Chapter 214

Translator: Dreamscribe

Professor Quirin looked out from his office.

Winter in Cambridge. The snow heaped on the branches slid off little by little in the wind.

Clink.

A coffee cup rested in his hand.

It had already been a month since he began searching for a counterexample in Seo-ha's 13-Step Hypothesis. Yet, astonishingly, he had nothing to show for it. It had taken him three days just to admit that much.

Ngh.

Still, he could not simply give up.

Nearly 50 years spent alongside mathematics, his pride as an Abel Prize winner, and the weight carried by the name Harvard all made him hesitate to retreat. But neither could he go on letting the days slip by like this.

He forced his reluctant hand to move and placed a call to Dean Whitman.

* * *

The dean's office of the MIT mathematics department.

Quirin bowed politely and offered his greeting.

"It's been a long time."

"Come in, come in. We live right next door to each other and still it's this hard to meet!"

An excessively cheerful voice. His skin had a smooth, healthy glow to it, as though he had grown younger.

Quirin frowned faintly. He had expected as much before he ever picked up the phone, but seeing it in person was still unpleasant.

"I've come because there's something I need to discuss with you."

"Hahaha! What's the hurry? Have a cup of tea first. As it happens, I have some excellent tea leaves shipped over from Korea."

Whitman rose without waiting for an answer and walked toward the cabinet.

Quirin preferred coffee, but with the other man's back already turned there was nothing to be done. He stepped carefully inside and settled back against the sofa.

"Have you ever heard of a place called Boseong?"

"...I can't say I have."

"They say it's the largest and most famous green tea region in Korea.

That Seo-ha, honestly! He must have remembered what I like, because he went all the way out there to get hold of the finest leaves. He sent photographs along with them, would you care to see? The tea fields run in rows down the mountain slopes, and from a distance they look like green waves rolling. Fog settles there often, so the plants grow slowly, and that in turn gives the leaves an aroma that..."

The unbroken hymn to green tea left Quirin feeling faintly dazed.

Trickle.

He handled the leaves and the tea ware with real skill, as though he had been properly taught.

"...Seo-ha sent you the tea?"

"A Thanksgiving gift, he said. Most farming cultures have a holiday to mark the harvest. In Korea, apparently people exchange gifts with those they're close to."

Was it his imagination?

There seemed to be a particular weight on the word 'close', as if it had been underlined. It grated on him. Quirin pretended not to have heard and let his eyes wander slowly around the dean's office.

The first thing to catch his attention was the glass case holding a first edition of Seo-ha's paper proving the Riemann Hypothesis. Judging by the binding, it was a limited run specially produced by the publisher.

Beside it, framed, were the other great problems he had proven along with patents and letters of commendation relating to the Minimum Energy Theory, Utopia, and Oracle.

When he turned his head, the bookshelf against the wall was packed without a single gap, not only with journals like Science and Nature but with major weeklies such as Time and Newsweek. Every one of them, naturally, was an issue reporting on MIT's and Seo-ha's accomplishments, the faces on the covers stamped with headlines printed in a different language each.

Quirin had no choice but to admit it.

The two schools might once have stood on similar ground, but that was no longer remotely the case.

When people talked about mathematics now, MIT was the first name out of their mouths. At conferences, in the press, even in conversations with the young scholars who came to visit Quirin's office, the order in which names came up unthinkingly had changed.

"This is what brought me here today."

Slide.

He pushed the book he had brought across the table.

Seo-ha's 13-Step Hypothesis.

Whitman looked down at it and gave a bitter smile.

"I have a copy myself."

He rose and walked over to the bookshelf. His hand moved with the ease of long familiarity, as though he took it down often. The condition of the book he pulled out left Quirin at a loss for words.

Every page was crowded with handwritten notes.

"How long have you been reading it?"

"Since the photographs first started going around, I'd say."

"Have you made any progress?"

"Progress, is it...."

He stroked his chin, sinking into thought. The buoyant air had drained from his face.

"None, apart from the fact that I haven't found a single error."

"I'm in exactly the same position."

"Quirin, let me speak frankly."

"Please do."

Whitman spoke with a serious face.

"I consider it deeply regrettable that Seo-ha's sketches were exposed. An unfortunate accident, you might call it."

"So you're none too pleased with that book either, Dean."

"It goes far beyond that."

Clack.

He set his teacup down and continued.

"At first it wasn't anything worth paying much mind to. But now it's gone past all reason.

Look outside. The moment students gather anywhere, they start holding forth about the 13-Step Hypothesis. They carry the book around like an accessory and flip it open. I suppose they think it makes them look impressive. Something like keeping a complete Shakespeare set you'll never read in the most visible spot in your study, wouldn't you say?"

Bang!

Quirin struck the table.

"That's precisely my point. The wretched thing is feeding the intellectual vanity of young students with oversized egos!"

"Calm yourself. The one in the worst position right now is Seo-ha himself."

Now that he thought about it, the man was right.

"Hmm. He never intended any of it, but it must be an awkward spot for him."

"Even Seo-ha can't produce a spur-of-the-moment sketch that's flawless. What do you suppose happens if it later turns out to be riddled with errors?"

"Ah!"

He understood then what Whitman was worried about.

"Given how proud those students are, they'd feel enormous humiliation. And that resentment would be aimed squarely at Seo-ha. Even though he did nothing wrong at all."

Quirin frowned.

"It's the weak and wicked side of people, I suppose. Blaming someone else puts their minds at ease.... He might even end up an object of ridicule."

"Seo-ha is already building a spotless career, and this sort of gossip can only do him harm. Better to put the matter to rest as quickly as possible."

He gave a puzzled look.

"Couldn't he simply come forward himself?"

"That would be rather...."

Whitman looked pained.

"It wasn't a formally published paper to begin with, so there's nothing to retract. And it would be strange for him to dismiss it as idle scribbling."

"...He stated in his own words that the Turing Machine isn't complete. He'd have to walk that back as well...."

He would become a laughingstock not only in mathematics but across the whole of the sciences.

Whitman let out a long, heavy sigh.

"Now you see what a headache this is for me."

"I understand."

He offered Dean Whitman his sincere sympathy.

But this was also an opportunity. Quirin made his suggestion obliquely, as though extending a favor.

"In the end, there's only one method that will settle it for certain."

""Verification.""

The same word came out of both men's mouths at once.

"If you'd like, the Harvard mathematics department will lend its assistance. It would be a valuable experience for everyone involved."

"Do you truly mean that?"

At the color rising in the man's face, Quirin smiled in satisfaction.

"If the result comes from Harvard and MIT verifying it together, no one will be left muttering afterward. This bizarre fad will burn itself out soon enough. And Seo-ha gun will be able to devote himself to his research with an easy mind."

Whitman seized his hand.

"Thank you. I'm indebted to you. I won't forget this."

"Hahaha! There's no need for all that. Are we not colleagues walking the same road of mathematics?"

A Harvard Distinguished Professor and the Dean of MIT; between them, they had authority to spare.

Scale, budget, even the scope of the verification. The terms were settled on the spot.

"I'll see you again before long, then."

Unlike when he had arrived, Quirin left the dean's office with a considerably lighter expression. Once he had confirmed the man was gone, Whitman exhaled at length and leaned back comfortably in his chair.

Knock knock!

The teaching assistant opened the door and came in.

"Dean, the bindery called again. It sounded like they'd like us to raise the print run this week. They say the book is flying off the shelves. Feels like a bit of a waste to sell it at cost, doesn't it?"

"Tell them we'll add another 300 copies. And tell them not to get greedy, they're to charge exactly that price and nothing more."

"Understood!"

His gaze drifted to the desk.

Seo-ha's 13-Step Hypothesis.

A book whose title he had chosen himself, and whose proofreading and copyediting he had seen through personally.

Stroke.

The dean ran his hand over the cover the way one would handle something precious.

The workmanship was far too fine for anyone to take it for a simple bound copy. Which stood to reason, since it had been printed through the university press.

That strange document that had been circulating around campus.

He had been furious to see Seo-ha's equations passed around printed on shoddy paper. Missing pages were routine, and some sections had gone blurry, apparently from copying the PDF images over and over.

"This is how a book ought to look."

The day the equations spread, Whitman had hurriedly called Seo-ha. Purely out of concern for him.

"In your own judgment, how accurate is what you wrote on that wall? This matters a great deal, so give me a clear answer."

Seo-ha had answered Whitman's question without hesitation.

-In my own head it's 100 percent. Though proving it rigorously will take some time. Still, I don't think it would take 10 years.... The further I got, the more complicated it kept getting.

10 years!

Which meant that even for a mind like Seo-ha's, the proof was anything but easy. It might be on the order of the Riemann Hypothesis, or something harder still.

After hanging up, Whitman had sat lost in thought for a long while.

Equations that had leaked could not be gathered back up.

The conclusion was so audacious that the backlash would be equally fierce. Any number of thoughts ran through his head.

Upheaval across the nation and across entire industries would be unavoidable.

Even if the proof were completed properly, he concluded, academia and society would need time to accept it.

And that was the optimistic scenario. The worst case was that it drew no attention at all.

For a theory to be applied to the real world, vigorous research has to spring up in every field. The flood of data and critical scrutiny that pours out of that process is what prepares the social soil in which a theory can take root.

'Better to throw on more firewood and let it blaze.'

He decided to make use of academia's conservatism.

Verifying your own work invites suspicion about neutrality. But what if Harvard, with its rivalry toward MIT, took the lead on the verification? They might struggle on their own, so lending them manpower wouldn't hurt either.

A proof that even Seo-ha said might take years. The message Whitman expected from them was simple.

'No errors or counterexamples could be found.'

Authorities like Harvard and MIT looked, and found nothing wrong?

Seo-ha's hypothesis would go straight onto the list of unsolved problems. And given how mathematicians hunger for glory, that would only draw in more attention.

His ultimate aim was to pull in every field where Turing's theory was put to use.

He thought of Quirin and murmured to himself.

"Do try not to take it too hard. It wouldn't be so bad for Harvard to become the home base of research into Seo-ha's 13-Step Hypothesis. I'm sure it will prove a most honorable seat."

This was something Whitman could only set in motion because he trusted Seo-ha absolutely. The young man had said one hundred percent, and so there was no call for hesitation.

"Academia is going to get noisy."

No fewer than thirteen problems that could neither be proven nor refuted. And waiting at the end of them, a conclusion that would turn the world on its head.

What mathematician alive could stand to leave that alone?

Whitman decided he would gladly sit back and enjoy the mess.

*****

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