Translator: Dreamscribe
New York City Hall, the mayor's office,
John received the report and widened his eyes, counting the numbers again.
Thud.
"Jake. Work must be pretty easy these days, huh? There's a typo in the docunt. What happens if you add an extra zero to sothing as sensitive as a budget?"
Jake picked up the docunt John had tossed and placed it politely back in front of him.
"I'm sorry, sir, but it's not a typo."
John furrowed his brow.
"Then you're telling you brought this to seriously?"
A low voice,
But this was the tone that ca out when he was truly angry.
"..."
"Do you even know what New York City's annual budget is?"
"I do, sir."
"Then I shouldn't need to explain how absurdly ridiculous the figure in this report is. Unless my aide has lost his mind, there's no way he'd be telling to dump ten percent of the annual budget into this.
For reference, the entire Departnt of Transportation's budget is 1.2 percent."
"That's the total budget through project completion. If we had about half to start, we could begin..."
"Enough!"
He raised his hand as if he didn't want to hear another word, cutting Jake off.
"You said it was ten tis the Boston Project. Ten tis, not a hundred! This is a figure I couldn't authorize even if I were the President!"
"Please take a look at the last page."
Jake had placed the figure of ten billion dollars on the first page of the report.
If it couldn't get past that hurdle, the rest of the contents would be dead on arrival anyway.
Flip.
John turned the pages of the report with disinterested eyes.
"...What is this?"
Nas, densely packed across the final page.
At first, it looked like a simple list of signatures. But as he read on, his expression gradually hardened.
Blue ballpoint pen, pencil, marker.
Cursive, print, handwriting so bad even an elentary schooler wouldn't write that way, and penmanship so rigid it looked like it had been stamped out by a typewriter.
"Ha ha ha ha!"
John couldn't hold back and burst out laughing.
Jake watched him with a puzzled look.
"Ah... sorry about that. It reminded of the Declaration of Independence I studied back in college. The last page had fifty-six patriots who left their signatures too.
They inscribed their hope and fear, their resolve and responsibility, in a single line of writing, steeling themselves for what lay ahead."
He sat down and read the signatures one by one.
Theodore Langford - Mr. Mayor, you are a lucky man. Seize this opportunity.
Harriet Cole - This is not a delusion. John, let's step into the future together.
Jonas Patel - This is not the best answer. It is the only answer.
Freya Alvarez - I sign with full awareness of the risks.
Miguel Howard - I will share responsibility with everyone here.
Susan Lee - The only way to save this goddamn city.
.
.
The last line,
As the page neared its end, John's eyes stopped at one spot.
Yu Seo-ha - You don't have to do this. It's not my dream. I simply couldn't look away from the existence of a better answer, as a mathematician.
"A dream."
John rubbed his face with dry hands, then gulped down the water sitting on his desk.
"I'll read the report."
What on earth was this boy's vision that every single researcher was speaking in unison?
In twenty years as a politician, he had received countless proposals.
Half of them were the delusions of idealists who ignored reality. The rest were products of self-interest, masterfully disguised as public good.
'He says it's not his dream? The existence of a better answer?'
Swish.
He turned the page, and an overview appeared.
The project's purpose, the core concept of the system, how it would operate... The report Jake had poured his heart into was written in language that even a layperson could understand without difficulty.
Swish.
John was quickly drawn into the future of New York that Seo-ha was envisioning.
But as he passed the midpoint, his expression grew increasingly stiff. By the ti he reached the end, his hands holding the report were trembling.
"Jake."
"Yes, Mr. Mayor."
As if he had expected this, Jake approached imdiately.
"I need to et Seo-ha. This isn't the kind of matter you can judge from a docunt."
"I'll make arrangents right away."
* * *
The researchers dispatched to MIT had left for a short vacation.
After all, no work could move forward until the mayor signed off.
The people who had laughed and cried in the research building for months headed ho with beaming smiles, like soldiers returning from a war zone.
Seo-ha was sitting at a small table in the corner of the cafeteria, gazing out the window.
A CD that Gyeo-ul had recently sent him was playing through the earphones in his ears.
'She's gotten even better.'
Debussy's Reverie.
Why had she chosen this piece?
The dreamlike tones, perfectly suited to the late afternoon weather, gave Seo-ha's weary mind a mont of rest.
As the music neared its end, a group of people in black suits, entirely out of place, piled out of a car.
Bzzt-
The door opened and attendants entered first, surveying the interior.
Then, a mont later, a man appeared.
Rough skin, bloodshot eyes,
John's face looked ten years older than usual.
Jake approached Seo-ha first.
"Seo-ha, the mayor is here."
Seo-ha slowly raised his head.
He removed his earphones and stood up from his seat, extending a hand to John.
"You ca again."
John smiled faintly and clasped his hand.
"I had no choice but to co."
Thump.
John set the report he had read the day before onto the table.
He had clearly read it thoroughly; annotations and tabs were scattered throughout.
"I'll ask you directly. Is this truly a feasible plan?"
It was too far-fetched a story.
In the report, he had described the existence of an AI that would always make the optimal decision, as if it knew the future. What was needed to build it was an enormous budget and data.
Among that data were sensitive pieces of information directly tied to citizens' safety.
"It's possible."
"Before coming here, I consulted scholars I trust."
John spread open the annotation-covered report.
"They told sothing like this can't exist. That the very premise of calculating every variable in New York is an impossible proposition."
Seo-ha nodded.
"They're right."
"Then..."
"But if there existed another world, built from all of New York's information, we could test the future there, make our choices, and co back.
Digital Twin.
This is the brain of New York's transportation system that I want to build."
Another world synchronized with the real New York, a replica that recreated the physical elents composing the city as mathematical structures.
Its core lay not in prediction but in convergence.
If millions of scenarios could be run simultaneously, then a solution guaranteeing the lowest cost and minimal congestion was bound to exist among them.
"Oracle..."
"Pardon?"
"The researchers call your system that, I'm told."
Seo-ha made an uncomfortable expression.
"I think that's an exaggeration.
An AI is just a bundle of algorithms. The answers the system produces aren't prophecies; they're the result of finding the most stable point of convergence among countless possibilities."
"Is there no risk of it being misused?"
What if soone tried to engineer a future favorable to a specific group?
He was a politician.
He knew better than anyone that power and information were the things most easily abused in this world.
"There's no need to worry about that. Because I won't allow it."
Seo-ha answered without a single second of hesitation.
So humans do not pursue the common good.
This was the very first lesson Seo-ha had learned after encountering people.
John gazed quietly at Seo-ha's face. Since eting him, the young man had already checked his watch three tis. As if he wished an unwelco guest would hurry up and leave.
'So it's true.'
He had no intention of pushing this project through at all costs.
He probably had no desire to ingratiate himself with a man of power like John, either.
"I kept thinking about it on the flight here.
Ten billion dollars. An absurdly large sum. By any common sense, it's impossible.
The mont I approve this, I'll have to fight the city council endlessly for the rest of my term. So why is it that I couldn't ignore this and ca all the way here?"
Seo-ha thought he knew the answer, but it seed like John wanted to say it himself, so he let him.
"New York has beco a city for the aristocracy.
The top one percent owns more than half of all real estate in New York. The enormous wealth that resides in this city never leaves their domain."
His throat must have been dry; he paused to catch his breath and took a drink of water.
"And what about the transportation problem?
The dia is going on as if congestion pricing will solve all of New York's problems, but in the end, it was a asure to make life more comfortable for the rich. Do you think they'd bat an eye at a fifteen or twenty dollar entrance fee to enter central Manhattan?
The real problem is the working-class people who commute into New York every day.
Low-wage workers coming in from the Bronx, Queens, or New Jersey can't commute without a car. For them, the congestion charge is essentially a fine."
As anger rose in him, John's voice grew increasingly emotional.
"And do you know what the dia suggests as a solution?
Take public transit, they say. Oh, my God! We must all be idiots. Here we were, agonizing over such an easy problem!"
Bang!
He slamd his fist on the table.
"Every area with convenient transportation belongs to the wealthy. Working-class people have already been pushed out to the outskirts, where the public transit network doesn't reach.
There's no subway station nearby, and buses co only every thirty minutes. And still, people can't afford the crushing rent, so they're driven further out in search of cheaper housing.
This city is turning into slums from the outside in. Of course, the inside will stay pristine well into the future. As long as their money doesn't run dry."
At so point, John's voice had beco a raw, heartfelt confession.
He hadn't always been part of the inner circle the way he was now.
A rundown neighborhood near the docks, where darkened streets echoed with shouting and fighting every night. Schools lost teachers every year to budget cuts, and there wasn't a single public facility left in decent shape.
Growing up in a poor neighborhood was never a matter of choice. It was sothing closer to a fate predetermined from the mont of birth.
John had been a bright student, and he'd beco a politician to change the wretched reality of the poor. Twenty years had worn him down, but the word "dream" that Seo-ha had written was what brought him all the way here.
"Do you know what the working class ultimately loses?"
John stared at Seo-ha with a cold, piercing gaze.
"Ti."
He nodded.
"Ti is the most valuable resource a human being has.
And yet, in this city, the ti of the poor is consud at a price far too cheap. Are you telling that you can truly change that?
If so, I'm willing to fight not just the city council, but the entire country. Even if it ans I lose my reelection."
Seo-ha had stopped checking his watch at so point.
The man he had assud to be an ordinary politician held a noble ideal in his heart. And Seo-ha himself had the ability to make that dream a reality.
"I'm glad you ca, Mr. Mayor. Mathematics can accomplish anything."
A bright smile spread across Seo-ha's face.
He could help a good person and make even more people happy.
Swish.
John flipped through the report and opened to the very last page.
Scratch.
And in neat handwriting, he left his signature.
'John Carson.'
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