30 Fading
Professor Buzard hit me up on Sunday before the start of the semester.
He mentioned that he doesn't really read the IJAM, but he had been talking about my proposal with someone on the team beforehand. That person told him about me publishing two theses last week.
So, he dug into my thesis on evolutionary algorithms; he found it pretty interesting. But he wasn't exactly an expert in that field.
He mentioned that they've mostly been working with training a neural network model before.
Once I laid it out that I was knee deep in another thesis tailored to their goal, he finally gave me the nod to join the team.
The whole shebang officially went by the name MetaMath Prover, and they got a crew of 15 mathematicians and over 10 computer science experts grinding away on it.
After a quick chat, he shot me over some papers, laying it down that the whole project was purely academic. The fine print promised that any results coming out of this thing would be for the greater good of mathematicians worldwide.
That might be the song they were singing, but under the hood, it wasn't exactly playing out like that.
Digging into the nitty-gritty, the London Imperial College was set to take the top spot, holding the primary ownership of the project and its end product. Meanwhile, the official squad grinding away would be in line for royalties.
The split would be 50/50 between the team and the college, which was the financial backbone.
It was all laid out with a professional touch, but still, like with everything... under the hood, there was a money game in play.
I decided to lay down my signature on the paperwork since, let's be real, the college wasn't about to flip the script this deep into the game. But make no mistake, I wasn't gearing up to grind my ass for it either.
My plan was to just provide them the theoretical basis and let them do their thing. It'd be a smooth move for building up my rep without eating up too much of my time.
With that done, Professor Buzard gave me a heads up that there is a meeting on Slack every Friday at 4 PM, where they discuss everything and that I should jump in on the conversation.
I also got a message from Railey...
'Hi. It would be nice if we could talk about the app design sometime?'
Oh, right, there was that too... it almost slipped my mind... The initial price that she mentioned was $2000, and she had the skills to match, that's for sure. I could even agree to give her a bit more.
'sure. I'm a bit drained today, though. What about tomorrow morning? 9 AM? I would give you a call'
'I'm cool with that'
'Till tomorrow then'
It was fucking 2 AM! And I had classes at 10...
I swiftly slipped into some comfy pajamas. Gotta say I think I looked cute.
However, this night would prove to be a bit different from all the previous ones.
...
I found myself in the Dreamland, like any other night, but something shifted. The right half, once painted in bright green and radiating an azure glow, took on a darker hue.
The sky before me left me dumbfounded. The six blue comets hung steadfast, unaltered. However, the once crisply visible small green comets now appeared blurred, as if smeared across the sky.
Without a clue about what it all meant, I couldn't help but wonder. Was there something to worry about, or was it just another seemingly harmless twist, like the voices that I had heard before?
As my eyes absorbed this peculiar change, a chill ran down my spine. I had a bad feeling about this. Little did I know, this was merely the beginning of an unfolding nightmare.
In the left half, where the ground had a shade of blue, a subtle yet concerning transformation had begun.
Threads, intricate and entangled, began to sprout from the ground, slowly extending their tendrils across the dreamland. The pace was deliberate... not hurried, almost as if time itself had slowed.
These were not ordinary nets; they were the same haunting threads posted behind me. But these...
Vibrant yellow color adorned their intricate patterns, vivid... lively.
In real-time, I stood there, gripped by the creepy show. The yellow nets, like ghostly fingers, slid across the ground, spreading their influence across the dreamland. But they wouldn't stick to the ground.
No, these strange threads defied gravity. They started creeping up, slow and steady, like they had some twisted goal to touch heights that weren't natural. Like they were reaching for something.
The air felt weird, like there was some strange energy crackling around. The question stuck with me: Was this Dreamland playing tricks, or was something way darker brewing in the depths of my own mind?
As three-quarters of Dreamland now lay blanketed in those eerie threads, the once-clear sky began to fade from view.
I couldn't help but wonder, would that remaining quarter get swallowed up too? Would I lose sight of the comets altogether?
With doubts clouding my thoughts, I made a choice.
I wasn't about to venture into the mysterious tunnel of those new nets...
Instead, I turned around.
During the previous couple of nights, I had repeatedly chosen to enter the tunnels on the left, but The Room never appeared again.
Instead, I took cautious steps toward one of the tunnels on the right.
With everything that had unfolded, I half-expected something to jump out at me...
But there was no sound, no sight, just an eerie silence. And then, abruptly, I woke up.
...
The next morning, I woke up feeling rested.
Surprisingly, the first vibe I got was that nothing had changed.
With the wild differences in the dream, I was kinda expecting some crazy shift in the real world.
I mean, the dream changes affected me, after all.
I looked at my phone.
'6:11'
"What the fuck? It's so early"
I barely snagged 4 hours of sleep. Tried to cozy up again in bed, cuddled myself up in the bedsheets, but catching some z's wasn't really happening.
Instead, I fired up my PC and started tapping away on my second AI thesis. Kept it hush-hush, didn't want to wake up Rick.
Thankfully, I bought a keyboard with them brown switches.
I pretty much wrapped up crafting the neural network model. Snatched the one they had from MetaMath Prover, and just tweaked it a bit—added some extra weights that would be altered whenever mutations and cross-overs happened.
After that, I set up some slick propagation to let the changes flow through the rest of the network.
All that shit was just the warm-up. Now, I had to throw in the theoretical juice from the first thesis and work on building the population of these networks.
At 8 AM Rick woke up and came up to me half-asleep, rubbing his eyes. "What are you writing? Another thesis?"
"Yes, sir!"
"You need to catch some shut-eye too... and what's the deal? Why ain't you prepping for the opening ceremony?"
"I'm not going," I said
"Why though? I thought I was the anti-social one.", Rick said with a smirk.
"This is too important. I need to finish it before Friday..."
"Well... do your thing. I'm heading out," he dropped, looking at his watch, "Shit! I gotta hustle if I wanna make it."
With that, he ran into the bathroom.
Right, I was supposed to call Railey about the whole deal...
I grabbed my phone, and before dialing Railey's digits, I figured I'd check my company's bank account. Gotta make sure the funds are there if I want to pay her.
Dreamland Net
Balance: $219,186
That's nice...
After getting a solid upfront payment of $115,000 and cashing in another $121,000 for this month's license from Adomi, even after cutting the lawyer's $30,000, there was still a hefty chunk of money left.
Finally, I hit up Railey's phone, "bipbop... bipbop"
"Railey?"
"Yeah, hey Max, good to hear your voice again."
"Ya, same here. So, you wanted to talk it up about the deal?"
"Yes, I did. I have a design sketch ready and I could send it to you..."
"Ok, so, previously we were talking about $2000 for your work. Are you still up for that?"
"Hmm... It would be sweet if you could bump it up a bit..."
"Sure, no problem. I can push it to $4000. I think that's a fair deal, but I need to see your design first"
"Max... what about royalties, though..."
