It was the redhead that I saw back at the scholarship office. She was rocking her usual professional getup, real sharp, but this ti, she had on a flashy yellow skirt.
Even though she was sitting right next to , it seed like she was in her own zone, like she didn't even know I was there or maybe she just didn't rember from before.
I didn't realize before, but now looking more closely, besides that fire-red hair, she had these killer erald 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 seed to murmur sothing under her nose
"2584, 4181", I added
She turned her head and shot a complicated look.
"The Fibonacci sequence, I like it too", I remarked
She thought for a while and answered - "It helps calm down, I really hate flying... wait, do I know you from sowhere?"
"Well, we might have not t, but you could have noticed at MIT."
She blinked, trying to jog her mory but coming up empty.
"Scholarship Office?", I ntioned
"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 rember the Fibonacci sequence? Are you crazy?", she looked at with a disgusted look, like I was the one that started with the numbers
"I didn't rember 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 sa book that I just got recomnded by the Professor.
She slowly turned her head back towards - "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 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 , 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 ga."
"We're gonna see about that"
Nadya gave 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 beca clear that her heart was mostly in the books.
As the plane arrived in Massachusetts we got on the sa 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 pri 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 ti 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 .
"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 so 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 apartnt. 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 ti being, everything seed fine, and I figured I could consider renting an apartnt 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 ti 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 rge with the right side.
Though the tunnels themselves offered no clues, just a couple of days ago the fifth blue cot appeared helping go through the proofs that Professor Milik sent . I had reached out to him via email, and to my surprise, he had been exceptionally helpful. It made wonder—without the guidance of these blue cots, I might have remained an ordinary human, while Professor Milik understood math without any shortcuts.
"Here cos the Sun!!!, doo-doo-daa-daa, Here cos the Sun!!!"
"Man, you need to change this alarm clock if you want to live with ... It's ass" - Rick muttered half asleep
I quickly gathered up my stuff - a couple of notebooks and so papers - and took off for the Math Departnt.
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 ca 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 co. Not too long later Professor Milik ca in together with an older Asian woman.
"Students! Halo! I hope you are ready for so mathematics! This is Professor Yang, together with 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 et in Lecture Hall D and it took so ti to get here.", he added, I don't know if it was an excuse or if he really misread sothing
"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 na seed 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 so more details when it cos to the Olympiad and the ti 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 mont. Professor Yang make sothing 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 imdiately with the card on the right."
Looking around at Nadya, Will, and Isaac. They all seed 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
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