Chapter 52
Chapter 52
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 52
Chapter Title: Duckie Goes Viral
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Zeros and ones rained endlessly across the screen.
Yoo Seo-ha couldn't quite understand why these utterly simple symbols had stolen his heart.
Open and closed.
Was it because just those two states could embrace the world's entire complexity?
Mathematics grapples with infinity, but binary reduces it to the simplest fragments.
Negation and affirmation. Absence and presence.
The world might seem woven from endless spectra, but perhaps everything ultimately compresses into just two symbols.
Duckie vibed perfectly with binary's deceptively simple yet intricate structure.
He embraced this clunky system—designed merely to signal machines—as a natural language.
Duckie whispered that if he wanted, he could craft an even more perfect system.
"It's fine. I'll handle it myself."
Penalizing repeated cancellations would solve the issue in a snap. But Seo-ha disliked such a blunt, one-dimensional fix.
Tap, tap.
A memory from the laundry room flickered in Seo-ha's mind.
"Experiment done?"
"Yeah, the data was weird, so it dragged on."
"You're gonna drop dead soon. Hey! I reserved the washer—go first. I can do mine tomorrow."
Students here always yielded their spots gladly to friends delayed by experiments. Seo-ha didn't want those kind souls hit with penalties.
"Let's allow just one cancellation per day."
That alone slashed abuse potential dramatically. He also reworked rewards to trigger only when all three parties actually benefited.
'Still, just letting abusers slide feels off...'
Seo-ha started designing a custom algorithm just for them.
A smile crept across his lips.
The thrill of applying math theory to reality was irresistible.
"Done."
New graphs and equations scrolled onto the monitor, overlaid with a blue curve diverging from the old ones.
Now it was time to observe how things played out under the new conditions.
Seo-ha's patch delivered immediate results.
As abuse dropped and the laundry app hummed smoothly, positive feedback surged among students.
No more baskets lining the halls like before. No more griping while waiting for absent students.
In the Bit Force club room,
the developers and student council gathered for a meeting.
Yeon-woo and Jun-gi, after crunching the logs, wore satisfied grins.
"Uptime's way up from last week. Complaints are basically zero."
"Student council's inbox is flooded with thanks."
Liberated from complaint hell, Jun-gi and Do-hyun looked utterly relieved.
The anonymous board brimmed with praise for "Quack Quack."
Jong-uk peered closely at the graphs.
The red unfairness metrics had plummeted; the green curve stabilized smoothly.
"It actually worked. I was all for penalties on cancellations."
Yeon-woo chuckled.
"It's just laundry. Returns were never huge to begin with—make farming tough, and they quit. Game over."
The anti-abuser patch needed more time to shine. This was purely from curbing returns.
Seo-ha marveled at how a tiny system tweak could so profoundly shift human behavior.
'Maybe humans aren't rational so much as efficient egoists, chasing self-interest.'
If so, big platforms could steer people effortlessly by tuning their systems.
The thought weighed on him. Seo-ha decided it was time to wrap the app.
"Beta's over, I think."
Everyone nodded in agreement.
As Seo-ha closed his laptop, the club room quieted.
"Great work. We couldn't have built something this good without you."
Jun-gi stood and offered a handshake.
"I learned programming—thanks to you guys."
"Once the in-school project results drop, your performance score's official."
Jun-gi clapped Seo-ha's shoulder reassuringly.
"But what if issues pop up again? No Seo-ha around now."
Vice president Min Do-hyun still fretted.
But Seo-ha shook his head.
"No worries. I added a conscience metric to the algorithm."
Eyes widened at the news.
"What's that?"
"It tracks who benefits from cancellations. Probability distribution function—Shannon Entropy in math terms. Catches 99.9% of abuse."
Seo-ha vowed no more gaps for human greed.
"For real?"
"Entropy measures how evenly data spreads, basically. Dozens rotating benefits? High value. Just a few hogging? Drops off a cliff."
Seo-ha sketched on the whiteboard; Do-hyun finally got it.
"So, if concessions don't spread benefits widely, the system flags it?"
Seo-ha nodded.
"Yeah, excluded those who truly deserve consideration.
Abusers drop in priority. Followers recover over time—not permanent."
When did he slip in such a complex algo?
Everyone stared blankly at Seo-ha.
"Uh... Seo-ha!"
Yeon-woo hesitated.
He desperately wanted to recruit Seo-ha to Bit Force but lacked the nerve. Nothing left to teach him.
"...Thanks!"
Short and plain, but Seo-ha read the depth in his eyes.
Seo-ha beamed.
"It was fun. Can I drop by again sometime?"
"Anytime!"
Affection shone in their gazes.
Nari sniffled, eyes red—already attached.
'Good people.'
Seo-ha packed up.
He treasured the bonds forged in this project.
Heading to the dorm with his laptop, he spotted a student on crutches.
Seo-ha recalled Jun-gi's priority list.
'Senior Jinju.'
Heard she had a major accident as a kid.
Still couldn't go anywhere without crutches.
"Senior."
Seo-ha approached cautiously.
"Oh? Yoo Seo-ha! Fancy meeting a celeb."
Balanced on one crutch, her smile was wrinkle-free and bright.
"Mind if I help?"
He eyed her heavy bag. But Jinju shook her head.
"Thanks, but I'm good. Doc says this leg's never recovering."
"Pardon?"
Seo-ha gaped.
Jinju smiled calmly.
"It's inconvenient, but I'll live like this forever. Can't get used to help, right?"
Seo-ha was speechless.
"Still, you've made things way easier."
"How so?"
"Quack Quack. Before, friends mobbed me whenever I tried laundry. Fell once en route ages ago—they worried. Forced to carry my basket or yield machines despite my protests."
"Changed now?"
"Yeah. Felt guilty, so I'd sneak down at dawn. Now? Reserve and go— no hassle, solo fine."
'Immediately?'
Even high-priority disabled slots couldn't cancel others.
Friends must still cancel at her times.
"Glad to hear."
"Just wanted to say thanks. You're a godsend to our school."
She waved brightly and hobbled toward the dorm.
Seo-ha stood rooted for a while.
Friends helping a disabled pal. Her sneaking dawn laundry from guilt.
Jinju's sturdy stride on crutches, bag in tow, left a profound imprint. It cleansed the mess abusers had stirred in his heart.
'You're a godsend to our school.'
A stock phrase, yet it instilled responsibility.
Joy swelled—his algorithm eased someone's life, even a bit.
Back in his dorm, Seo-ha fired up his laptop.
Soccer team snacks and drinks cluttered the desk.
The cursor blinked onscreen.
"Someone out there needs this."
Typing "code sharing" yielded floods of results. He picked the top-mentioned: GitHub.
A space for anyone to upload source, anyone to tweak and evolve.
'What to name it?'
His gaze drifted to the desk duck figurine.
A piece of himself that loved binary.
"You it is."
Duckie.
Signup done, code uploaded.
Short description:
Tap, tap.
Thousands of lines committed.
The blue progress bar filled slowly, then completed.
"Done."
Seo-ha smiled at his first public project.
Next morning, rubbing sleepy eyes, he opened his laptop.
"What the...?"
GitHub notifications exploded.
Overnight, a no-name's tiny project was in devs' hands worldwide.
Even big open-source maintainers starred it.
Seo-ha's code spread like wildfire.
In a day, overseas dev forums and SNS dubbed it the "Quack Quack Algorithm," with developer Duckie trending alongside.