8 p.m., the observation deck of Rockefeller Center,
Seoha perched lightly on the windowsill.
“Now is perfect. Don’t move.”
The photographer slowly brought his hand to the shutter of his Leica.
Click.
The lines of brake lights filling lower Manhattan, the endless procession of headlights—today was the day of the cover shoot for Times Magazine.
Seoha sat there and gazed outside.
‘Incredible.’
The regularity and irregularity created by millions of cars.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?”
The photographer pointed outside and continued.
“I shoot here often, and every time I come, I’m moved.”
“Yes, it really is an amazing night view.”
But Seoha was seeing a scene completely different from what the photographer imagined.
A vast vector field opened before his eyes.
The millions of lights and points were vectors with direction. Places where congestion had formed looked like vortices created by vectors colliding with one another.
When energy accumulated at a particular intersection, it transformed into an unstable equilibrium point where even a small change could make the system run wild.
As he looked down beneath the window, the entire city naturally transformed into a gigantic topological space.
In this space, the signal system played the role of an operator that altered the terrain.
“Ah! It’s similar.”
“Hm? To the night view of which city?”
Seoha did not answer his question and merely smiled brightly.
‘It resembles an energy function.’
The difference was that he could design the terrain himself.
A city was a living system.
Then there was only one thing the brain had to do: lower the energy of every region in the space as evenly as possible.
It was also a field connected to the theme of minimum energy that he had been researching all along.
* * *
MIT Collaborative Research Building,
A restricted area that could not be entered without an access card.
“Everyone looks busy?”
Rachel set down her pen while writing a report.
She could feel a tension around her unlike usual.
Everyone was glued to their monitors, modifying code or reviewing data.
“Ah, Rachel. Today’s probably going to be hectic.”
“What’s going on?”
“Today’s the day Seoha reviews the entire simulation.”
Rachel examined the researchers’ expressions once more.
Nervousness, anxiety—but quite a few people also had the corners of their mouths slightly raised.
“We’re going to pass today!”
“We really are confident this time, you know?”
Theo’s mathematics team was gathered in front of the whiteboard, analyzing the causes of their past failures.
“The problem, in the end, is the global stability condition. If the gradient direction goes off even once here…”
“The energy surface tears apart.”
“So this time, we added the constraints meticulously.”
With haggard faces, the researchers refuted or verified one another’s theories.
Dozens of equations and phase diagrams were tangled across the whiteboard. In front of it, everyone stood tensely, like examinees waiting to hear whether they had passed.
“He’s coming in now!”
In an instant, the laboratory fell silent.
An innocent boy in a white hoodie.
Seoha walked toward the central screen of the laboratory with a broad, expectant smile.
Bow.
“Hello. Everyone, you’ve really worked hard.”
His words carried sincerity.
The rigid atmosphere softened a little.
Even the researchers who had been glaring with bloodshot eyes just moments ago had faint smiles on their lips, if only briefly.
“Don’t be fooled by that.”
Jake whispered quietly into Rachel’s ear.
Fooled? By what?
For a moment, Rachel could not understand what he meant.
Jake remembered it clearly.
On the day of the first review, Seoha had brutally slaughtered all the researchers with that innocent-looking face.
That day, too, he had definitely entered the laboratory with a smile.
The board had been filled with phase diagrams of traffic flow in each sector, stability analyses using Jacobians, and the like.
“The overall flow converges stably. There are no phase transitions, and we’ve removed the feedback loops.”
Harry stepped forward confidently and explained.
Seoha approached the equations with the expression of someone looking at a beautifully prepared meal.
And then,
“The convergent flow is twisted here.”
The researchers rushed over in shock.
“Th-that can’t be!”
Instead of answering, Seoha picked up a marker and began drawing the topological structure.
Pointing to the dots and arrows he had drawn, he said,
“If the function converges like this, in reality it moves off in a direction deviating by about 0.003 radians (a mathematical unit for angles).”
0.003 radians (0.17 degrees). In engineering terms, it was an error that could almost be ignored.
The research team was appalled.
“With an error of this degree, in 100 minutes, the flow density at that point will increase threefold.”
Seoha wrote an equation on the board.
Jake could not understand it, but as the equation progressed, the researchers’ expressions grew serious.
What he had written was a proof that if a minute error repeated, it would ultimately diverge.
“You get it? Everyone in the lab that day got demolished. They said the proof was so perfect they didn’t even have the energy to argue.”
It was probably from around then.
That the researchers began subtly avoiding Seoha.
Seoha had felt disappointed about it, but the researchers were human too. They had felt the need to protect themselves.
“Then please begin.”
Tap.
The sound of a keyboard being pressed once.
Whiiir—
A vibration began to hum from the massive server racks.
Hundreds of modules began high-speed computations at the same time, and a miniature version of megacity New York awakened on the screen.
Following the flow of the algorithm, Seoha checked each of the forty divided sectors one by one.
“Ah!”
Every time he pointed something out, the researchers flinched.
Seoha’s eyes turned toward the logs.
It was the process of tracking and comparing the results output by the algorithm to confirm topological consistency.
“Please…”
Someone bounced their leg and bit their nails, while someone else clasped both hands together and looked at Seoha as if praying.
They could barely breathe, afraid he would say “error found” like before.
Seoha’s eyes widened as he looked at the logs.
“This… You really made this well.”
In an instant, the laboratory went quiet.
“Y-yes?”
“Really?”
“Don’t lie. You’re going to say something’s wrong after this again, aren’t you?”
Accustomed to repeated failures, the researchers blinked as if they could not believe it.
Seoha approached the monitor and enlarged the logs.
His eyes scanned over the numbers.
0.0004
0.0011
0.0009
In the past, these values would have been omens of topological distortion and divergence, but now it was different.
“There’s micro-noise here and there, so the optimization work will probably take a while, but…”
Seoha looked at their faces and smiled brightly.
“In the broad framework, the structure is perfectly in place.”
Thud.
As if the strength had left his body, Harry collapsed into his chair with a loud noise.
“Yes!”
“We did it!”
“We made it! We actually made it!”
“Finally… finally!”
Cheers erupted from all around.
Someone jumped up from their seat, and a researcher who had developed a circular bald spot from stress sat down and wiped tears with his sleeve.
Perhaps overcome with emotion, Harry covered his face with both hands. Then he seemed to think of something and sprang to his feet.
“Everyone, stop!”
Everyone stopped chattering and focused on him.
“Hands off.
Please don’t touch anything and save it first. Back it up! Save it twice!”
Tatatatatak.
In an instant, the sound of keyboards filled the laboratory.
“Saved! I saved it!”
“Original backup complete too!”
“Double backup to off-site storage underway!”
“Don’t touch the RAID server! Touch it and you die!”
Rachel felt her chest grow hot.
Even when they became sensitive to one another’s mistakes, even when exhaustion and stress left their minds worn down, they had never given up.
There was only one thing that worried her…
“Harry, what if you get this happy and it blows up again later?”
Would they really be able to endure the aftermath?
But Harry’s expression was extremely relaxed.
“Why worry about that? Seoha said it was fine.”
His words were neither a joke nor baseless confidence.
It was a sentiment shared by everyone who worked here, an absolute premise that at some point they had all come to believe in.
“Seoha is never wrong.”
Hearing Harry’s words, someone muttered quietly.
“If Seoha says it’ll work, then it works.”
“If he says it won’t, then no matter what you do, it’s hopeless.”
Having received praise from such a person, it was only natural that everyone would be excited.
For Rachel, who had only been here a few days, it was an atmosphere she could not understand.
“Seoha! Aren’t you happy? Why do you look so serious?”
Amid the cheering, Seoha was standing quietly in the middle of the laboratory. At Harry’s words, everyone’s gaze turned to him.
Seoha hesitated for a moment, then smiled as if embarrassed.
“You all created the best possible frame, so I was thinking about how I could design a brain worthy of it.”
“…”
“…”
The researchers’ eyes reddened.
A few lowered their heads and bit their lips hard.
The best possible frame. With those words alone, it felt as though all the heartache they had endured until now melted away like snow.
“Wasn’t it all finished? That’s what we thought.”
Seoha nodded.
“If it’s a brain that plays the role of a passive mediator, then it’s already complete. But if you ask whether this is the best, I don’t think it is.”
“Can you explain it to us? We’re no slouches ourselves! Who knows? Maybe we can help, even a little.”
Harry placed both hands on his hips and spoke proudly.
The researchers nodded all at once.
“Right, we’re experts too.”
“We studied the related algorithms plenty while designing the frame.”
The uplift of having been recognized by Seoha, the desire to contribute to the project, the wish to ease even a little of their leader’s burden.
Those feelings gave them courage.
“Shall I?”
Seoha’s face brightened in an instant.
“The model I originally had in mind was…”
Before long, the number of boards began to increase one by one.
Scribble, scribble—
The sound of markers filled the laboratory.
Theo noticed that Seoha was feeling a little excited.
“In the end, the optimal model is…”
Unable to hide his enjoyment, Seoha continued his explanation.
The researchers, who at first had not been able to understand the explanation well, soon gathered around Seoha and joined the discussion.
One hour, two hours.
As time passed, Seoha’s voice grew a little louder.
“Rachel, order some pizza. From the best place in Cambridge.”
An hour later, dozens of pizza boxes arrived at the laboratory.
“The mayor of New York is paying!”
When Jake declared it, small laughs and applause broke out among the researchers.
Everyone’s faces had softened.
Even as they ate, they did not stop discussing.
By the time the sun was setting, the entire explanation had ended.
The moment Seoha set the marker down on the final board, the laboratory became quiet, as if time had stopped.
“My God…”
“Is… is this actually possible?”
“If it’s Seoha, it’s possible. There are no gaps in the theory either.”
“If this is realized, New York will literally become a future city in an instant.”
Jake’s mouth fell open.
For a moment, he looked around, checking whether there was anyone in the room with a low security clearance.
Because if the system Seoha intended to implement were leaked to the public at the wrong time, it could cause fatal problems.
“The problem is money…”
As if the shock had not worn off, Harry looked dazed.
“That’s why I was worrying. No matter how good the design is, it has no meaning if it can’t be realized. As expected, using the draft plan would be…”
“Wait!”
When Seoha seemed about to give up, Harry stopped him.
“Everyone, gather around! Let’s calculate the cost for this.”
No sooner had Harry spoken than the researchers stood up and brought over their laptops.
The laboratory once again began to bustle noisily.
“We have to start with the power requirements!”
“No, first we should calculate the server density.”
“Bandwidth! We need that before we can even start.”
“We’ll estimate the initial construction cost on our side!”
Experts from each field gathered and calculated the minimum cost required to build Seoha’s brain.
And an hour later, a rough budget sheet was placed in Seoha’s hands.
He shook his head.
“This won’t work. There’s no way the mayor will approve an amount like this.”
Nngh—
Haa.
Groans could be heard from all around.
Perhaps the amount was larger than expected, because Harry looked surprised as well. But soon he composed his expression.
“No, let’s go with this. There’s no doubt this is the optimal system. Now I’m even starting to think nothing else will do.”
“But it isn’t realistic…”
“What if all of us sign this? Saying this is truly the path that serves New York. Wouldn’t the mayor at least reconsider?”
A heavy silence descended.
“…I’ll go first.”
Theo rose from his seat and wrote his name on the last page of the budget sheet.
“Me too!”
“I also think this is the right choice.”
“My name can’t be left out of a historic project like this.”
It looked as though they were signing a joint petition.
A civil servant who cooperated in pressuring the mayor could later suffer disadvantages. But none of them agonized over it for long before writing their names on the document.
For a while, Seoha was unable to speak.
People voluntarily reaching out their hands to help carry the burden together—it was an overwhelming emotion so unfamiliar to Seoha that it left him breathless.
They sincerely wanted to see it.
The moment the design drawn by this genius of the century became reality.
After that day, though no one had officially named it, everyone called the brain Seoha had designed by the same name.
“Oracle.”