19 Team Leader
It was the redhead that I saw back at the scholarship office. She was rocking her usual professional getup, real sharp, but this time, she had on a flashy yellow skirt.
Even though she was sitting right next to me, it seemed like she was in her own zone, like she didn't even know I was there or maybe she just didn't remember me from before.
I didn't realize before, but now looking more closely, besides that fire-red hair, she had these killer emerald green eyes and cute freckles around her nose, the whole shebang. She looked focused, so I didn't wanna start a conversation with her for no reason.
"89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597" As the plane started taking off she seemed to murmur something under her nose
"2584, 4181", I added
She turned her head and shot me a complicated look.
"The Fibonacci sequence, I like it too", I remarked
She thought for a while and answered - "It helps me calm down, I really hate flying... wait, do I know you from somewhere?"
"Well, we might have not met, but you could have noticed me at MIT."
She blinked, trying to jog her memory but coming up empty.
"Scholarship Office?", I mentioned
"Ah, yeah! That rings a bell. I wasn't really paying attention to anyone back then. Crazy coincidence, huh? You a freshman?""
"Yep. A brand new guy"
"Why would you remember the Fibonacci sequence? Are you crazy?", she looked at me with a disgusted look, like I was the one that started with the numbers
"I didn't remember them, I'm just quick with my math"
"Sure. I have a book to read now though. Nice talking with you", she turned away as if losing interest and took a thick black book out of her bag
"Ey! Is this Calculus by Spivak?", this was the same book that I just got recommended by the Professor.
She slowly turned her head back towards me - "How did you know? Just from the color?"
"Professor Milik dropped that book on us, gearing up for the Olympiad."
"Olympiad? Really? Weren't you just a freshman?", She eyed me skeptically.
"I might be a freshman, but I'm rocking the IMC team."
"Aiii... it might get a bit tricky this year then..." Her expression was resigned, and she peered deep into my eyes. "I'm Nadya, by the way. And guess what? I'm the captain of the IMC team this year. God help us, bruh."
Now it was my turn to pull a complicated expression; this couldn't just be a coincidence. This had to be fate.
"It's not gonna be that bad. Trust me, I'm very good at math."
"I sure hope that you're at least very good. But it doesn't matter if people called you a genius your entire life. On the IMC you're not the best mathematician in the room. You are painstakingly average. Just another player in the game."
"We're gonna see about that"
Nadya gave me a headshake, no-nonsense style, and then buried her nose back in her book.
We did end up talking about why I was even on this flight and where we were from, but it became clear that her heart was mostly in the books.
As the plane arrived in Massachusetts we got on the same Uber drive to MIT, but she wasn't the one to talk much. We did get into it about the Riemann Hypothesis, though.
I was all about how proving it true could shake up prime numbers, potentially flipping the script on crypto and tech. It had that real elegance.
Nadya, on the flip side, had her doubts. She was thinking maybe the Riemann Hypothesis would stay out of reach forever. Only wasting the precious time of the mathematicians.
It turned out that she was a 4th-year student of Applied Mathematics, but she skipped through the 2nd year and she started her studies 1 year earlier. Making her only 2 years older than me.
"Tomorrow at 9 AM. Lecture Hall C! Don't be late Max, Professor Milik might not care, but I really don't like late people.", she said before taking off toward the female dorms.
She was harsh, but she was also pretty. So it's all good.
At this point, I called up Rick and waited for him for another hour, while strolling through the campus, there was lots of greenery around and some early arriving students were lying on the grass just chilling.
When Rick arrived we entered the dormitory and got our paperwork done. We now had a two-person dormitory apartment. Inside, we discovered a bathroom with a simple shower, a compact kitchen featuring a gas stove, and handy shelves for all our essentials.
Everything that students would really need. Well... other than a bit of privacy.
For the time being, everything seemed fine, and I figured I could consider renting an apartment later if the need arose. After all, money didn't appear to be a concern, given the recent stellar performance of my app
After unpacking, I took care of scaling up the server for the PT-GAI Weather app.
It needed to be done as the number of users was now growing quite rapidly. I created a back-end microservice for the AI as well as a simple channel for communication between the end user and the server.
With a simple configuration of a Kubernetes cluster and CI/CD on Gitlab. I was ready to scale the needs at any time in the future.
With those thoughts swirling in my mind, I drifted into an unsettling slumber.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been visiting the mysterious tunnels in my dreams, once I found myself on the pure-white side and then on the early yellow side, but all there was... silence.
I have never heard anything again. I would run and run through the tunnels until my heart pounded like a drum, only to be abruptly jerked awake by my blaring alarm clock.
One thing that I noticed though was the gradual transformation of the nets on my left. The once vivid yellow was fading, inching closer to white as if it sought to merge with the right side.
Though the tunnels themselves offered no clues, just a couple of days ago the fifth blue comet appeared helping me go through the proofs that Professor Milik sent me. I had reached out to him via email, and to my surprise, he had been exceptionally helpful. It made me wonder—without the guidance of these blue comets, I might have remained an ordinary human, while Professor Milik understood math without any shortcuts.
"Here comes the Sun!!!, doo-doo-daa-daa, Here comes the Sun!!!"
"Man, you need to change this alarm clock if you want to live with me... It's ass" - Rick muttered half asleep
I quickly gathered up my stuff - a couple of notebooks and some papers - and took off for the Math Department.
As I entered Lecture Hall C, there were already 2 students seated in the front row. One of them was Nadya, while the other one I didn't know, but he was a short guy with glasses and dark hair. I would say he looked more like a computer science guy than a mathematician.
"Ai, Max. You can sit down we're waiting for Professor Milik", Nadya looked in my direction
"Hi, I'm Max", I came closer to the seats and held my hand out toward the guy
"Sup. I'm Will", He held my hand tightly
"You can let go now..."
"Ah, sorry"
I sat down next to them, took out my notebook, and waited for the Professor to come. Not too long later Professor Milik came in together with an older Asian woman.
"Students! Halo! I hope you are ready for some mathematics! This is Professor Yang, together with me she will be a part of the delegation to London"
"I hope you can make as much of this opportunity, students, and I will try to help you as much as I ..."
"I'M SORRY! I'm late! ah... ha",
Professor Yang was about to finish her sentence, but she wasn't able to.
A tall guy with disheveled dark hair ran into the lecture hall gasping and trying to catch a breath. He looked just how I imagined a genius to look like.
"I'm sorry Professors, I was sure that we were supposed to meet in Lecture Hall D and it took me some time to get here.", he added, I don't know if it was an excuse or if he really misread something
"Well... Did you forget how to do math too?", Professor Milik asked half-jokingly
"No, Sir"
"It's alright then. We need your brain, Isaac. Sit down."
His name seemed to be Isaac, I nodded in his direction and he gestured back.
"OK, Nadya, Will, Isaac, Max. Everyone is here. Later I will tell you some more details when it comes to the Olympiad and the time you will be spending in London, but first, let's start with a warm-up question. I don't have anything on hand at the moment. Professor Yang make something up please...", Professor Milik explained and Professor Yang smiled before approaching the whiteboard
"So... 40 random cards are placed in a row, all face down, a move consists of turning a face-down card face-up and switching it immediately with the card on the right."
Looking around at Nadya, Will, and Isaac. They all seemed to be hyper-focused on the whiteboard, turning off all background noises and thinking about the problem.
"Prove that no matter what cards are chosen, this sequence of moves must terminate", Professor Yang finished
