Translator: Dreamscribe
Zeroes and ones endlessly falling on the screen.
Seo-ha couldn't understand himself why he was so captivated by such simple symbols.
Open and closed.
Could it be because even with just these two states, all the complexity of the world could be contained?
Mathematics dealt with the infinite, but binary numbers broke it down into the simplest fragnts.
Negation and affirmation, absence and existence.
The world seed to be made of an endless spectrum, but in the end, perhaps everything was compressed into just two symbols.
Ducky had a good affinity with the binary system's simple yet complex structure.
Though it was an inconvenient system devised to send signals to machines, he accepted it as a natural language.
Ducky whispered that if he wanted, he could create a more perfect system.
“It’s okay. I’ll take care of it myself.”
It was a problem that could be easily solved by giving penalties for repeated cancellations. However, Seo-ha didn’t like such a one-dinsional solution.
Tak, tak.
A scene from the laundry room in the past ca to Seo-ha’s mind.
“Is the experint over now?”
“Yeah, the data was coming out weird, so I kept going and it took a while.”
“You look like you're about to die. Hey! I reserved a washing machine for you, okay? Go ahead. I can do mine tomorrow.”
The students at this school willingly gave up their spots for friends who returned late because of experints. Seo-ha didn’t want such good-hearted students to be penalized.
“Let’s allow only one cancellation per day.”
Even with just that, the possibility of abuse would be significantly reduced. He also overhauled the system so that rewards would only be given when a third party actually benefited.
‘Still, just letting the abusers off the hook like this feels a bit...’
Seo-ha began designing a customized algorithm for them.
A smile spread across his lips.
The fact that mathematical theory could be applied to reality was unbearably fascinating.
“It’s done.”
New graphs and formulas appeared one after another on the monitor. A different curve was drawn in blue over the existing one.
Now it was ti to observe the situation under the changed conditions.
***
The patch led by Seo-ha had an imdiate effect.
As abuse decreased and the laundry app began functioning properly, positive feedback among the students started to increase.
Now, there were far fewer instances of laundry baskets lining the hallway or students getting annoyed waiting for soone to pick up their laundry.
Bit Forge clubroom,
The developers and the student council had gathered for a eting.
Yeon-woo and Jun-gi, who had checked the logs, wore satisfied expressions.
“The usage rate has gone up a lot compared to last week. Almost no complaints either.”
“We’re getting a lot of thank-you ssages at the student council too.”
Jun-gi and Do-hyun, who had been freed from the hell of complaints, looked relieved.
Even now, the anonymous board was filled with praise for “Quack Quack.”
Jong-uk closely examined the graph.
The unfairness indicators that had been marked in red had eased considerably, and the green curve had stabilized smoothly.
“This actually worked. I was in favor of giving penalties for cancellations.”
Yeon-woo smirked.
“It’s just laundry, after all. The return wasn’t big to begin with, and now that even farming has gotten harder, what choice is there? They’ve basically quit the ga.”
It would take more ti for the patch targeting abusers to show full effect. This was purely a result of the limitations in return.
Seo-ha was amazed that such a small change in the system could so drastically alter human behavior.
‘Maybe humans aren’t rational beings, but just creatures who try to efficiently fulfill their selfishness?’
If that were true, then major platforms could easily control people just by adjusting the system.
That thought made him feel a bit heavy inside. Seo-ha decided to wrap up the app developnt at this point.
“We can finish the beta now.”
Everyone nodded as if they shared the sa thought.
As Seo-ha closed his laptop, the noise in the clubroom died down.
“Great work. Thanks to you, we were able to make a good app.”
Jun-gi stood up and extended a hand to Seo-ha.
“I’m the one who’s thankful. I got to learn programming.”
“Once the results of the school project are announced, you’ll be able to officially check your performance scores too.”
Jun-gi looked at Seo-ha firmly, as if to say not to worry.
“But… what if a similar problem happens again? Now that you’re not around.”
Vice president Min Do-hyun still seed to be worried.
But Seo-ha shook his head.
“You don’t need to worry. I added a conscience indicator to the algorithm.”
Everyone’s eyes widened at sothing they were hearing for the first ti.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a tric that tracks who benefits when a cancellation occurs.
It’s a probability distribution function, and in mathematics, it’s called Shannon Entropy. With this, we can filter out 99.9% of abuse.”
Seo-ha had decided not to allow any more room for human greed to interfere with the system.
“That’s possible?”
“Entropy, simply put, is a value that asures how evenly data is distributed.
For example, if dozens of people take turns benefiting, the entropy value cos out high. But if only a specific two or three people benefit, the value drops sharply.”
As Seo-ha brought over a board and explained with drawings, Do-hyun finally understood.
“So basically, if the act of yielding doesn’t benefit the majority, the system detects it, right?”
Seo-ha nodded.
“Yes. I excluded those who rightfully deserve consideration.
From now on, people who try to exploit the system will fall behind in priority. On the other hand, those who follow the system properly will gradually recover their status, so it’s not permanent.”
When did he even add such a complicated algorithm?
Everyone stared at Seo-ha with blank expressions.
“Uh... Seo-ha!”
Yeon-woo opened his mouth but hesitated, mumbling.
He desperately wanted to recruit Seo-ha into Bit Forge, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. There was hardly anything left he could teach him.
“...Thank you!”
In the end, the words that ca out of Yeon-woo’s mouth were short and ordinary. But Seo-ha could read many emotions in his eyes.
Seo-ha smiled brightly.
“I had fun too. I can co hang out again soti, right?”
““Anyti!””
Their eyes, looking at Seo-ha, were full of affection.
Na-ri, already feeling attached, sniffled with reddened eyes.
‘They’re good people.’
Seo-ha packed his things and stood up.
He felt content knowing that he had made valuable connections through this project.
He was walking slowly toward the dormitory with his laptop in hand when he saw a student walking with crutches.
Seo-ha recalled the laundry priority list that Jun-gi had given him.
‘Yu Jin-ju sunbae.’
He had heard she had a major accident when she was young.
Even now, without crutches, she couldn’t go anywhere.
“Sunbae-nim.”
Seo-ha carefully approached and greeted her.
“Oh? Yu Seo-ha! I’ve t a celebrity, huh?”
Though she held a crutch in one hand, her expression was bright and unwrinkled.
“Would it be alright if I helped you?”
Seo-ha looked at her bag, which seed heavy. But Jin-ju shook her head.
“Thanks, but it’s okay. The doctor said this leg will never recover for the rest of my life.”
“What?”
Seo-ha looked at her with shocked eyes.
Jin-ju smiled calmly.
“It’ll be inconvenient, but I have to live like this from now on. That’s why I shouldn’t get too used to receiving help, right?”
Seo-ha couldn’t say anything.
“Still, things have gotten much more comfortable thanks to you.”
“In what way?”
“Quack Quack, of course. Before, whenever I tried to do laundry, a few friends would always co with . I fell once while going to the laundry room a long ti ago, and I guess it stuck with them. Even if I said I didn’t want help, they’d force themselves to carry my basket or give up their turn for the machine.”
“That’s changed?”
“Yeah. I used to wake up secretly at dawn to do it out of guilt. But now, I can just make a reservation and get it done right away, so there’s no pressure, and I can do it perfectly fine on my own.”
‘Right away?’
Even if a student with a disability had high priority, they couldn’t cancel existing reservations.
Most likely, there were still friends who pressed cancel for her during her laundry ti.
“That’s a relief.”
“I just wanted to say thank you. I’m really glad you ca to our school.”
She gave a big smile, waved her hand, and slowly walked off toward the dormitory.
Seo-ha couldn’t move from the spot for a while.
Friends who wanted to help a classmate with a disability, and the student who, out of guilt, insisted on waking up at dawn to use the washing machine.
Jin-ju's figure walking briskly with her crutch, carrying a heavy bag, left a deep impression on Seo-ha. The turmoil in his heart caused by the abusers felt cleansed.
‘I'm really glad you ca to our school.’
It was just a conventional expression of gratitude, but Seo-ha felt a sense of responsibility in her words.
He was happy to know that the algorithm he had created had made soone’s life a little more comfortable.
As soon as he returned to his dorm room, Seo-ha turned on his laptop.
On the desk were snacks and drinks given by the soccer team mbers.
The cursor blinked on the screen.
“There must be soone out there who needs this.”
When he typed ‘code sharing’ into the search bar, countless results popped up. Seo-ha chose the na that was ntioned the most.
GitHub.
A place where anyone could upload their source code, and anyone could freely modify and improve it.
‘What should I na it?’
Seo-ha turned his eyes to the duck figurine on his desk.
A part of himself who liked binary numbers.
“Alright, let’s go with you.”
Ducky.
He completed the mbership registration and uploaded the code.
[An algorithm for fair use of the laundry room by students, Quack Quack!]
[Return structure optimization, conscience indicator.]
[Anyone can reference and improve it.]
Tak, tak.
Thousands of lines of code were committed.
The blue progress bar slowly filled and then showed a completion ssage.
“Done.”
Looking at his first public project displayed on the screen, Seo-ha smiled with satisfaction.
The next morning, rubbing his eyes, Seo-ha turned on his laptop.
“What is this?”
The number of ssages in the GitHub notification window kept increasing endlessly.
[Stars (bookmark) ★ 1.2k]
[Forks (copies) 340]
[Issues (discussions) 57 Open]
[Pull Requests (suggestions) 23]
Overnight, a small project uploaded by an ordinary individual had reached developers around the world.
Even developers from well-known open-source communities had starred Seo-ha’s account.
└Where is this place? What kind of school makes an app like this for laundry reservations?
└Cried reading the code. What was my 10-year career even for?
└Shouldn’t this be licensed?
└Was going to rewrite it in Rust, but after seeing the Python code quality, I quietly closed the window.
└EF1, using Shannon Entropy in a laundry room ㅋㅋㅋ
└He solved probability, optimization, fairness, and resource allocation problems all at once. This is really incredible.
Seo-ha’s code spread rapidly.
In just one day, on international developer forums and social dia, it was dubbed the “Quack Quack Algorithm”, and the na of developer Ducky began to be ntioned along with it.
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