Chapter Five: The Twelve-Division Business

reputation. The flash steadied Lu's hands. He saved the boy. In exchange, the lamp took sixty-eight seconds from his graduation—the first time his now-dead father had called him “Doctor Lu.” The sixth belonged to mathematician Xu Cheng, whose Alzheimer's had swallowed half a proof. Her secret was a student's alternative method she had suppressed thirty years earlier to keep sole credit. During her borrowed clarity, Xu abandoned her own approach, found the former student, and completed a joint proof. The flash took fifty-five seconds from her wedding, when her husband misspoke his vows and the room erupted in laughter. She retained the theorem but could no longer remember his laughing face.