Chapter 246

Translator: Dreamscribe

The morning of the Thesis Defense.

Dean Whitman opened the conference room door with a cup of coffee in one hand.

'They're all here.'

There were still thirty minutes to go, yet all twelve distinguished scholars were already seated and waiting.

Professors specializing in Complex Systems, Network Theory, Algebraic Geometry, Oncology and Molecular Biology, Immunology, Computation Theory, Control Theory and Dynamics, as well as Analysis and Information Theory.

Whitman slowly looked around the conference room and chuckled.

"It feels like we've gathered for an international academic conference."

Authorities from all manner of fields.

Perhaps because of the sheer presence they exuded, the atmosphere inside the conference room felt even heavier.

There were two Nobel Prize winners, three recipients of the Three Major Math Prizes, a lifetime member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society. Every one of them had devoted a lifetime to a single field and reached its pinnacle.

And today, people like them had gathered for the Thesis Defense of a single doctoral candidate. If an ordinary student had stood before them, they probably would not even have been able to breathe properly.

Professor Wright greeted him with his usual gruff expression.

"Dean Whitman, you've put us in quite a difficult position."

"Haha, it's not as though I forced any of you into this. Every one of you signed the invitation and sent it back faster than anyone else."

Whitman shrugged as he shot back, drawing light laughter from around the conference room. But the smile soon disappeared from his face.

He sat down and looked around. Papers lay scattered across the table. Dense handwriting filled every margin, and sticky notes covered page after page. How many defenses had these people ever prepared for with this much effort? How many dissertations had ever made them this absorbed?

'Probably none.'

There was a strange tension on the professors' faces.

Anticipation, curiosity, and pressure. They were about to evaluate the theory that had shaken the world over the past several months.

At nine o'clock sharp.

Click.

The conference room door opened.

Step.

Step.

A neatly dressed student walked inside.

A crisp white shirt with no tie and dark slacks. It was an ordinary outfit that could have been seen anywhere. Yet the moment he stepped through the door, the atmosphere in the conference room changed.

Twelve pairs of sharp eyes turned toward him at once.

'Yu Seo-ha!'

'Twenty-two years old. At that age, I was still busy copying my seniors' papers by hand.'

'This is nerve-racking. If my question isn't insightful enough, won't he think less of me?'

'All right. Let's see you defend it.'

Seo-ha stood at the podium and bowed deeply to the professors.

"It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Yu Seo-ha from MIT. I sincerely appreciate all of you taking the time out of your busy schedules to be here. I look forward to learning a great deal from you today."

Dean Whitman nodded with a satisfied expression.

"Then we will now begin the Thesis Defense for Yu Seo-ha's Doctoral Dissertation, Life Matrix."

Jeremy Rupert.

A leading authority in Network Theory and a professor at Stanford, he was the first to take the microphone.

"Seo-ha, in Chapter Three of your dissertation, you proved the critical point at which the overall topological structure of a dynamic network remains intact when nodes randomly drop out. It was an excellent proof using Yu-Riemann Geometry."

He adjusted his glasses and tapped his pen against the table.

He was hesitating.

'Is it really all right to ask this?'

It was a concept far too difficult to pose to a student who was only now about to earn his doctorate.

But he steeled himself. Seo-ha was a Fields Medalist. It was only proper to treat him as a scholar equal to, or perhaps even greater than, himself.

"However, in actual biological data, the entire metabolic system can completely collapse when even a single core protein disappears. Do you believe the geometric framework you've constructed can fully account for this kind of targeted attack?"

If a specific gene were missing, or a hub protein had been eliminated by a lethal toxin, could the geometric continuity of the Life Matrix still be maintained within that shattered balance?

Professor Rupert's question concerned one of the greatest barriers facing Network Theory and Systems Biology, the chronic vulnerability of Scale-Free Networks.

Rupert felt guilty.

He had just pushed a problem that no one in academia, himself included, had managed to solve onto a young man who had only just turned twenty-two.

'Don't think I'm being too harsh. It's only because your dissertation touches the deepest reaches of Network Theory.'

He repeated the excuse to himself.

It was not because he wanted to find fault with the dissertation. He simply wanted to know where the true limits of this astonishing theory lay.

The professors quietly whispered to those beside them.

"Even so, this is a bit...."

"I think it's excessive too. You're practically pressuring him to solve one of academia's unsolved problems on the spot."

"Even a mathematically perfect model doesn't necessarily work properly in reality."

A heavy silence settled over the conference room. The professors looked at Seo-ha with complicated expressions. But rather than becoming flustered, Seo-ha flashed a bright grin as if he had been waiting for that very question.

"That's exactly right, Professor! I had the same concern."

He quickly moved to the blackboard. Complex equations began filling it as he wrote without hesitation.

"When the targeted attack you described occurs, the curvature term is compressed into a manifold of a new dimension through a Diffeomorphism. In other words, life doesn't simply collapse. It alters its own metabolic pathways and leaps into another stable state. If we set this parameter in the equation to...."

scratch scratch.

Matrices and topological symbols filled the blackboard.

Professor Rupert's eyes gradually widened. The text written in the dissertation had truly been only the tip of the iceberg.

"I see...."

Before he knew it, Rupert had become completely immersed in the sea of equations Seo-ha was unfolding before him. The guilt weighing on his chest had already transformed into awe, and then into an exhilarating academic thrill.

'Hm?'

Suddenly, he felt a sense of déjà vu. It was a concept he had seen somewhere before.

Seo-ha smiled mischievously and said,

"The formula for the critical limit of metabolic flow that you proposed in 2007 was a great help, Professor."

"...You even read that?"

Rupert recalled an old equation that even he had forgotten. It had been the result of his early research, buried after failing to attract much attention from academia. Now, in Seo-ha's hands, it had been reborn in a completely different form.

His fingertips trembled.

"You...."

Unable to contain the emotion surging inside him, Rupert rushed to the blackboard and grabbed a piece of chalk. It felt as though a blockage that had held him back his entire life had suddenly cleared all at once.

Just as Rupert, brimming with excitement, was about to write the next equation,

"Ahem!"

"Professor Rupert!"

He turned his head and found several people glaring at him.

"My apologies."

He had completely forgotten that they were in the middle of a Thesis Defense. Snapping back to his senses, he returned to his seat. But his mind was still filled with the lingering images of the equations Seo-ha had shown them.

"Then I'll go next."

Professor Anderson, a Nobel Prize winner in Oncology, pulled the microphone toward himself.

What followed was closer to a discussion or seminar than a defense. Seo-ha explained the random mutation mechanisms of cancer cells by reformulating them through an entropy reduction equation from Information Theory.

Concepts that had previously been impossible to prove began falling into place one by one within the framework of the Life Matrix.

"Ahem!"

Professor Anderson repeatedly cleared his throat awkwardly as he copied Seo-ha's explanations into his notebook.

The stern expressions of examiners gradually disappeared from the professors' faces. At some point, they had begun genuinely enjoying their discussions with Seo-ha.

"Um, professors.... It's time for lunch."

The defense had been scheduled to last two hours, but that time had long since passed.

A Teaching Assistant cautiously knocked on the door and stepped inside to speak, only to be met with the fierce irritation of twelve distinguished scholars.

"Who cares about lunch right now!"

"We'll eat on our own, so just order some sandwiches or whatever and leave them in the back!"

The elderly scholars, who normally would have maintained their dignity, irritably waved him away. The Teaching Assistant jumped in surprise and hurried off toward the cafeteria.

"Then let's continue, Dr. Yu.... No, Seo-ha."

The professors gathered in a circle around the blackboard. A sandwich in one hand and chalk in the other, they followed the progression of Seo-ha's equations with their eyes.

The scholars argued while biting into sandwiches, sauce smeared around their mouths. Their eyes burned with the same pure enthusiasm they had possessed when they first entered academia.

"...."

Dean Whitman stood some distance away and watched them.

Seo-ha's face was full of life as he enthusiastically continued his explanation. Whitman had spent decades at MIT and had seen many geniuses.

Quite a few of them were distinguished scholars who had received the most prestigious awards multiple times. Yet none of them had ever approached difficult problems with the same joy Seo-ha did.

An endless passion for the truth, and....

'He must have absolute faith in the world he designed.'

Whitman felt warmth spread through a corner of his chest.

The white equations covering the blackboard were beautiful. And before them, the great scholars clustered together, eyes shining like children as they immersed themselves in discussion.

Whitman took a sip of his now-cold coffee, leisurely sat down, and quietly took in the sight.

***

The defense did not end until it was nearly evening.

"It looks like a war broke out in here."

Half-eaten sandwiches and wrappers were scattered across the table.

Equations covered the enormous blackboard in white. Seo-ha tried to erase them, but Professor Wright, who had received two of the Three Major Math Prizes, nearly jumped out of his skin as he stopped him.

"W-We will clean it up!"

"Don't erase a single thing. There's still more I need to think about."

One by one, the professors approached Seo-ha and gave him firm handshakes. It was a sign of respect for the young scholar who had already reached the pinnacle of his field, and a courtesy extended to the man who would soon become their fellow professor.

"Did everyone enjoy yourselves today?"

Dean Whitman asked with a chuckle. The distinguished scholars wore different expressions, each lost in thought. Professor Wright shook his head and said,

"I wonder if the professors who evaluated Oppenheimer's or Gödel's papers felt like this."

"Perhaps even more so."

Rupert murmured quietly.

Richard from the Clay Mathematics Institute felt the same way.

"Being asked to evaluate the dissertation of a junior scholar more brilliant than yourself.... Dean, you really do have a wicked streak."

A small wave of laughter spread through the conference room at Richard's pointed joke. He looked toward the blackboard and continued.

"Seo-ha is an extraordinarily rare case. A genius of that caliber almost always has something wrong with them somewhere. Arrogance or poor social skills would be a blessing by comparison. I can't tell you how relieved I am that he shows none of the psychological issues so often associated with geniuses."

The dean nodded and opened the folder.

Rustle.

The twelve scholars stepped forward and signed their names in the 'PASS' column. By regulation, a doctorate was decided only by pass or fail, but as if they had made an agreement beforehand, each of the great scholars added their own remarks.

'Utterly exceptional.'

'A new milestone in the history of human intellect.'

'Beautiful.'

'I did not dare consider myself qualified to judge this.'

'History will remember this day.'

Whitman quietly stared at the comments, then closed the cover only after the ink had completely dried.

"Thank you. MIT owes all of you a great debt. Someday, I will make sure we repay it."

He bowed politely and left.

Twenty-two years old.

At the end of the most spectacular Thesis Defense in history, Seo-ha had finally earned his doctorate.

*****

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