Yun feet moved with a steady rhythm and pace. Occasionally she would punctuate her mild run with a burst of speed, hoping to get wherever she was going just a bit faster. But it was hard Yun was never much of a runner. She had strong legs and the muscle for it, working her family’s farm saw to that, she just didn’t have the stamina it took.

As she hurried through the park, she noted that it was unusually full that day. Which really meant it was a bit more than its normally empty state. She had to have passed a dozen people in her lap around the outside of the amber and brown landscape of fallen leaves. However, the ever truly empty. There was one person she had noticed almost everyday she ran.

A young man, and someone she was just about to come across again. There he was sitting on that part bench, tossing seeds and nuts to the squirrels that seemed to love him. He was always feeding those stupid tree rats. Running past, him, he didn’t seem to notice as she ran by, which was fine by her. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone right then anyway.

Her mind was too focused on the current problem she was chewing on. Running was a liberating experience, her mind was able to focus on one thing, and one thing only. Moving forward. It cleared the space for other thoughts and ideas that she wanted to focus on. Which at this time, was her thesis.

She was young, 20 in fact. A very young age to be in a graduate program. She had managed to blow away high school by age 16 and even started college classes before enrolling. It only made sense that she would jump passed a master’s degree, straight into a PhD program. But, the problem remained, what problem did she want to tackle in her thesis?

So much had already been solved, and the more complex problems were all being worked on by various AI. Determining what project to work on was often more a process of determining what kind of AI you wanted to spin up to do the work for you. Even that was already heavily automated. Just what was the point in picking a project in the first place, if the question wasn't even going to be answered by you?

No, Yun wanted to do something different. Very differently, she wanted a project that she could actually and truly call her own. One that she could do the work on, using AIs as assistants at most. It was the old way of doing research but no one seriously did it anymore. Just wasn't a point, humans were too slow.

There were three projects that might have been viable. The first singularity had been made about 9 years earlier. It was a complex process requiring resources from the world over, and they barely lasted a plank second. A unit of time so small, that to try and talk about anything smaller would be meaningless. But, that had opened the world to whole new realms of science! Most of which were being explored by machines, not humans…

Still, it was worth considering for her research. There was already work being done to use singularities as quantum computers. No doubt they'd have that area cracked in the next few years. There were so many people working in that direction. It was worth considering, maybe her thesis could be a steppingstone in that path.

Her faculty adviser, Dr. Schroder had a lab full of high energy quantum processors. Systems that made use of the full quantum state of an atom, at temperatures that made little sense to a human mind. Infinite and negative temperature systems were powerful engines for quantum computational systems, but also heavily explored. Despite his pushing in the direction, it just seemed like a 'solved' problem. There was work being done to convert them over to singularity processors, but she was already considering that idea. Maybe that would be two points in favor of it?

There was also one last area that maybe she could do work in, virtual quantum processing. It was fringe theory, at best. None of the AIs could crack it and most scientists had considered the idea fanciful. Using virtual particles and fluctuations wasn't considered possible. It was true they could impact the phase of a running quantum system, but in practice they weren't real. Even more advanced field theories did away with their existence, using other mathematical frame works to solve the uncertainty relations in quantum systems.

She did like that last idea though, a lot. Even if it wasn't considered viable, and even if Dr. Schroder wanted her to do something more, practical. It was an idea that could have been her own, one that the machines had a hard time with and had given humanity to give up on. And perhaps they were right, but still, wasn't it worth a shot?

Another major hurdle was that she was studying theoretical computation, the field of studying how and why things act like computers, more or less. She was not a physicist, and many of these problems required deep insight into how the physical world worked.

With a final few step, Yun crossed her finish line, which was where she came in at and felt no closer to her mental goal. Slowing her breathing, she took a few deep sighs, and prepared to walk back to her small studio apartment.

The apartment was small, tiny even. A single couch, and a small twin-sized bed took up most of the floor space. The area that might be called a kitchen was little more than a counter that could barely fit a plate, a stove the width of that plate, and a refrigerator that might fit the plate if you rotated it first. In all, it was cramped, but it was hers. At least, when her sister wasn't visiting. Thankfully, she was happy enough on the couch, there wouldn't be any room to sleep on the floor.

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On a wall, near the door to the equally miniscule bathroom with a cramped stand up shower that Yun had to turn in just to wash properly, was a whiteboard or dry erase board as some might prefer. On that board was a set three ideas for her thesis. Next to each idea, a set of checkmarks. Yun grabbed the black pen and put another check mark next to 'Virtual Particles', the option that was clearly by and far the winner at the moment.

Her answer seemed ever more obvious, no doubt Dr. Shroder wouldn't agree. The next day, she would discover just how bad of an idea it truly was.

"Absolutely not!" Dr. Shroder was in his late 80s, maybe early 90s? But he didn't look at it. At most, one might think 65 at the oldest. His voice boomed with further deception to his age.

"I don't want to do what everyone else is doing though. I need…"

"You need to make your mark on the world. I understand you're just, a few decades too late." Dr. Schroder rubbed at his left eye.

"Eye still bothering you?"

"Mmmm… I need to get it checked out again. But, don't change the subject. I'm willing to be lenient with you, you're young and very intelligent. But if you pursue this path, no one will take you seriously."

"Because the machines say it's impossible?"

"No, because we do. It's a field that has been explored very heavily, nothing has ever been found. The math is sound too so you can't even attack it from that direction."

"But, it's all just surface research. With the new singularity maybe, we could…"

"Yun… We've been over this. If you have an actual idea, a theorem, maybe then we can at least humor the idea. But if you want to spend a year or more just trying ideas, my lab is too small for that."

He was right, there was only the one high energy quantum frame in his lab, and even in the most conservative outlooks, she'd need to monopolize it for weeks maybe even months for each data run.

"Let's… table this for another day. You're young, if it takes you an extra year or two to get started, I'm sure things will be fine." He smiled, as he always seemed too.

Meanwhile, Yun deflated. "Alright… I need to go for another run anyway."

Dr. Shroder's eyebrow turned up at her statement, "A run you say?"

Decades earlier he had started running, even got into some competitive marathons. So, the call of a trail was a bit too much for the old man to back down from.

In the park, Yun had her concerns. "You sure you'll be, ok? I mean I know you run all the time but, this path has some modest hills on it, and I like to keep a solid pace."

"Ha! My body might be 90, but my heart is barely 20. You just try to keep up, youngin'" He laughed, and so did she.

Only, she couldn't laugh after the 3rd mile. He was already so far ahead of her, it was insane. She was used to pushing 7-minute miles, not terribly fast, but still quite good. He had to be closer to 6 and half minutes. She just couldn't keep up. Burned out, her run dropped down to more of a high-speed walk, that quickly changed to just a normal walk with lots of huffing and puffing.

"Hey, you, ok?" A young man on a bench called out to her as she leaned over in defeat.

"Huh? Yeah. Just winded." She looked back at the man, it was the squirrel guy she always saw in this park. There he was, surrounded by his furry minions.

"Ok. I always see you running here. You've never really stopped or slowed down before."

"Yeah. Just trying to keep up with my friend. But, he's already over the horizon." She shook her head before turning to face the man again. He was wearing an NYU shirt, like her, perhaps he was a student as well? Only one way to find out, "I'm Yun." She reached her hand out to his.

“Oh right, I’m Theo.” He smiled. It was actually kind of charming.

The two talked for what felt like an hour, maybe two. He was studying physics at the university, and much like her, was one of the only students who still tried to attend in person. He was a graduate student like her, only he already had his thesis picked out. It was all theoretical work based upon having a 'full size' blackhole available. One that was semi stable. The area of singularity-based research had exploded over the past decade. It shouldn't have been a surprise that a physicist would be studying the same.

His ideas though were quite interesting. They gave her something to chew on. After he laughed at her original idea anyway.

"No, no, no. I'm not laughing at you! Honest." He grabbed her arm quite genially as if begging her to stay on the bench a while more while he explained or apologize. Perhaps both.

"I kind of wondered something similar when I was an undergrad. What if there were 'virtual singularities' popping in and out of existence everywhere."

"And?"

"Well… others had already thought of the same idea. It's called quantum foam. At a small enough distance, space itself would distort into a grid of foam. Points of space time wrapping around, back on itself, next itself. Wormhole, gravity lenses, just a mess. The problem is, most of our observations don't seem to point in that direction."

"What's your point?"

"Well, your idea of using virtual particles to do computations with, I don't think it's unreasonable it's just… too small. What if you took that idea and applied it a singularity?"

"Others are already doing that. Quantum singularity processing. It's coming, I guess I could help but."

"Yeah, but those are small scale systems. Basically, an evolution of the high temperature and plasma arrays. What if you did it on the event horizon of a stable black hole instead?"

Yun paused and thought about it. The math was beyond her ability to do in her head. She knew of the basics, differential geometry, things like the Schwarzschild metric, but it wasn't what she had focused on. What little of it she could hold in her mind, suddenly spilled out at the nearby interruption.

"Yun! Fancy seeing you back here. Did you pass me or did you give up?" Dr. Schoder appeared quite unexpectedly from around the corner. If she had to guess, he had just run the full length of the track, a half marathon, and few extra steps.

"How did… You did a half marathon in two hours?"

"Eh, about 2 and 10. Bit slow for me. Your friend looks familiar?"

"Uh, I'm Theo, Theo Dunkin I'm-"

"Ben's new student!" Dr. Schroder stated without missing a beat or even pausing to breathe.

"Yeah, that's right."

Yun paused the introductions for a moment, she had something to discuss with her mentor and advisor, "Dr. Schroder, I think I might have an idea for thesis now. Do you have a minute?"