Translator: Dreamscribe
Chris hurried back to the company.
As always, the place was running at full tilt.
Test schedules, procurement meetings, ignition sequences for the next launch vehicle. Through all of these processes, machines that were no different from scrap metal came to life. Chris loved watching it happen.
"Yo! Everything good, everyone?"
Slam.
The moment Chris threw open the door and walked in, the founding members of the company stared at him with cold, unamused eyes.
"Chris, what did you do this time?"
Stanley, the CTO, held his coffee and looked at Chris as though scolding a child who'd gotten into trouble.
The CFO, another founding member, clicked his tongue and shook his head, while the head of legal adjusted his glasses as if nothing had happened. This had played out countless times before.
"Why the long faces? It's really nothing this time."
Chris dragged over a chair and dropped into it.
"Nothing? Every time you say that, we end up in serious trouble.... Reports of you being spotted at MIT are already flooding SNS."
"Oh, yeah, I stopped by. There was a bratty kid there, so I put him in his place."
"Don't tell me, the math department's Yu Seo-ha?"
"Chris...."
Stanley ran his fingers through his hair as if he had a headache.
But Chris just shrugged.
"It can't be helped. The paper they published overlaps directly with our control model. Our contractors could get nervous about this", the head of legal said in a low voice.
"He has a point. This could snowball from a technical issue into a trust issue."
But the board members seemed to think differently.
"We prove it by succeeding. The more we escalate this, the worse it gets for us. So what exactly did you do while you were there?"
Chris flashed a mischievous grin.
"I agreed to a public debate."
"What?"
"You're joking, right?"
"I know why you're all worried. But I'm confident. I've never lost a debate."
Stanley cut in urgently.
"Yu Seo-ha is seriously no joke! He's already famous among MIT researchers! What are you going to do if the debate turns into a math quiz?"
Chris shook his head with a smile.
"You know I'd never fight that way.
We have a track record. Hundreds of failure logs, explosions, vibrations, tank pressure fluctuations. We've built up evidence from experience that mathematics can never refute."
Chris leaned forward.
"I've seen plenty of kids like him.
Pen-pushers believe theory changes the world. But reality doesn't work that way. Reality comes first, and theory follows.
Don't worry. Shutting down one little kid is nothing."
"B-but still!"
Stanley raised a hand to quiet the others.
"Wait! It was impulsive, but this might not be a bad thing."
"How so?"
"Their side can't offer an alternative. If we frame it as 'So what do you propose instead?', it becomes a fight Chris can't lose."
Chris nodded.
"I think the same way. They're probably expecting something like a math lecture, but they don't stand a chance."
"Still, let's prepare thoroughly. We have several math PhDs on staff, so start getting tutored right now. Tear that paper apart."
"I was planning on it.
Get in touch with Peter Reynolds too. Tell him let's set a date for the debate. And contact the PR team to prep the messaging and scenarios."
His eyes gleamed sharply.
* * *
On the bus heading to Boston,
Theo was reading a news article on his smartphone, unable to hide his unease.
"This just got complicated. He came in with the framing already set."
[Chris Mercer: "The stagnation of theory must be broken through with technology."]
-Boston local time, yesterday at 8 PM,
Chris Mercer, founder and CEO of private aerospace company Sierra Space, publicly criticized the latest paper from MIT-affiliated Team Apex, igniting a firestorm of controversy.
The paper in question concerns the existence and stability of the Minimum Energy Solution, and has been assessed as directly contradicting the foundational assumptions underlying engineering optimization models.
It is reported that Science's editorial board has proposed a public debate to both the Mercer camp and Team Apex, and the possibility of an open forum being arranged in the near future is being discussed.
└I don't understand any of this. Can someone explain?
└Think of it like: "I'm perfectly healthy" vs "Just because the fever went down doesn't mean the illness is cured. If you don't know the diagnosis, it can come back anytime."
└Oh! That makes total sense now.
└As someone studying math, the phrase "stagnation of theory" does sting. There are definitely areas where modern mathematics hasn't been able to keep up with the pace of reality.
└Tech really has made incredible leaps since the 2000s. In the math world, it feels like nothing's happened since the Poincaré Conjecture was solved.
└Isn't Yu Seo-ha supposed to be a legit genius? Are we finally gonna see Chris get wrecked? His arrogance was getting really off-putting. But on a side note, I do think the guy is genuinely impressive.
└Yeah, if only he'd watch that mouth of his.
Chris was naturally planting the perception in the public's mind that mathematics was failing to keep up with technology.
He would undoubtedly hammer away at that weak point in the debate: that mathematics couldn't provide answers right now.
'Will he be okay?'
After hearing the story from Su-jeong and Sri, it was quite a spectacle.
How Chris possessed such a talent for picking out exactly the kind of things Seo-ha hated to hear. It was understandable that Seo-ha had gotten angry.
When Theo returned to the lab, Seo-ha was engrossed in his research as usual. No, if anything, he seemed even more absorbed than normal.
Su-jeong and Sri were in the middle of gathering materials to counter Chris's arguments for the debate.
'No use crying over spilled milk, I suppose.'
Seo-ha had a surprisingly broad range of knowledge.
If he could hold his own against a heavyweight like Chris, this might actually turn into a blessing in disguise for the team.
A few days later, a short video was posted on Science's official channel.
[When Theory Meets Reality]
The video began without any explanation.
A time-lapse camera rolls.
Pitch-black night.
The sky gradually brightens.
As the sun rose, a massive launch vehicle could be seen standing tall between steel structures.
The frame shakes.
A low-frequency sound, as if tearing through the air, accompanied a violent surge of energy pouring out from beneath the launch vehicle.
Whoooooosh-
And then, launch.
A rocket soaring up through the curtain of smoke.
The camera deliberately avoided a perfect composition to convey a sense of being there. Amid the shaking and brief moments of lost focus, short captions appeared on screen.
-Test Failure #1
-Test Failure #2
-Test Failure #3
Silence.
The rocket wobbled but held its trajectory to the end. Then it grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared into the sky.
A brief silence, followed by a caption.
-And then, success.
""Yeaaaahh!!""
The passionate cheers of the staff rang out.
In the next scene, Chris Mercer appeared for the first time.
He stood against the backdrop of the launch site, wearing a helmet with his sleeves rolled up.
Chris looked straight into the camera and spoke.
"Just because theory has stalled, does that mean we should wait for them?"
A brief pause.
He shook his head with a confident smile.
"That is not the spirit of engineering. We will break through head-on. Just as we always have."
-Sierra Space's current average rocket launch success rate exceeds 95%.
The next scene followed.
Scratch.
Scratch.
The setting was a lecture hall. No stage, no special lighting.
Just an enormous chalkboard and one person standing before it.
The proof Seo-ha was writing filled an entire wall.
-The complete proof of the Four Color Theorem.
The scene changed to footage of Seo-ha explaining Smale's Problems at a Colloquium.
With each gesture of his hand, the failure conditions on screen were neutralized one by one.
-Resolution of Smale's Problems, a longstanding challenge in Analysis.
-A sixteen-year-old boy rewriting the classics of mathematical history.
Seo-ha looked into the camera and spoke.
"Chris seems to be under a serious misconception.
For the past three thousand years, mathematics has never, not for a single moment, stopped advancing."
Within just hours of the video going live, the response was explosive.
Engineer forums, math communities, even ordinary citizens reconsidering the timing of their investments.
Science placed Team Apex's paper on the front page.
Normally, it would have been the kind of title that struggled to capture readers' interest, but this time was different.
From the very first day of release, copies were selling at a far higher volume than usual.
Time passed quickly, and the day of the debate arrived.
Inside Science's studio, tension hung in the air.
Two cameras, modest lighting, and a space that would typically host calm conversations with invited professors or renowned scholars. But today, the production crew's footsteps were hurried.
The number on the monitor was the reason.
[41,920]
"The waiting audience has already broken 40,000."
The real-time viewer count was surging by the minute.
An unprecedented level of buzz for a science channel. Despite having millions of subscribers, the live viewership for a topic like this would usually barely break a few thousand.
Peter, the editor-in-chief, glanced at the number that had just passed 50,000, then cleared his throat.
"Thirty seconds."
The camera director signaled with his hand.
The noise in the studio died down.
Everyone stopped in their tracks and watched the monitor.
[91,002]
"No way!"
A number no one had ever seen in all their years of broadcasting.
Someone couldn't hold back an exclamation.
As Peter walked toward the podium, the countdown began.
5.
4.
3.
Peter took one last look at the two guests appearing today.
A sharp suit with no tie, Chris's usual look. His counterpart, on the other hand, looked as though he had walked straight out of the middle of a research session.
Sunken eyes on a pale face, wrinkled jeans, and a checkered flannel shirt.
'Actually, this might work in our favor.'
The appearance Seo-ha was showing today matched the public's image of a once-in-a-generation math genius.
In a corner of the studio, his teammates were watching Seo-ha with worried eyes.
2.
1.
[ON AIR]
The moment the red light on the camera turned on, the number on the monitor jumped again.
[103,614]
"Welcome, viewers, to Science Live."
He slowly surveyed the studio once. The camera director flashed an OK sign.
"Today, we will be holding a debate under the theme, 'When Theory Meets Reality'.
Has technological progress already ventured far beyond what mathematical theory can explain? Going further, some scholars argue that 'technology is, in fact, leading theory'.
This is not an uncommon position."
The host's remarks continued.
Then Chris took the floor to lay out his argument.
"...So what exactly is this so-called 'living solution' he speaks of? Can he prove even a single one and show it to us? If not, then there is not the slightest shred of potential in...."
Seo-ha had been in a haze all week.
By the time he came to his senses, several days had passed, and when he looked around, he was inside the studio.
"...Mathematicians say that if the answer doesn't appear in their notebooks, there is no solution. But for us, only one thing matters: 'Does it work, or doesn't it?'
If it works, that means there must be a domain in reality that theory cannot explain."
'That man is as loud as ever.'
Seo-ha turned his head.
Su-jeong, Theo, and Sri's faces had gone white.
'Oh right! I was in the middle of writing an equation.'
Paper and a pen sat on the desk in front of him.
Seo-ha unconsciously picked them up.
Scratch scratch.
'That's better.'
An unresolved knot in his mind was gnawing at his nerves.
Scratch scratch.
The sound of the pen moving echoed with unusual clarity throughout the studio.
"...The changes the public actually experiences have always been led by engineers."
Seo-ha had forgotten where he was.
The cameras, the lighting, the live broadcast being watched by a hundred thousand people. All of it had been pushed beyond the borders of his awareness.
Seo-ha's mind was a tangled mess.
The materials his teammates had gathered, the countless meetings where they had discussed the unsolved problem, fragments of unfinished equations, counterexamples he had deleted from the paper, the vibration patterns he had observed in the launch vehicle footage.
Information from entirely different layers was flooding in without distinction.
"...Seo-ha? Are you listening? What are your thoughts on Chris's argument?"
Peter handed the floor to Seo-ha.
The paper was already filled up.
'This isn't enough.'
Seo-ha raised his head.
There happened to be something suitable nearby.
Seo-ha stood up from his seat. He had no choice but to solve this right now.
"Huh? Seo-ha? You need to answer!"
"What are you about to do?"
A whiteboard that the Science crew had set up just in case.
Seo-ha walked up to it and began writing equations at a furious pace.