Chapter Three: The Price of Genius

Numbers traveled faster than slogans. Restaurants removed locker codes. Couriers shared the template. Within three hours, seventy percent of the street had copied it themselves. Zhou appeared at the edge of the crowd, no longer smiling. “You think open-source means victory? Next loop, I'll patent it first.” “Then next loop I'll find another solution,” Chen said. “You can steal an answer. You can't steal how I find one.” At eleven, Benefit judged them. [Pickup participants include couriers, preparing merchants, and on-site customers.] [Majority utility: 72.8%. Mean wait reduced 41%; errors reduced 63%. Day Three passed.] [Additional finding: low-cost self-propagation. Utility weight increased.]