Translator: Dreamscribe
Lawrence could not fall asleep that night.
The piece he had heard during the day refused to leave his mind. He picked up the pencil sitting beside his bed.
'Was it something like this?'
He tried transcribing the piece Gyeo-ul had performed into sheet music.
Eventually, he got out of bed and sat down at the piano.
Ding...
It was a strange feeling.
Decades of career built as a performer and conductor, and during that time, the number of pieces he had handled was beyond count. But never before had a piece consumed his thoughts like this.
Analyze the score, understand the composer's intent, then reproduce it through the orchestra. That was what he had done his entire life.
And yet, the intent eluded him.
'What on earth were they thinking?'
Heavy, heavy, sinking down. Settling endlessly into the depths of some deep abyss.
No leap, no return, just a passage from one state to the next.
'After building up emotion this deep, why does it never promise release?'
He recalled Gyeo-ul's words, that a friend had written the piece as a hobby.
He shook his head.
There were clear traces of someone who had thoroughly contemplated their own inner self. A structure achieving perfect correspondence from the first note to the last. A piece woven this precisely could not have been written as a hobby.
Before he knew it, morning had broken.
"Ah!"
After playing it dozens of times over, he could faintly sense the composer's inner landscape.
'Why was there no resolution?'
This piece had never been written with the purpose of being heard by an audience.
The composer had not wanted comfort or understanding through them, nor had they any desire to demand empathy.
Bit by bit, it was coming into focus.
'Did they use music to give form to thought?'
At last, he understood.
This had merely borrowed the form of music; in essence, it was a devastatingly raw confession of the self.
And still, he could not help but love this piece.
Symmetry so exquisite it bordered on obsessive.
Humans are inherently drawn to symmetry. Symmetrical faces, architecture, equations, the orbits of stars. Symmetry is perhaps the most primal instinct that gives humans a sense of stability and order.
'To have perfected it to this degree.'
Lawrence found his heart stolen, as if spellbound by that relentlessly meticulous beauty.
* * *
City Hall, 14th floor, the mayor's office.
The Manhattan traffic congestion visible through the window was the same as ever.
"Here are today's papers."
Jake set a thick stack of papers down on the desk.
Major dailies, tabloids, financial papers, local outlets, and printouts from online media. He had deliberately mixed publications with different leanings and readerships.
"Hmm."
Rustle.
John flipped through the pages one by one, scanning the headlines.
[NYC Mayor Pushes to Funnel Welfare Budget into Transportation - Fierce Pushback from Council]
[Time Tax After Congestion Charge? Opposition Promises Assault on John's Policy]
[Project Oracle Reignites Big Brother Controversy]
[A $10 Billion Dream? City Council: "Show Us the Funding Plan First."]
[City Hall Promises Privacy Safeguards. Will It Quell the Big Brother Debate?]
[D-20 to Council Vote: What Will the Council Decide?]
["What Is Your Time Worth?" Mayor John Carson Stands at a Crossroads in His Political Career.]
John furrowed his brow.
More than half the papers were unfavorable.
"How many seats have we secured?"
"Twenty-one in favor, eighteen against. The rest are still watching which way the wind blows. We're five votes short of a majority."
"Nothing is ever easy."
He had thought that as long as he had public support, securing a majority would be straightforward enough.
But in the face of the astronomical sum of ten billion dollars, the number of council members hedging their bets was growing one by one.
"Getting started is the hard part, doing it again is easy. Next time you need money, are you going to raid the welfare budget again? Stick to your principles!"
"Project Oracle? What happens if it fails? You have absolutely no contingency plan!"
"The whole country is up in arms over data leaks right now. And in this climate, you're asking for that kind of extralegal access to information?"
"The biggest problem is what happens if we spend ten billion dollars and traffic doesn't improve. Who takes the blame then? Don't say it'll be you. By that point, John, you won't even be sitting in that chair anymore."
Not every politician in America is corrupt.
The vast majority of council members agreed with the overarching goal of traffic reform. They simply needed assurance that this policy would succeed.
"Boston isn't enough to convince them?"
"The scale is completely different. We're not using the same system as back then, and the budget is dozens of times larger, so there are limits to how persuasive it can be."
John nodded.
Ten billion dollars.
An astronomical sum.
If it failed, all of New York could spiral into an irrecoverable downturn. That they could not easily agree was entirely understandable.
He himself would never have staked his political life on this fight if not for his absolute trust in the person named Yu Seo-ha.
[D-18]
He failed to persuade the neutral council members.
Even among members of his own party, a subtle distancing could be detected, as if they were preparing to pull away.
John knew exactly what their attitude meant.
'They'll vote against it.'
If opposition remained dominant by the day of the vote, they would side with the majority.
[D-14]
The vote was two weeks away.
This policy had never been easy to bring to the floor in the first place.
Getting it past the operations committee alone had cost John a considerable amount of political capital.
'If not now, it's essentially over.'
Reintroducing a policy that had already been voted down was a far more difficult undertaking.
Every council member he had contacted through unofficial channels said more or less the same thing.
"I can't bet everything on something uncertain. The risk is too great."
"How about significantly cutting the budget and adopting the Singapore model instead?"
"This Yu Seo-ha person you keep mentioning, he's only sixteen. I understand he's fairly well-known in mathematics, but can he really handle a ten-billion-dollar project?"
[D-10]
The tension was draining him dry.
The stretches without a ringing phone grew longer.
Council members who had been reaching out on their own just days ago now would not even respond to his messages.
Just as he was beginning to consider giving up, Jake burst into the mayor's office.
"Sir! You need to see this!"
Jake thrust a tablet toward John.
Red text at the top of the screen.
'SCIENCE - Cover Story.'
John's gaze drifted downward.
[Mathematics Always Knows the Answer.]
-Minimum Energy Theory
"The embargo just lifted. I called MIT too, and they say the academic response is explosive. There's no shortage of companies keeping an eye on this theory either.
I reached out to some friends with engineering degrees, and they say this could be a terrifying game changer. Their exact words were 'nuclear-level.'"
John's breathing quickened.
The hand gripping the tablet trembled faintly.
"Take a look at this too!"
Jake pulled up screenshots he had captured in advance.
They were online headlines from major dailies.
[Teenage Mathematician on the Cover of Science Shakes the Engineering Paradigm with Minimum Energy Theory.]
[Urban Engineers Speak in Unison: "Minimum Energy Theory Can Be Applied to Traffic Optimization."]
[Is the Architect of Project Oracle an Alien? Seo-ha Yu Solves His Third Unsolved Problem.]
John rose slowly from his chair and gazed out the window.
Rush hour had long passed, yet the roads were still gridlocked.
"Will this be enough to move the neutral members?"
"I can't say for certain. But the odds have definitely improved."
"Get in touch with them. Now."
[D-9]
Jake spent the entire day in his office, working the phones.
He called the twelve neutral council members in order of likelihood.
But the results fell far short of expectations.
"I saw the article."
"He certainly seems like an exceptional talent."
The same reaction, as if they had rehearsed it: start with praise, end with evasion.
Not a single one firmly promised their vote.
[D-7]
[Project Oracle: New York City's $10 Billion Project Dead in the Water?]
[Anonymous Council Member: "We Cannot Entrust a City's Future to a Single Individual."]
"Disgusting."
John hurled the newspaper across the room.
Dodging responsibility while asserting moral superiority. A politician's favorite rhetorical trick.
[D-6]
"Was I too naive?"
Just as John was agonizing over how to salvage this, something happened.
Chris Mercer, appearing on a nationally broadcast program, dropped a bomb on the New York City Council.
"New York? I'm not even surprised. Kicking away a gift that lands in your lap is a talent in itself, I suppose."
Laughter erupted in the studio.
"This isn't about politics. I can say with confidence that I know Seo-ha fairly well. He absolutely does not call something possible if it's uncertain.
Digital Twin? Oracle?
Just hearing the words gives me chills. But we're not going to see it in New York. I think everyone knows whose fault that is.
But don't worry."
Chris put on a playful expression.
"I guarantee there are cities already making moves. But why do I get the feeling it won't be an American one?"
The anchor posed a question to him.
"Whether Oracle can actually be implemented?
I'm not Seo-ha, but there's one thing I can say with absolute certainty. Compared to the energy theory he proved, a mere Digital Twin wouldn't even qualify as child's play. And New York will have permanently lost its chance to become a city of the future."
Alex Howard, a consultant, also uploaded a related video.
"Personally, I find it deeply unfortunate.
As a consultant, I prioritize my clients' interests above all else."
Seo-ha's theory appeared on screen.
"I sincerely apologize for my past careless remarks. I was ignorant. I genuinely didn't think this was actually possible."
He looked directly at the camera and bowed his head respectfully.
"This theory can be applied simultaneously across dozens of industries. To be honest, if Seo-ha had been my client, I'm confident I could have made him tens of billions of dollars.
But he released it for a single cent."
This was a story that had not been widely known to the general public. The comment section began scrolling rapidly.
"Even Jeremy Bentham, who championed utilitarianism, would have found it difficult to make a decision like that."
Alex looked squarely into the camera.
"'Choose not what benefits you now, but what serves society in the long run.' It seems this simple teaching from John Stuart Mill was too difficult for our esteemed New York City council members. Or perhaps our system is one that doesn't allow for long-term choices.
Either way, it's equally disappointing."
Numerous mathematicians and engineers left their opinions on social media.
Most of them were motivated by the advancement of their field, or by a desire to see Oracle as Seo-ha had envisioned it, but it was clear that their voices were helping John's cause.
And the New York citizens who had been watching all of this began to join the social media movement as well.
An endless stream of hashtags.
"Mr. Mayor, the tide is clearly turning."
Jake placed a freshly printed public opinion report on the desk.
John read the first line and broke into a jubilant smile.
[75% of New Yorkers Support Time Welfare and Project Oracle]
Now it was his time.