? If what happened was that we were just barely grazing past an unstable fixed point....”

Seo-ha nodded with a look of satisfaction.

”That’s the key.”

He quickly drew arrows along the gradient lines of the curve on the board.

They flowed alongside the surface like currents of water, then diverged at a certain point and shot off in a different direction.

”Look here. This is a fixed point, but the curvature is extremely shallow. So the system lingers here for a moment, pretending to settle, and then....”

Seo-ha’s chalk traced the trajectory off the graph and out toward the edge.

”It falls away to one side, just like this.”

Theo spoke, his voice brimming with excitement.

”Son of a... It wasn’t noise. I can’t believe we’re only seeing it now. If we can properly analyze just this, we can move on to the next stage!”

Sri hurried to his feet and pulled out a sheet of paper that had been buried in a drawer.

”Look at this graph. The same signal is here too.

Up until now, we’ve been analyzing the model based on fixed values, but from here on out, it’s the flow and the geometry that’ll matter.”

The three of them looked at one another.

Their eyes burned with intensity.

Seo-ha broke into a bright smile and spoke.

”From now on, we need to build a new framework that brings together flow, stability, curvature, and bifurcation, all of it.

We’re no longer searching for an existing solution. We’ve entered the stage of uncovering how solutions are born.”

All the struggle up to this point had not been in vain.

At last, they had cleared another step on the path to the summit.

”Hell yeah, we actually did it.”

Overwhelmed with emotion, Theo let out a rough exclamation. Sri, equally unable to contain himself, covered his eyes with his hand.

”Small but definite progress.”

His voice was trembling.

Seo-ha walked over quietly and placed a hand on each of their shoulders.

”Thank you. I wouldn’t have made it this far without the two of you.”

At Seo-ha’s words, both of their eyes reddened.

”So there was a path after all. Thank god we didn’t give up.”

”Once you’ve tasted this, there’s no way you could give up.”

Seo-ha was no exception.

The two of them had invested far more meaning in this project than he had expected. The realization that all three of them shared the same goal and were moving in the same direction filled his chest with emotion.

”Wonderful.”

Outside the glass window, Whitman gently tipped the brim of his fedora down with one hand.

”Mentor, your teachings were never once wrong.”

Whitman murmured softly, gazing at the three of them.

But behind his smile lay a worry he had carried for months.

The fact that MIT’s most talented young minds had come together was a source of pride and anticipation in itself, but it was also a source of unease.

’Too young.’

Youth was brilliant, but it could also be a latent risk factor.

Impatience,

passion that burned too hot,

the strong ego that inevitably accompanied exceptional intellect,

and sometimes, a heart that shattered all too easily.

If these were not kept in balance, a team could fall apart with ease.

Whitman recalled the past.

Richard Feynman, the once-in-a-generation genius MIT had produced.

He, too, had once been part of a team.

Schwinger, Dyson, Tomonaga.

Brilliant geniuses each possessed their own distinct interpretations and stubbornness. Schwinger and Feynman had been virtually incapable of communicating with each other. Tomonaga and Schwinger, too, never truly understood one another until the very end.

And yet, they had jointly received the Nobel Prize.

”It was a miracle.”

The four of them had been incapable of collaboration.

They had simply each walked their own path to the summit. What succeeded was not the team, but each individual’s obstinate genius.

Had they been able to actively collaborate, the landscape of modern physics might have looked entirely different from what it was today.

He turned his gaze back toward the lab beyond the glass.

Theodore Langford, Srinivasa Krishnan.

Both were students with intellects comparable to Schwinger and Tomonaga. And yet this team produced no discord.

This was not solely because of Seo-ha’s genius, which stood in a class of its own.

He was a radiant presence, certainly, but he also knew how to share that light. He drew brilliance out of others and wove it all together into something greater.

”I had no idea he had a talent for leadership as well.”

Whitman nodded quietly.

He could now fully understand why his mentor had stood in that spot.

* * *

New York City Hall.

In the mayor’s office on the top floor of the main building, John was watching television.

On the screen, the mayor of Boston stood before a massive crowd, delivering a speech.

”Esteemed citizens of Boston.”

Click.

Click.

Shutter sounds fired in rapid succession from the press section.

”Today, we have arrived at a very important moment.”

He surveyed his surroundings.

It was a high-traffic hour, and citizens passing by on the street had stopped to listen to his words.

”For the past several decades, Boston’s traffic has been nothing short of hell. There is simply no other way to describe how terrible it has been.

This hellish congestion has stolen your precious time, prevented ambulances and school buses from arriving on schedule, and created severe anxiety and chaos.”

Patrick paused briefly, his voice catching as if with emotion.

The citizens gathered in the square watched him with eyes full of anticipation.

Looking out at them, Patrick felt a surge of elation rise within him.

”But today! I, personally, will put an end to that history of suffering!

As of today, I am declaring the activation of the Smart Traffic System across all of Boston. This system was developed under my leadership and operates exclusively here in Boston, nowhere else in the world. It is the finest signal system on the planet.

Citizens!

I, Patrick, your mayor, will take full responsibility for leading this change and building a new Boston!”

Citizens waving their hands, placards fluttering behind them.

Patrick’s self-assured face. John watched it all, then scrunched up his face in open disgust.

[PATRICK = FUTURE]

[BOSTON LEADS AMERICA]

”He looks like he thinks he’s president or something.”

A shabby little place that couldn’t even begin to compare to New York, and the mayor of that insignificant city was on national television, shouting to the entire American public.

Even the female reporter seemed unable to hide her excitement. She stood with her microphone against the backdrop of the Boston square.

Suited office workers, young couples pushing strollers, elderly citizens, everyone was beaming and waving at the camera.

”Since implementing the new system, the Boston Department of Transportation has announced that average commute times in the downtown area have decreased by 31.8%, and congestion on major arterial roads has dropped by approximately 38%.

The rate of intersection-related traffic accidents has also fallen by 26% compared to the previous year.

These groundbreaking improvements in transportation have translated into public support, with Mayor Patrick’s approval rating currently ranking an overwhelming first among all local government heads nationwide.

Analysts are even suggesting that Mayor Patrick may enter the presidential race in the future.”

Beep-

John switched off the television and hurled the remote across the room.

”What’s the status on bringing Allen over?”

New York, whose traffic nightmare rivaled any city on the planet. After seeing the news, complaints from citizens were pouring in like a flood.

John, whose approval ratings were too low to guarantee reelection, had decided to recruit Allen, the leader of Boston’s traffic optimization project.

”Well....”

His aide wore a troubled expression.

”What? I offered to triple his salary, and he still said no?”

The aide shook his head.

”That’s not it. He said that even if he went, he couldn’t produce the same results as Boston.”

A vein bulged at John’s temple.

”What? Why?”

”He said New York is structurally too different from Boston for a direct application.

The area, the population density and traffic volume, and on top of that, the subway, buses, rail, and personal vehicles all form an intertwined, complicated network.”

”Who doesn’t know New York traffic is complicated? So he’s saying there’s no way?”

”Well.... He said he wasn’t confident he could do it, so if it’s really urgent, we should go find the designer of the system.”

”The designer? Allen didn’t build it?”

The aide opened the file he had prepared and began reading.

”Apparently it’s a system devised by MIT’s mathematics department.

The supervising professor is Harold Whitman, and the person who created the core algorithm is....”

John gestured impatiently for him to hurry up.

”The name.”

The aide brought his face close to the document.

After confirming he had not misread it, he spoke.

”It’s an undergraduate there, someone named Yu Seo-ha.”

”What?”

John’s eyes flashed.

It was a name he had heard before. A math prodigy whose popularity had been rising sharply in recent times.

’Now’s the chance! If his name gets any bigger, who knows how much we’d have to pay...’

Recruiting someone of professorial caliber meant negotiating with the university itself.

A steep price tag and a long list of demands would be expected, naturally.

But Seo-ha was still an undergraduate. There would be plenty of room for negotiation.

”Do whatever it takes to bring him in. Right now!”