November 25.
Heavy rain fell over North Rhine-Westphalia, making people worry that the Rhine River might overflow its banks.
An unassuming research institute tucked away on the right bank of the Rhine River was suffering from precisely that concern.
Its gray-black stone bricks were mottled with the marks of age, letting out a low lament under the battering wind and rain, like an old man leaning beneath a grape arbor, softly wheezing through what little time he had left.
Of course, compared with the things that truly troubled it, this bit of bad weather was insignificant.
As a witness to the former glory of the Göttingen School and an heir to the Bourbaki School, it had been thinking on behalf of the world for nearly two hundred years, and barring any surprises, it would continue to do so.
Yet this was probably the first time.
The first time a single problem had troubled it so deeply...
The door opened, and an elderly man climbed the rain-soaked steps and entered the institute.
Shaking the droplets off his raincoat, he handed it to the assistant who had accompanied him. Professor Faltings, who had just hurried over from home, rubbed his hands together and breathed out white mist as he made his way toward the conference room.
More than a month had passed since he returned to Europe from Hua Nation.
Over that month, many things had happened in the mathematical community.
Beginning with the paper published in Future Mathematics proving the Beilinson-Bloch conjecture, research into motives and cohomology theory in algebraic geometry had been pushed straight from the shallows near the shore into deep water.
A wealth of research findings had emerged in the field, making people increasingly believe that Grothendieck's prediction about algebraic geometry was within reach-and very likely correct.
Barring