Translator: Dreamscribe
"Wahhh. Now I need to craft the helm...."
Streamer Nova leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Beside him stood a massive, beautiful War Hammer.
'How many hours have I been streaming?'
In the upper left corner of the monitor, the numbers 'LIVE 17:42:13' blinked red.
He had pulled an all-nighter and was still going. But even he was finally reaching his limit.
"Guys, I'm gonna close my eyes for a sec. I'm not ending the stream. Just a thirty-minute break, so chat amongst yourselves."
He pulled off his headset and reclined his chair back.
└ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└He's sleeping again.
└Is napping Nova's whole content now?
└It'd be hilarious if an event triggered while he's asleep.
About thirty minutes passed.
Suddenly the screen froze, and a gray popup appeared in the center.
[You have been disconnected from the server.]
└ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└AFK kick ㅋㅋㅋ
└Did they patch it to 30 minutes?
└He never leaves his room so they probably shortened the timer.
└What are you gonna do now Nova ㅋㅋㅋ
Nova's eyes snapped open at the alarm he'd set for thirty minutes.
"What? I got kicked?"
He frantically moved his mouse. The popup was still on screen.
"Hey, hey! What did I even do to get kicked??"
He hurriedly hit the reconnect button.
[The server is currently full.]
[You have been placed in the queue.]
[Current queue position: 3,127]
"Three thousand? Are you kidding me? It was around a thousand just yesterday!"
The chat exploded.
└First time seeing 3,000.
└Isn't this all because of Nova?
└Whoever made that War Hammer is at least half responsible.
└What is this, a lottery? 30 players is just cruel.
└It's an indie game. Isn't it kind of shameless to not pay a dime and still demand free servers?
Nova stared blankly at the screen. He watched the queue number tick down to 3,126, then shook his head.
"I agree with that. We shouldn't complain when we're not paying anything. So I really wish they'd just do a proper release already. I want to play something else in the meantime, but I can't stop thinking about that helm, so nothing else holds my attention."
Just then, something flashed in the upper right corner of the screen.
It was the notification icon for announcements.
Click.
[Announcement: MIT Simulator Crowdfunding Campaign]
-Hello. This is Spectra Works.
Thank you for your support. Over the past week, far more users than we ever expected have come to play MIT Simulator.
But perhaps it was too soon for us?
We've reached a point where we can no longer handle the servers. Even as we write this, we are bribing the administrator with donuts so we don't get kicked out of the university's shared server room.
Nova spat out his coffee.
"These guys were really struggling, huh."
└Donuts ㅋㅋㅋ in America you can't get anything done without donuts.
└These kids are quick learners huh? Even in corporate, when something goes wrong you bring donuts first.
└There's youthful refreshing vibe about this. Lucky kids.
└Should we help them out? Honestly, what I've played so far is already worth 10 bucks.
Spectra Works is a team of four. Three engineers and one genius mathematician.
We received several offers.
'Hand over the engine, and we'll give you enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your lives.'
But the engine's designer did not want that. The rest of the team feels the same way. We want this engine, and this game, to belong to everyone.
That is why we are coming to you first.
Starting right now, we are launching a crowdfunding campaign to expand MIT Simulator into a larger world.
By participating in the campaign, you will receive access to testing before the official launch, along with exclusive rewards.
If you help us, we would love to see this grand project through to the end, together.
-Spectra Works.
(A photo of the four of them sitting on the floor eating donuts)
-$10: Game key for the official release version.
-$30: Early access and inventory.
-$50: Limited edition Founder's Skin and badge.
-$100: Sponsor name on a campus billboard.
-$1,000: A private secret space within MIT Simulator.
Phase 1 goal: $500,000. Stretch goal: $2,000,000.
Nova read the announcement carefully.
"A private space? That's insane. You'd basically get a safe hideout."
└But it's a thousand dollars though?
└That's basically the price of a cup of coffee for Nova.
└I think $30 sounds about right for me.
└Getting my name on a billboard sounds pretty cool too.
└I want the dev skin and the badge. These guys really know how to dangle carrots, don't they? I want everything.
└Gotta respect them for turning down a big company's offer and doing it on their own. If a big corp got their hands on it, imagine how much they'd push microtransactions ㅋㅋㅋ
└Yeah, it's admirable. They could've taken the investment and lived easy.
└I just want them to expand the servers already. I'm suffering here.
"Guys! I'm going for the thousand-dollar tier!"
Nova pulled out his wallet and entered his card number.
[Your contribution has been completed.]
* * *
At the same time, in the Spectra Works clubhouse.
In the brief moment Cypher had stepped out to use the bathroom, the number on the monitor had climbed again.
[Current amount raised: $102,414 (20.4%) – 3,102 contributors]
Entropy pointed at the screen, her jaw hanging open.
"Guys, is this a bug? We already hit a hundred thousand dollars!"
"It was fifty thousand just two hours ago!"
Root shouted, his voice bursting with excitement.
Seo-ha, who had been eating cup noodles in the back, walked over with his chopsticks still between his lips.
"Oh! Things are going smoothly."
"Right? Glad we listened to you. The perks are working way better than revenue sharing."
Seo-ha's suggestion had been adopted during the planning of the campaign.
"In psychology, it's called Hyperbolic Discounting.
People tend to undervalue rewards when the future payoff feels uncertain. They rate the expected value lower than its actual worth."
Root's eyes went wide.
"You know psychology too?"
Seo-ha gave an awkward smile.
"I had my reasons."
It was ironic that the psychology he had been forced to study was now proving useful in so many ways.
The amount raised kept soaring.
It was as if the users were screaming for them to please expand the servers.
* * *
Stanford Mathematics Department, Edward Han's office.
Late afternoon sunlight pierced through the window and bathed the office in gold.
Theodore sat in his chair with both hands resting neatly on his knees.
Edward regarded him steadily from behind his glasses.
"What exactly is your reason for wanting to go to MIT? Didn't you say you wanted to become a professor here?"
There was an unmistakable note of disappointment in his voice.
Nobody pays attention to a master's thesis. But this stubborn mathematician had invested a full two years to write one that met his own standards.
When the news came that the thesis was finished, no one had been happier than Edward.
Theodore had long been regarded as a "next-generation frontier" student. He had been quiet lately, but this thesis should have been more than enough to prove that his talent was no fluke.
'What a shame.'
Theodore possessed the same stubbornness as the great mathematicians of old.
It was a rare virtue for someone his age, and that made him someone Edward absolutely had to hold onto.
After a long silence, Theodore slowly spoke.
"Professor."
"Go ahead."
He let out a sigh.
"I was in a slump for a long time. It felt like there was no way out. The problem was that I couldn't even begin to guess what was causing it."
Edward knew this already.
It was something every mathematician had to go through.
"Have you found the cause now?"
Theo nodded.
"My perspective had narrowed."
After returning from Cambridge, he had looked back over the past two years of his own work.
Dozens of notebooks he had filled during his master's program. Analysis, Differential Dynamics, Topology, Group Theory....
"All of my research had fallen into the same pattern. The angle from which I approached problems, the way I developed them, my habit of constructing inductive frameworks.... Everything I did was always the same."
A bitter smile crossed his face.
"But just those few weeks I spent there changed me completely."
"Stanford is by no means inferior to MIT, I should think?"
Edward's expression hardened.
"I'm not going to MIT. It's just that Yu Seo-ha happens to be there."
"What?"
"He gives me flashes of mathematical inspiration. Seo-ha is different from ordinary people, somehow. I can't even begin to imagine how the world looks through his eyes.
But merely trying to imagine it was enough to solve a problem I had been stuck on for two years. It was an approach I never would have taken on my own."
"Yu Seo-ha...."
Edward's expression shifted, as though recalling something from the past.
"Come to think of it, you're from Korea, Professor."
"I am. And I know him fairly well, actually. It was back when he was young, but we even co-authored a paper together."
"Then you must understand how I feel."
"On the contrary. Now that I know, I want to talk you out of it even more."
"What?"
"Tell me, do you believe mathematics is the exclusive domain of geniuses?"
Theo rested his chin on his hand and thought it over carefully.
"I wouldn't say that, but I do believe that most of the great breakthroughs were made by geniuses."
Edward shook his head.
"That is simply not the case. True mathematical progress is made by the hands of ordinary people like you and me."
Theo held his breath and listened.
"Newton, Euler, Gauss, Riemann, Hilbert. Of course their discoveries were extraordinary.
But it took a very long time for the world to change after they published their theories. Progress comes from the process of organizing, expanding, and connecting those ideas.
And the people who do that work are hundreds and thousands of unnamed mathematicians. Would you call that work trivial?"
Theo quickly waved his hands.
"That's not what I meant."
Edward nodded knowingly.
"There is one more thing you should consider."
"What is it?"
Edward did not want to cause Theo pain.
But since the young man was being stubborn, he had no choice but to finally say what he had been keeping to himself.
"Standing beside Hilbert reveals, with brutal clarity, just how slow a person I am."
"Pardon?"
Edward continued, his expression grave.
"Those were Minkowski's words to an acquaintance.
The two had been friends who studied together since childhood. People hailed both of them as generational geniuses.
But at some point, Minkowski realized that he was not the same as Hilbert.
What do you think happened after that?"
Theodore swallowed hard.
"He eventually gave up pure mathematics. He made a dramatic turn toward physics instead. Standing beside a genius is a cruel thing. Whether you like it or not, you end up comparing yourself every single day.
Even Hardy and Littlewood left records of the anguish they felt while working alongside Ramanujan. They must have had to question their own talents every day."
Edward took a sip of his tea.
"And even after hearing all of this, your mind is unchanged?"
Theo nodded.
"I've already made my decision. Thank you for everything."
He stood from his seat and walked out of the office.
The sun was already setting. The sunset dyed the campus in shades of orange.
Theo let out a bitter smile.
'As if I don't already know that.'
It had only been a few weeks, but he had felt it to his core.
The way Seo-ha stood at the chalkboard, pouring out proofs as if possessed. Every obstacle seemed like nothing when it stood before him.
Seo-ha was blindingly brilliant. Like the midday sun, the kind of presence that would burn out his eyes if he stared directly.
During that time, Theo had marveled dozens of times, felt jealous twenty times, and broke down ten times.
But in the end, he had made up his mind.
'To protect myself, he says?'
He had no need for cowardly self-deception.
What mattered was the simple fact that being beside Seo-ha would make him grow.
If his perspective was narrow, he would widen it.
If he was lacking, he would learn.
All of that was only possible when he could hold himself up against the mirror that was Yu Seo-ha.
And he would lend his hand to that great journey.
If he kept at it, then someday...
"Maybe I'll get to see the same view as you."