New Jersey. Peggy's Apartment.
Adam was playing chess with Peggy while simultaneously reciting tens of thousands of heart surgery data points.
Both of them were super geniuses—multitasking was just par for the course.
Adam was taking his sweet time with the chess moves. If he didn't, Peggy's skill would've checkmated him ages ago. Back in the day, he only had a basic grasp of the game. Even now, with his brain upgraded to a super CPU, he still had to spend a ton of time analyzing every possible outcome of Peggy's moves.
In his mind, a chessboard unfolded—black and white pieces sliding forward and back, each potential clash playing out like a rehearsal in his head.
It looked pretty badass.
But Peggy? Her brain was a super CPU too—an Adam-plus edition. When it came to mathematical calculations, she left him in the dust. Add her mastery of chess strategies and her ability to stand on the shoulders of giants, and she was basically chilling outside the stratosphere, looking down at Earth.
Adam trying to pull off some last-minute genius move? Yeah, that was a pipe dream. Right now, he was just losing with style.
And honestly, it was working out great.
Peggy wasn't rushing him at all. In fact, her delicate face was lit up with a smile. Every now and then, Adam would glance up, catch her gaze, and feel like he could hear her thoughts: "I used to think you were just a decent tool—my inspiration generator. But turns out, you've got some real talent. Maybe my friend count will go from one-and-a-half to two. Keep it up!"
That just made his mental CPU kick into overdrive.
One chess game dragged on for five hours.
"Checkmate!" Peggy said with a grin, setting down her piece.
"I'm done for," Adam admitted, tipping over his king with a smirk.
"You've only recited 10,369 data points so far. Wanna go another round?" Peggy asked, resetting the board with a playful smile.
"You sure you want me to keep going?" Adam raised an eyebrow. "It's already 7 p.m. If I run through all of them, we'll be up till 3 a.m. Isn't 10,369 enough to prove something?"
"Spitting out 10,369 data points does prove your talent," Peggy said, eyeing him with curiosity. "I don't know why you never showed this side of yourself before, but talent's talent. If that's all it was, we could stop here. But from those 10,369 points, I spotted that pattern you mentioned in your video. So now I'm wondering—if you finish the whole set, will that pattern hold? Can we turn it into a full-on mathematical formula?"
"A mathematical formula?" Adam blinked, stunned. "Is that even possible?"
"Why not?" Peggy grinned. "Math's the tool we use to decode the universe's secrets—human bodies included. You said in your video that you used this data to figure out surgery stats for a middle-aged guy stepping into a little girl's procedure. How'd you pull that off?"
"I took stuff like gender, age, heart condition, all that, and turned them into axes," Adam explained. "Each surgery data point became a dot. Connect the dots, and you get a rough curve. Then I kinda fudged it to fit."
"So you've got a sloppy curve in your head," Peggy said with a laugh. "But what I'm seeing is a formula. What's wrong with that?"
"…" Adam's mouth twitched.
She wasn't wrong—mathematicians did boil down complex patterns into neat little formulas and theorems to help people understand the world. But this? This felt insane. With so many variables in surgery data, could it really be summed up in one formula? Then again, math could model the entire freaking universe—heart surgery data was peanuts in comparison.
His eyes lit up. "You really think we can turn this Duncan Curve into a formula?"
"…" Now it was Peggy's turn to go speechless.
Duncan Curve? Where'd that come from?
"Peggy, you're amazing!" Adam jumped up, wrapping her in a bear hug and planting a big kiss on her cheek. "If we pull this off, we're calling it the Duncan-Adler Formula. Like Sheldon said, 'Brain babies are the cutest!' This is our brain baby—no crying, no messy goo, just pure, beautiful perfection."
"Did Sheldon actually say that?" Peggy asked, wiping the slobber off her face.
"Think about it—does it sound like something he'd say?" Adam chuckled.
"He does hate kids," Peggy nodded. "And pretty much everyone else too. But he's obsessed with brainpower, so yeah, it tracks."
"See? Close enough," Adam said, waving it off. "Let's not sweat the small stuff. We've got the Duncan-Adler Formula to figure out!"
Peggy rolled her eyes, but he ignored it completely.
For her, a formula like this was no big deal. Over the years, she'd pumped out tons of cutting-edge math papers—how else could she be the youngest mathematician of her caliber? These days, she tackled the toughest, most mind-bending problems in the field. This? This was just a side gig.
But for Adam, it was a game-changer.
If they nailed this formula and published it as the Duncan-Adler Formula, it'd blow yesterday's public lecture out of the water. Sure, his performance then had been wild, but deep down, plenty of people probably whispered about some hidden trick—something they couldn't quite put their finger on.
And there'd be a lot of those skeptics. Humans hated the unknown. Psychologically, they weren't ready to buy into an Adam this over-the-top.
But a paper like this? Paired with his lecture? That'd be the nail in the coffin—undeniable proof of his genius.
A performance could be faked. You could script a whole speech, plant questions, rehearse answers, and stage every shocked gasp or smug smirk from the crowd. Adam was a billionaire—he had the cash to pull off a stunt that big. And with his ambition to make waves in medicine, he had the motive too. Means, motive, ability—all there. So yeah, people doubting him felt reasonable to them. Some might even convince themselves it had to be the truth.
Even if they'd asked questions themselves, they could brush it off. Maybe Adam got lucky, and their "gotcha" questions just happened to be ones he knew. Or maybe he had an earpiece with some medical bigshot feeding him lines.
Fake. All fake.
But math? Math didn't lie.
And when it tied directly to his work, that formula would be as real as it gets.
With that, Adam shoved the chessboard aside and threw all his energy into reciting the surgery data.
Both of them were geniuses—photographic memories, mental calculators on steroids. One spoke, the other recorded. Adam turned the data into a multidimensional web, countless rays intersecting at points, each point a surgery, each line a connection.
Peggy dug into the mathematical ties between those points, working to weave them into a single formula.
Their minds were like starry skies—data twinkling like constellations, glowing with brilliance.