Translator: Dreamscribe
Shaaaaa-
Water poured from the showerhead.
Theodore tilted his head back and closed his eyes. A stream of moderate pressure massaged his face in a steady rhythm.
"Hoo, hoo."
Breathe in, breathe out.
He rubbed his temples with his fingertips, as if washing away unnecessary thoughts.
It was a ritual he repeated whenever he needed extre focus.
"Hoo—, hah—."
The fatigue faded and his mind cleared. And after a mont, he felt a sense of omnipotence, as though he could solve any problem.
"Good."
After finishing his shower, he prepared breakfast.
Toasted whole wheat bread, yogurt with frozen blueberries, and a cup of strong coffee.
There was only one reason he was this on edge.
The person who had shot up to second place in a single day.
Theodore had watched the na climb the ranking tab as if it were teleporting.
Every ti he hit refresh, the rank jumped several places. And at last, Yu Seo-ha had chased him all the way up to his chin, holding a blade to his throat.
"Looks like you pushed yourself pretty hard? Fine, I should at least give you this much."
He emptied his coffee cup and opened his laptop.
When the screen lit up, a blue logo appeared.
"Alright. I'll show you who's on top. Today, I'm breaking through 999 points no matter what."
The corners of Theodore's mouth turned upward.
* * *
It was Saturday, with no classes.
Seo-ha had co out to a quiet cafeteria tucked in a corner of campus.
Sitting by the window, he read a book with one hand while picking up a cookie with the other.
What he was reading was a philosophy text, a book he had borrowed from the library for a liberal arts class report.
Crunch.
He bit into a chocolate chip cookie, and before it disappeared in his mouth, he took a sip of strawberry milk.
The cookies his mother had made as an experint were unbelievably loaded with chocolate, and every bite tasted like happiness.
'Hm?'
Just as he was about to take a break, his laptop screen flickered.
[LOGIA Ultra-Advanced Session]
-Difficulty S
-Success Rate 0.1%
'Ah... I had a problem search queued up.'
Click.
He pressed the accept button and the problem appeared.
Seo-ha blinked for a mont.
'This one's going to take so ti.'
A problem blending probability, topological geotry, and complex integration.
Even at a glance, the amount of calculation required was no joke. Seo-ha stared at the screen for a mont, then took out a pen and paper.
'The space is curved.'
Scratch, scratch.
Seo-ha's approach was far removed from convention. He skipped the steps needed for expansion in one leap and dove straight into the heart of the problem.
The complex structure was simplified in an instant.
When he reversed the direction at the edge of the complex plane, the disordered terms interlocked as if they had been one all along.
Spin.
Seo-ha spun the pen on his hand.
The shape the problem demanded was vividly drawn in his mind.
Tap-tap-tap.
When he entered the answer, the familiar fanfare sounded.
[Correct answer.]
'Is it analyzing ? The problems are getting more complex.'
Seo-ha deliberately took a bit more ti on certain types of problems.
Sure enough, the next problem drilled into that exact area with remarkable precision.
'Trying to find my weakness?'
He felt he understood how LOGIA's algorithm operated.
Seo-ha stopped experinting.
[Correct answer.]
[Correct answer.]
[Correct answer.]
[Rank 1: Yu Seo-ha / S / MIT / KR / 998.9]
He could see the bottom of the algorithm.
If this was all there was, there was no reason to keep holding onto LOGIA.
Just as he was about to quit, the pattern of the problems shifted subtly.
'This one feels a bit underhanded.'
The definition of the function was not stated in the problem. Also, parts of the assumptions contained intentional contradictions.
At first glance it looked like an error, but Seo-ha imdiately saw through LOGIA's intent.
'It's trying to disrupt my patterns. It wants to be confused.'
Negation, contradiction, and incomplete propositions.
If soone took the bait and floundered, even if they later realized it was a trap, they would run out of ti. But it did not work on Seo-ha.
Tap-tap-tap.
[Correct answer.]
[Rank 1: Yu Seo-ha / S / MIT / KR / 999.9]
LOGIA's algorithm was clear.
First, it presents a variety of problems to assess the opponent. Then it digs into the types the user got wrong, or the areas where they deliberated the longest.
If the user still did not waver, it distorts the conditions to create confusion.
LOGIA was built to nurically evaluate a human's mathematical ability.
But if a user's accuracy rate was 100%, it could not determine his limits. Therefore, LOGIA desperately tried to draw wrong answers out of Seo-ha.
'Nothing more to see here.'
There was nothing special about problems generated by an AI. Slightly more complex calculations, elaborate problem designs based on computational power.
But that was all.
Seo-ha decided he would delete his account once he finished this problem.
"Huh?"
[LOGIA, Impossible Session initiated.]
-Difficulty SSS
-Success Rate 0%
[Ti Limit: None]
As if it had read Seo-ha's mind, a type of problem he had never seen before appeared.
Not a short answer, but a proof.
Seo-ha's eyes moved slowly, following the problem.
One line, then another.
At first, the formulas were familiar.
Polynomials, complex plane, differentiation, critical points.
But the answer did not co as easily as usual.
Seo-ha furrowed his brow.
"What is this?"
The formulas were simple, but within them lay unexplained gaps.
Yet strangely, it did not feel uncomfortable.
If anything, he felt the problem pulling him in with fierce intensity.
Swish.
Seo-ha brought over a sheet of paper and, looking at the formulas, dotted a few points.
Then he connected them with lines.
"The relationship between the rate of change and critical points."
A waveform surfaced in his mind.
One was fast and the other was slow.
Seo-ha moved his pencil along the waves created by the curves.
"There should be an equilibrium point sowhere."
It was not logic or calculation, but instinct.
Sowhere within the curves of the wildly fluctuating function, there had to be a single point where the flow ca to a halt. He was certain of it.
'It can even co up with problems like this?'
This was not the pattern of LOGIA he had seen so far.
It was not needlessly verbose, nor were the conditions convoluted. It simply asked whether a perfect equilibrium point existed under a specific set of circumstances.
A creative and high-dinsional problem.
It occurred to him that LOGIA might be a far more capable AI than he had thought.
“You can do it when you try.”
Seo-ha let out the words as if giving praise.
Snap.
He closed his laptop. He did not want to scatter his focus on anything else.
Seo-ha forgot everything else and sank into the problem.
* * *
Bang!
Enraged, Theodore slamd the desk.
"Damn it! He didn't show up today either?"
It had been a week since Seo-ha claid the number one ranking,
and he had vanished without a trace.
Theodore could not even sleep peacefully at night.
The na sitting atop the ranking tab tornted him every night. But what truly infuriated him was that no matter how hard he tried, he could not surpass Seo-ha's score.
[1st: Yu Seo-ha / S / MIT / KR / 999.9]
[2nd: Theodore Langford / S / Stanford / US / 999.3]
He had broken past the 999-point wall that had been his limit, but his rival was already far ahead.
"Don't tell that's the reason?"
Theodore's voice cracked low.
"You hit the top and left because it was too boring?"
Just as he himself had planned to do.
"So you never even gave a damn about soone like ?"
He smiled coldly.
He felt ridiculous, having clung to problems without even eating, all to raise his score by a few points.
"Fine! If that's how you want to play, I'll drag you back down by force."
He canceled every plan he had for the day.
Theodore gripped the mouse with a look of determination. He felt he would not be satisfied until he landed a solid blow on that infuriating smug bastard.
Ding-
A notification sounded.
[1st: Theodore Langford / S / Stanford / US / 999.3]
[2nd: Yu Seo-ha / S / MIT / KR / 998.9]
"Huh?"
He clicked the log with trembling hands.
'Right, you're human too, so you were bound to get one wrong eventually. I've had my score docked unfairly because of fatigue before, too.'
But after checking the log, his face was anything but joyful.
[Automatic Penalty Applied – No login records in the past 7 days]
[-1.0 point deduction]
At last, Theo had achieved the first place he had so desperately wanted.
But not in the way he had wanted.
Theodore exploded in frustration.
"Don't screw with ! You stupid tin can. I was going to climb up there on my own. Why are you taking away my chance for revenge?! Put it back the way it was!"
His enormous ego would not accept a win by default.
'What do I do? Should I take a week off too? Or should I deliberately get a problem wrong?'
He racked his brain over what would constitute a fair competition.
"Wait. What if Seo-ha doesn't know I got it wrong on purpose? He'd think I'm an idiot."
Tap-tap-tap.
He hurriedly sent a ssage to Seo-ha's LOGIA account. His reasoning was that a notification would pop up and Seo-ha would read it.
But even after waiting for hours, Seo-ha never logged on.
'Is he really going to disappear just like that? Is there really no way?'
He scoured social dia but could find no trace whatsoever.
The MIT community board, the mathematics departnt's internal forum, he even posted inquiry threads on the departnt board, but there was no way for him to track down Seo-ha's contact information.
"Damn it."
Nothing was working.
He clutched his head.
The frustration felt like it would burst from his chest.
There was only one clue left.
"I have no choice but to go in person..."
Theo shot up from his seat.
He opened the drawer and took out his wallet. He closed his laptop into his bag and packed his charger, pen, and notebook. Then he slid the printed ranking screen and log screenshots into a file holder.
He opened the closet and threw on the light coat he usually wore.
As he left the dormitory, he mapped out a schedule in his head.
'It's night now, so I should arrive by morning.'
Just in case, he also sent an email requesting to visit MIT's mathematics departnt.
'It's not like I won't be able to et him, right?'
An anxious thought flickered through his mind, but Theo was too ntally cornered to bear staying still.
After a grueling six-hour flight, he arrived at Boston Logan International Airport.
"Damn, it's way colder than I expected."
He pulled his coat collar tight and stepped outside the airport.
The cold was biting enough to cut through skin.
He hurried to catch a taxi.
"MIT, please."
As the car entered the city, an unfamiliar landscape unfolded.
Boston's air was nothing like the mild weather of the West Coast. The gloomy sky seed to reject outsiders.
"No wonder there's nothing to do here but study."
Once his body ward up, a wave of belated regret washed over him.
'What the hell am I doing right now? Am I seriously flying six hours to get permission to deliberately miss one problem?'
No.
LOGIA was only the surface reason; it was not sothing so simple.
When he had read Seo-ha's paper on the four-color theorem, it had been a trendous shock.
The content was brilliant, but the process behind it was even more so.
How had he managed to sustain his research for seven years without burning out?
His own master's thesis was not going well.
The difficult problem that had seed solvable turned out to be impregnable once he dug deeper.
'Was I looking for advice?'
He shook his head.
He had simply been curious about what kind of person Yu Seo-ha was.
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