Translator: Dreamscribe
Derek, a sophomore in MIT's math department, was walking down the hallway.
His original destination had been the library. The deadline for his midterm report was two days away, and there were far too many mathematical theories he couldn't wrap his head around.
"Hm?"
He was quickening his pace, scanning the wall-mounted chalkboards for any interesting notes, when he noticed a cluster of students gathered in front of one of the seminar rooms. As he drew closer, he could hear whispering from every direction.
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. Apparently it's Team Apex."
"What's the occasion? Those guys are basically lab hermits. I've only ever heard rumors, never actually seen them with my own eyes...."
"I heard they can't use their lab today because of the expansion construction?"
"Ah! That's why!"
Derek's ears perked up.
Same department, one year his senior.
Yu Seo-ha was a celebrity whose name no one at the school didn't know, but few people had ever seen him in person. It was because he almost never showed up to class. From what Derek had heard, he only dropped in briefly during exams, scribbled down the answers in an instant, and left.
"Excuse me."
Derek quietly wedged himself in between the crowd and secured a line of sight.
Beyond the half-open blinds, the seminar room came into view.
'Ah!'
The first thing that caught his eye was the chalkboard.
The equations written on it were just fourteen lines long. But he couldn't make out the meaning of a single one. It was like knowing every letter of the alphabet yet being unable to understand the meaning of a sentence.
"No filming. Just look with your eyes."
A member of the security team had come out and was stopping the students who were pulling out their phones.
Suddenly, Derek remembered something a professor had said in a recent class.
"The geometry you're all learning right now may end up changing dramatically someday. Of course, we won't be going that deep at the undergraduate level."
Seeing the students' eyes brimming with curiosity, the professor spoke with a proud expression.
"That's because your seniors might just solve the Riemann Hypothesis. I don't know the details myself. I only heard it's a geometric approach. However...."
Gulp.
The students swallowed.
"From what I hear from the Dean, they're remarkably close. To be honest, even I can't quite believe it. I've never once imagined I'd live to see that problem solved."
"What happens if the Riemann Hypothesis is solved?"
At one student's question, the professor made a mischievous expression.
"Tremendous chaos will follow.
Over the past two centuries, thousands of papers have been published carrying the premise 'assuming the Riemann Hypothesis is true'. A great many of them would, overnight, be recognized as flawless theorems.
I imagine the scholars doing related research are probably looking this way and praying every night, aren't they? Pleading, please, prove it."
The students murmured among themselves.
In truth, the Riemann Hypothesis wasn't the top priority of the mathematics world. Its ripple effects weren't as large as those of the other Millennium Prize Problems. But the symbolism and stature the problem carried could be said to rank at the very highest level.
"So, if you ever happen to run into Team Apex on campus, I suggest you get a good look at their faces. Especially Seo-ha. It would be no exaggeration at all to call him the Newton, the Euler of the future."
And they were here.
'So that's Team Apex.'
The people capable of keeping pace with a genius hailed as the second coming of Newton.
He'd heard that these days they didn't even recruit new members. An ultra-elite team thick with rumors and little else. Seeing the figures who had been shrouded in mystery, his curiosity surged.
"Their average looks are off the charts."
A remark that sounded almost like a sigh slipped out of him before he knew it.
A beauty in a deep navy lace dress, gracefully seated by the window and sipping tea, looked refined and elegant.
The person beside her was a tall man who appeared to be of Irish descent.
His features were clean-cut. The way he stood with his arms crossed, gazing at the chalkboard, looked like a scene out of a movie. Something must not have been working out, because he was scowling deeply in front of the equations.
'That person is one of my undergrad seniors too.'
An Asian woman with long hair who somehow looked out of place.
Her facial lines were delicate and composed. Exuding an elegant, mysterious air, she was writing equations on the chalkboard.
Besides them, there was an Indian man who brought to mind one of the characters from the movie 3 Idiots, and a German man sweeping the floor with the most serious face in the world. He was unfolding and reading a piece of paper that had fallen on the floor.
"Is that guy the janitor?"
The student next to Derek burst into a small laugh.
Perhaps having read the mood, Ben's face turned red. But only for a moment, before he neatly smoothed out the papers he'd gathered and ran them through the scanner.
And then there was Yu Seo-ha.
Derek's gaze shifted over.
A boy in a checkered shirt.
He was taller than expected, but his face still hadn't shed its youthful look. His attire wasn't flashy, and the impression he gave was plain. Yet there was something about him that drew the eye.
Every time he opened his mouth, the air in the room changed. The elegant, refined Cecilia, the handsome Irishman, and even the Asian girl with her mysterious aura, all of them looked at one person alone, as if by some prior agreement.
Ben had his ears pricked up. His gaze swept past the students outside the window, and then he let out a quiet snicker.
'I bet you think anyone can do the cleaning?'
In the lab, there were ten times more papers scattered around than here.
Apex Lab was a place where, if one couldn't understand the equations written on them, one couldn't even handle the grunt work.
"Huh?"
The students, every last one of them, crowded toward the window.
It was because Yu Seo-ha had picked up a piece of chalk. In a silence so complete that not even breathing could be heard, he began to write equations on an empty stretch of the chalkboard.
Scratch scratch.
The sound of the chalk reached all the way out to the hallway. Though no one had given any signal, the students in the corridor all edged half a step toward the window in unison. Before long, their numbers swelled until the hallway was packed.
The person closest in the world to proving the Riemann Hypothesis. Even setting that aside, a young mathematician who had already carved his name in large letters into the history of mathematics. The sight of him facing off against that great problem was likely a historic spectacle they would never get to see again in their lives.
"I'm so glad I came to MIT."
Someone whispered.
Everyone felt the same way.
The equations piled up, one line at a time. But they couldn't understand a thing. Even so, it didn't matter. The students engraved every single line he wrote deep into their minds.
Whitman and Leonard were watching them from a distance.
"Wasn't I right?"
At Dean Leonard's words, Whitman nodded.
They had deliberately assigned the open seminar room as Team Apex's substitute lab.
"It reminds me of Richard Feynman."
"He enjoyed the attention, after all. He often scrawled equations at the noisy cafeteria tables. He was even a regular at strip bars, where he'd solve problems on napkins."
Whitman's face contorted.
"I'd rather Seo-ha not take after him in that respect."
"But he was someone every physics student admired.
There is surely a student in that hallway who has gained a new dream today. Wouldn't they inevitably think, I want to become a mathematician, or I want to understand those equations one day?"
The thing a textbook can't give, the aura of real mathematicians that one could never grasp just by attending lectures. They would surely remember this day for the rest of their lives.
***
The Apex Lab, now that construction was finished, had changed from before.
"Wow! It's spacious."
Su-jeong clicked her tongue in amazement as she looked around the lab.
The floor area had doubled. It was the result of absorbing the entire space next to the existing lab. They had only torn down a single wall, yet the sense of openness was on a completely different level from before.
"I think the windows make it look even more so."
Theo said with a nod.
The Dean, worried that their health might suffer from the long hours of research, had taken special care. He'd installed long new windows along the top of the wall to let in natural light. The morning sun slanted in, brightly illuminating the interior.
"I love this chalkboard the most!"
Seo-ha broke into a beaming grin.
It was twice the length of the old one. It filled an entire wall in a single stretch, with no trace of being pieced together. True to Seo-ha's taste, all three sides were chalkboards.
"Hahahaha!"
Sri stroked the upgraded workstation with a happy expression.
A space for tea time had been newly created as well. The butler had come in and was arranging the tea set there.
A new workspace had been set up for Ben too. With an emotional look on his face, he sat down there and was inspecting his equipment.
"Alright! Shall we start over again, then?"
Theo rolled up his sleeves enthusiastically.
Fourteen lines of theorems were written on the chalkboard. For each equation, there were several lemmas that needed to be proven first. The team members, except for Seo-ha, were clearing them one by one.
Thanks to his teammates' consideration, Seo-ha had quiet time to himself for contemplation.
Proving the lemmas didn't mean the hypothesis was proven. The most important thing was to find the operator, the absolute order that would force the zeros of the zeta function onto a single line.
He sat in his chair and stared blankly at the sunlight streaming through the newly made window. Beside him, he could hear the sounds of his teammates struggling away.
"This inequality's solved! Su-jeong, I'm passing you the next set of coordinates."
"Yes, Cecilia! I think I can finish it before the weekend."
"Sri! Who told you to put in three tea bags! That stuff is expensive, you know? It's set aside for the Count to drink. If Morris finds out, he'll wring our necks!"
"I'm low on caffeine. I'm running the data simulation you gave me yesterday."
"Stop ordering tteokbokki delivery! Wait! What's that you've laid out on the floor over there?"
Whirl.
Seo-ha, twirling a pen on his hand, sank into thought.
The noise in his head vanished.
Ducky was quiet too. He had sensed it as well. That Seo-ha was drawing one step closer to the doorknob of truth.
Winter passed, and spring arrived.
And before he knew it, spring too was nearing its end. Beside the lemmas written on the chalkboard, check marks had been made like marks of victory. Now only two remained.
"Seo-ha! A letter came!"
Ben brought over a white envelope.
[International Congress of Mathematicians]
The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM).
Held once every four years, it was the Olympics of the mathematics world, a festival where tens of thousands of mathematicians gathered in one place to share knowledge and witness the frontier of human intellect.
Above all, the Fields Prize award ceremony was held there.
"Seo-ha, this is your first time attending, right?"
Theo came over and asked, examining the envelope.
"Yes. I was too young at the last congress."
"What does it say?"
Su-jeong asked, as if urging him on.
Rustle.
Everyone clustered at Seo-ha's side and read the letter together.
[We cordially invite you to be a Plenary Speaker at ICM 20■■.]
"Oh my goodness...."
Ben's eyes went so wide they looked like they might pop out.
The plenary lecture was the crown jewel of the congress. The chance to single-handedly explain one's own theory in a vast hall packed with tens of thousands of geniuses. It was one of the highest honors a mathematician could enjoy.
Looking at the list of past plenary speakers, every one of them was a figure who had exerted a profound influence on the history of twentieth-century mathematics.
"Have the old fogeys of the math world finally changed their minds?"
"Surely they don't mean for us to be satisfied with this? The Fields Prize is what really matters."
"It's not that I can't understand it. ST Compression and the Minimum Energy Theory are still being actively debated for verification, after all."
"An invitation came under the name of Team Apex too. Somehow it makes me feel proud. But where's it being held?"
Seo-ha's eyes traveled downward.
And then his body flinched.
[Hanover]
Riemann's hometown.
The place where Leibniz was buried.
Bernhard Riemann, Gauss's successor, wrote an eight-page paper in 1859. And his hypothesis would go on to remain the lifelong quest of every mathematician for the next two centuries.
Seo-ha slowly closed his eyes.
Perhaps, throughout this long stretch of time, Riemann had been waiting for someone?
Standing before the door he himself had never managed to open, waiting for someone who would come one day.
*****
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