Lawrence could not sleep that night.
The piece he had heard during the day would not leave his mind. He picked up the pencil lying beside his bed.
‘Was it something like this?’
He tried transcribing the piece Gyeoul had played into sheet music.
In the end, he rose from bed and sat down at the piano.
Ding—
It was a strange feeling.
Decades of a career built as a performer and conductor; over that time, he had handled countless pieces. But this was the first time a piece had ever bothered him to this extent.
Analyze the score, understand the composer’s intent, then reproduce it through an orchestra. That was what he had done his entire life.
And yet he could not understand the intent.
‘What on earth was he thinking?’
It sank, heavy and heavier still. It endlessly settled down into the depths of the deep sea.
There was no leap, no return—only a movement into the next state.
‘Why, after building up emotions this deep, does it make no promise of release?’
He recalled Gyeoul’s words, that it was a piece a friend had written as a hobby.
He shook his head.
There were traces of someone who had thoroughly contemplated his own inner self. A structure that achieved perfect substitution from the first note to the last. A piece woven this intricately could not have been written as a hobby.
Before he knew it, morning was dawning.
“Ah!”
After playing it over and over dozens of times, he could faintly sense the composer’s mental image.
‘Why was there no release?’
This piece had never been written for the purpose of being heard by an audience in the first place.
The composer had not wanted comfort or understanding from them, nor had he intended to ask for any empathy whatsoever.
Little by little, he began to grasp it.
‘Did he give form to thought through music?’
Only then could he understand.
Though it had borrowed the form of music, in essence, this was an unbearably desperate confession of the self.
And yet he had no choice but to love this piece.
A symmetry so outstanding it bordered on obsessive.
Human beings are, by nature, lovers of symmetry. Symmetrical faces, architecture, formulas, the orbits of stars—symmetry is perhaps the most primal instinct that makes humans feel stability and order.
‘To have brought it to completion to this degree.’
Lawrence found himself utterly captivated by that tenaciously meticulous beauty, as if bewitched.
* * *
City Hall, 14th floor, the mayor’s office.
The traffic congestion in Manhattan outside the window was, as always, unchanged.
“Today’s newspapers.”
Jake set a thick bundle of papers down on the desk.
It was a deliberately mixed selection of newspapers with different leanings and readerships: major dailies, tabloids, financial papers, local papers, and printouts from online media.
“Hmm.”
Rustle.
John flipped through the papers one by one, scanning the headlines.
[New York Mayor Pushes to Divert Welfare Budget into Transportation—Fierce Opposition from Council]
[After Congestion Tax, Time Tax? Opposition Party Prepares Fierce Attack on John’s Policy]
[Project Oracle Reignites Big Brother Controversy]
[A 10-Billion-Dollar Dream? City Council Says, “Secure the Funding First.”]
[City Hall Promises Privacy Safeguards. Will It Quell the Big Brother Controversy?]
[Council Vote D-20, What Decision Will the Council Make?]
[“How Much Is Your Time Worth?”
Mayor John Carson Stands at the Crossroads of His Political Career.]
John furrowed his brow.
More than half of the papers were unfavorable.
“How many seats have we secured?”
“Twenty-one in favor, eighteen opposed. The rest are still watching the winds. We’re five votes short of a majority.”
“Nothing is ever easy.”
He had thought that as long as he had the support of the citizens, he would be able to secure a majority without too much trouble.
But before the astronomical budget of ten billion dollars, more and more council members were starting to play it safe.
“It’s hard the first time, easy the second. Next time you need money, will you pull it from the welfare budget again? Stick to your principles!”
“Project Oracle? What will you do if it fails? You have no countermeasures at all, do you?”
“The whole country is in an uproar over personal information leaks these days. And in this situation, you want us to grant you such extralegal access to information?”
“The biggest problem is if traffic doesn’t improve even after spending ten billion dollars. Who, exactly, will take responsibility then? Don’t say you will. By the time that happens, John, you won’t be in that seat anymore.”
Not every politician in America was corrupt.
Most council members agreed with the grand premise of transportation reform. They simply needed certainty that this policy would succeed.
“Boston isn’t enough?”
“The scale is different. It isn’t even using the same system as back then, and the budget is dozens of times larger, so there was a limit to how much we could persuade them.”
John nodded.
Ten billion dollars.
It was an astronomical sum.
If it were to fail, all of New York would fall into an unrecoverable slump. It was entirely understandable that they could not agree easily.
If he himself had not had absolute trust in the person called Yu Seoha, he would not have thrown himself into this fight at the risk of his political career.
[D-18]
They failed to persuade the neutral council members.
As if preparing to pull out, even members of his own party were beginning to show a subtle sense of distance.
John knew very well what their attitude meant.
‘They’re going to vote against it.’
If rejection seemed likely up until voting day, they would side with that camp.
[D-14]
The vote was now two weeks away.
This policy had not been easy to submit to the agenda in the first place.
Even to get it past the steering committee, John had been forced to expend considerable political capital.
‘If not this time, it’ll be practically impossible.’
It was far more difficult to submit a policy again once it had been rejected.
Every council member he contacted through unofficial routes said similar things.
“We can’t stake everything on something that isn’t certain. The risk is too great.”
“What if we drastically reduce the budget and bring in the Singapore model?”
“That person you mentioned, Yu Seoha—he’s only sixteen. I know he’s fairly famous in mathematics, but can he really handle a ten-billion-dollar project?”
[D-10]
He felt as if his blood were drying up.
The stretches of time in which the phone did not ring grew longer.
Council members who, until recently, had contacted him first no longer even responded to his messages.
Just when he began wondering whether he ought to give up, Jake rushed into the mayor’s office in a hurry.
“Mayor! Look at this!”
Jake held out a tablet to John.
At the top of the screen were red letters.
‘SCIENCE - Cover Story.’
John’s gaze moved downward.
[Mathematics Always Knows the Answer.]
-Minimum Energy Theory
“The embargo was just lifted. I called MIT too, and they say the academic world’s response is explosive. There are more than a few companies paying close attention to this theory as well.
I contacted some friends who came out of engineering schools, and they say it’s a theory that could become a terrifying game changer. They used the phrase ‘nuclear bomb-level.’”
John’s breathing quickened.
The hand gripping the tablet trembled faintly.
“Look at this as well!”
He pulled up images he had captured in advance.
They were online headlines from major daily newspapers.
[Teenage Mathematician Graces Cover of Science, Shakes Engineering Paradigm with Minimum Energy Theory.]
[Urban Engineers Unanimous: “Minimum Energy Theory Can Also Be Applied to Traffic Optimization.”]
[Is Project Oracle’s Architect an Alien? Seoha Yu Solves His Third Difficult Problem Already.]
John slowly rose from his chair and looked out the window.
It was long past rush hour, yet the roads were still jammed solid.
“Will this move the neutral council members?”
“I can’t be sure. But it’s certain the odds have gone up.”
“Contact them at once.”
[D-9]
Jake spent the entire day in his office making phone calls.
Among the twelve neutral council members, he began with those most likely to be persuaded.
But the results fell far short of expectations.
“I read the article.”
“He certainly seems to be an extraordinary talent.”
As if they had agreed on it in advance, they all reacted the same way—starting with praise and ending the conversation with evasion.
Not a single one promised him their vote for certain.
[D-7]
[Project Oracle, New York City’s 10-Billion-Dollar Project, to Run Aground?]
[Anonymous City Council Member: “We Cannot Entrust the Future of the City to One Individual.”]
“Disgusting.”
John roughly threw the newspaper aside.
Sentences that avoided responsibility while emphasizing moral superiority—politicians’ favorite way of speaking.
[D-6]
“Was I too naive?”
Just as John was wondering how to resolve this matter, an incident occurred.
Chris Mercer, appearing on a national broadcast, had hurled a bomb at the New York City Council.
“New York, you mean? I’m not even surprised. Kicking away good fortune that rolled right into your lap is a talent too, you know?”
Laughter burst out in the studio.
“This isn’t about politics. I can say I know Seoha quite well. He never says something uncertain is possible.
A digital twin? Oracle?
Just hearing the words makes my heart pound. But we won’t be able to see it in New York. You all know whose fault that is, don’t you?
But don’t worry.”
Chris made a playful expression.
“I guarantee there’s already a city moving on this. But why do I have a feeling it won’t be in America?”
The anchor asked him a question.
“Whether Oracle can actually be implemented?
I’m not Seoha, but I can say one thing for certain. Compared to the energy theory he proved, a digital twin won’t even amount to child’s play. And New York will have lost forever its chance to leap into becoming a future city.”
Alex Howard, a consultant, also uploaded a related video.
“I personally find this regrettable.
As a consultant, I consider my client’s interests to be the highest priority.”
Seoha’s theory appeared on the screen.
“I sincerely apologize for my past careless remarks. I was ignorant. I didn’t know this would actually be possible either.”
He looked into the camera and bowed politely.
“This theory can be applied to dozens of industries simultaneously. To be honest, if Seoha had been my client, I would have been confident I could help him earn tens of billions of dollars.
But he released this for just one cent.”
This was something not well known to the general public. The comments began scrolling up rapidly.
“Even Jeremy Bentham, who advocated utilitarianism, would not have found it easy to make such a decision.”
Alex stared straight into the camera.
“‘Make choices that help society in the long term, not choices that yield immediate profit.’ It seems this simple teaching of John Stuart Mill was too difficult for our New York City council members. Or perhaps this society is a system that does not permit long-term choices?
Either way, it’s equally disappointing.”
Many mathematicians and engineers posted their opinions on social media.
For the advancement of the industry, or because they personally wanted to see the Oracle Seoha had envisioned—such were most of their true feelings, but it was certain that they were helping John.
And the New York citizens who had been watching this unfold also began joining the procession on social media.
An endless stream of hashtags followed.
“Mayor, the atmosphere is definitely changing.”
Jake placed a freshly printed public opinion poll report on the desk.
John read the first line and smiled in delight.
[75% of New Yorkers Support Time Welfare and the Promotion of Project Oracle]
Now, it was his time.