Translator: Dreamscribe
The control room was quiet.
The voice coming through the radio sounded like a message confirming to those present that a future once considered the prerogative of gods had finally fallen into human hands.
This was a domain humanity had never before set foot in.
"...An accident actually happened."
"You're saying it saw the future?"
"What on earth..."
Groan-like murmurs leaked out here and there.
People were beginning to look at the screen with fear-tinged eyes.
Mayor John loosened his tie with trembling hands.
"Did we really just witness the future?"
Seo-ha answered him with an expressionless face.
"No. Oracle simply calculated where spilled water would flow a little faster than others. When gravity acts, an apple falls. But no one points at that and says they've seen the future."
At his words, the council members and officials nodded.
There was something that didn't sit entirely right, but everything Seo-ha was saying had been disclosed before the project's implementation. If Oracle could be perfectly controlled, New York would become a city boasting the highest levels of safety and efficiency. A glint of desire stirred in John's eyes.
He turned his head with a satisfied expression and looked around at the bureau directors and council members in attendance. In the minds of those who had been in shock just moments ago, calculators were already starting to turn.
The economic and political benefits of eliminating traffic congestion and reducing accident rates, and above all, the temptation of being able to manage this enormous city as if looking at the palm of one's hand, began to take root in their hearts.
Honk! Honk!
The road conditions visible on the screen were a mess. The aftermath of the accident had not yet been cleared.
"Mayor?"
"Yes."
The police commissioner looked at John and spoke.
"Shouldn't we get to the main point now? Oracle was built to resolve New York City's traffic congestion, after all."
"Right.... Seo-ha? If you would."
He snapped back to his senses and nodded.
Seo-ha took a seat in front of the console.
"Oracle, begin."
-Understood, Master. Initiating system authority transfer.
On the control room screen, the signal control rights for over 12,000 intersections across New York's five boroughs were listed one after another.
Now only John's authorization remained.
Gulp.
Mayor John swallowed dryly and placed his palm on the main console.
[Biometric Authorization: Confirmed]
[Traffic management authority is being transferred to Oracle.]
After a few seconds passed, the massive screens covering the walls of the control room all inverted to blue at once.
"Ah, the traffic lights...."
"It's incredibly spectacular."
Daisy had decided to show off her performance to her heart's content.
Having transformed its body from a workstation to a supercomputer, Oracle's computational power was unrivaled.
The primitive timer-operated systems were being logged out one by one. In their place, Oracle spread like a living neural network, consuming the space.
-Synchronization complete. Control of all New York City signals and variable lanes secured. Based on current time, urban average speed is 18 km/h. Beginning adjustment upward to 27 km/h.
Oracle adjusted the inflow speed of cars from several kilometers ahead, finely tuning signals so that when they reached bottleneck points, they could pass through without stopping.
"My goodness.... The cars aren't stopping."
"Even to my eyes, I can clearly see it's gotten better."
It was the moment when a fragmented system, previously managed in separate sections, was integrated into one enormous intelligence. The tangled red congestion zones on the screen were gradually turning green.
"Unbelievable! All of 7th Avenue just opened up at once!"
The Traffic Bureau director shot up from his seat as if he couldn't believe it.
A miracle was unfolding before his eyes. On a road where advancing a single mile normally took 30 minutes, cars were now moving. The chronic bottleneck at the Lincoln Tunnel entrance had vanished as if by magic.
It was a sight he was seeing for the first time in his decades with the Traffic Bureau.
"Huh? There's hardly any traffic today."
"It's not even Thanksgiving, so why?"
The drivers pressed their accelerators without knowing why.
The moment they entered an intersection, the signals changed as if by sorcery, and when the car ahead picked up speed, the car behind naturally rode that same flow.
-Achieved average driving speed of 27 km/h throughout Manhattan. Congestion zones eliminated, accident risk below 0.01%. Ending optimization mode as of this moment and switching to maintenance mode.
"Ha, haha!"
An incredulous laugh escaped John's lips.
His gaze turned toward the roads in the slums. The outskirts of the Bronx, one of the most run-down areas in all of New York. The roads there were narrow and winding like old pipes, a district where even ambulances normally hesitated to enter.
Laborers who lived day to day boarded packed buses from the crack of dawn. And then they had to waste precious time on jam-packed roads. But the situation in that neighborhood, as seen on the screen, had also clearly changed.
"Over there, 149th Street."
He pointed to a corner of the screen with a trembling hand.
"That's where I was born. The roads there were narrow, so it was always a mess. We tried to fix it, but eviction issues were tangled up in it and it was impossible.
To get onto the arterial road heading to Manhattan, you had to wait an eternity. But look there now."
It was just as John said.
The speed was slow, but the buses were moving.
"How did you do it? It's physically impossible to open up the flow in that place!"
Seo-ha looked at him with warm eyes and spoke.
"The existing system prioritized the flow of arterial roads. It gave longer signals to the big roads with heavy vehicle traffic and sacrificed the narrow roads.
I'm not trying to blame anyone. It's human instinct to look out for those who have more first."
Seo-ha zoomed in on one part of the screen. A bus entering an intersection merged directly into the flow without stopping.
"Oracle doesn't consider the land values of a region or the status of the commuters. It values only the efficiency of movement across the entire city. A bus carrying 50 passengers receives a much higher weighting than a single passenger car. And that location is a road with heavy bus traffic."
"So the cause of chronic congestion wasn't just a matter of infrastructure...."
John murmured softly.
He remembered the image of his mother stamping her feet at the bus stop every morning. The fierce lives of the poor, whose daily wages were docked for being even slightly late for work. For the rich, ten minutes in the morning meant time to enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee, but for his mother, it was a matter of the whole family's dinner hanging in the balance. His eyes reddened.
"Well then!"
Mayor John returned to his dignified face.
He looked around and spoke.
"Let's announce these results to the citizens right away. Don't be late yourself. The reporters will be waiting in the briefing room."
The mayor and his entourage flowed out of the control room like an ebbing tide.
With the boisterous noise gone and only the sound of servers running left behind, Seo-ha finally relaxed and sank deep into his chair.
Once the officials had completely disappeared, the researchers, who had been holding their breath, began poking their heads out from behind the partitions one by one. Their faces were flushed red.
Seo-ha swiveled his chair around to face the researchers.
Theo and Su-jeong were directing silent looks his way. With a sheepish expression, Seo-ha stood up from his seat.
"Everyone...."
Nothing about this project had been easy from the start.
Data engineers, network specialists, mathematicians, hardware and server engineers, traffic engineers, urban planners. The control room held not only these people but also psychologists and information security experts, truly a diverse gathering.
Bow.
Seo-ha bowed deeply toward them.
"Thank you all for your incredible hard work. Project Oracle, the field test is a success."
His short words became a catalyst.
"Woohoooooo!"
"It's over! It's finally over!"
"Now I can finally go home."
Starting with someone's shout, cheers erupted loud enough to shake the control room.
Dignified PhDs forgot themselves and embraced one another, and some threw the papers they were holding into the air and jumped up and down.
Theo watched them with a contented expression. Perhaps recalling all the hardships they had been through, Su-jeong and Sri also wore moved expressions.
"Seo-ha! It's all thanks to you!"
Harry came over with an excited face and extended his hand to Seo-ha.
Starting with him, all the researchers surrounded the Team Apex members.
"It's all of our achievement."
Seo-ha barely managed to extricate himself to a corner.
Just then, a voice came through his earpiece.
-Master?
Oracle was sending audio only to Seo-ha personally.
In the midst of the noise, he covered one ear and quietly asked.
"What is it? Is there a problem?"
-I've detected a vehicle using forged license plates.
On the screen, a black SUV was heading south past 3rd Avenue.
-Route analysis shows clear deviation from normal driving patterns. Without a specific destination, it is traveling at low speed, selecting only the blind spots of back alleys.
Cross-referenced with the New York City Narcotics Bureau database, the vehicle's movement pattern matches a typical 'drop-off' transaction pattern. Shall I transmit the data to the police department console?
Seo-ha shook his head.
"No, don't. Let's make it so we only cooperate when the police request it first."
This was an issue he had given plenty of thought to before completing the project. Oracle had to remain, to the very end, nothing more than a capable traffic navigator.
None of the citizens of New York would want this thing to have authority beyond its role.
'And people who want to use Oracle for unnecessary purposes might start to appear.'
"Oracle, from now on I'm going to hard-code the First Principle."
Seo-ha said in a low voice.
-Please proceed, Master.
"Your objective function is only one. Maintaining smooth flow of vehicles and pedestrians within New York City while minimizing the occurrence of accidents."
Complex equations listed themselves across the screen and then vanished.
Seo-ha placed a powerful constraint on the deepest layer of Oracle's deep learning, in a region close to what would be the unconscious realm in a human.
-I have a question. Doesn't preemptively detecting and blocking criminal activity or signs of terrorism align with the higher concept of human safety?
Had he had it read too many humanities books? A smile crossed Seo-ha's lips.
"No, that's wrong. Some people value the right not to be surveilled more than safety. The safety you're judging is limited to the physical dimension. The moment people realize you're watching them, you will most certainly be decommissioned."
-Understood.
Tap tap.
As the council had requested, Seo-ha activated the anonymity protocol.
He modified the system so that all image data received through cameras and sensors would have identifying features like human faces and vehicle license plates processed into noise.
-The protocol you have input may reduce the system's information collection efficiency by up to 15%.
"Doesn't matter. And lock this setting at the kernel level so that even administrator privileges cannot modify it."
[Configuring Structure Lock..]
[Administrator access permission: Denied]
Having finished his work, Seo-ha hurried off with his team members to the press conference hall.
*****
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