The floor of the Research and Development Department had never been more quiet before.
Three researchers were standing in a corner of Haruto's expanded work area and whispering quietly about what it meant for Haruto to have converted the documents into text. Three more were staring at the screen with a deep fascination, as if the screen itself held the answers to all their questions.
Among them was the researcher who'd stopped Haruto before, the one with the spectacles, he was looking at Haruto with an annoyed expression. He kept staring at Haruto for a few seconds before going back to staring at the screen as if he was trying to pin just how Haruto's little brain could make the machine do such a thing, something he hadn't even thought of making possible in all his years as a researcher.
Eventually the researchers had had enough, they stopped arguing, stopped staring at the screen and piled up around Haruto, pushing the spectacled researcher to speak their wishes again.
The begrudged researcher then began speaking for everyone present, "Run it again… on a different document. Something more difficult. Do you have old receipts? I have a few… run it on those and show it to me, to us."
Haruto nodded and opened up the scanner for them to place any receipt they might want to test the machine on. The researchers scrambled towards their desks and brought back the oldest, most crumpled pieces of papers from the most cramped corners of their desks.
"Form a line…" Haruto ordered coldly, causing the researchers to frown deeper before they debated amongst each other who got to go first and pushing the spectacled researcher first to allow him to place his paper down before everyone else.
The spectacled researcher held his nose in the air before placing the paper onto the scanner and moving a few steps back, allowing Haruto to operate the scanner and pull up the document onto his software.
The scanner glowed an ominous green before a notification came up on the computer causing everyone to hold their breaths.
Haruto silently pulled the recently scanned document onto his software before running the software again by pressing the convert button.
The silence in the research and development department was stretched thin over the tense atmosphere as everyone waited patiently to see if the software would work again or fail.
Even Haruto looked a little tense since he hadn't had the time to test much on data that was not already in the training data set.
With the soft hum of the computer fans spinning in the silence, the software completed converting the document.
In an instant the line that had formed broke, as everyone of the researchers stumbled towards the monitor to look at the document that was scanned in and the converted document that was displayed beside it to find any errors.
"Aha!!" The spectacled researcher pointed with his finger on the screen, "There's an error! A date cannot be more than thirty one! But your date is eighty one!!"
Haruto looked at the converted file and it was indeed eighty one on the date, then Haruto looked at the originally scanned in file and spotted the error instantly.
"The original clearly looks like an eight." Haruto argued blandly.
"That's just a smudge!" The researcher argued back smugly.
Either way Haruto simply shrugged, "It's only ninety four percent accurate. A simple error or two won't be enough to disprove its efficacy."
"Ninety four percent accurate…" The spectacled researcher stared blankly at Haruto, mumbling those words as if tasting the ludicrous claim made by them.
He then stared hard at the screen trying to find an error, any error, but failed to find anything else causing him to be pushed back in the line by others to allow them to hand over their receipts to Haruto.
Haruto satisfied them all one by one, putting in their receipts into the scanner to scan them and convert them using his software before allowing them to go over the results.
It took the better part of the morning to satisfy them but Haruto gained something unexpected doing all this, he found a twenty year old receipt from a particularly old researcher who was still in the R&D Department. And in spite of the age of the receipt the software converted it flawlessly.
"So? What do you think? Do you think I should earn those hundred and twenty thousand ryo now?"
Haruto's mention of a hundred and twenty thousand ryo sent shivers down every researcher's spine.
They all looked at Haruto like he was the devil incarnate.
"What? Calling off the bet now that you lost? I wonder if your mother will even look at you if that happens." Haruto taunted back with the same taunt that was tossed at him earlier.
The researchers, all unwilling, pulled out their wallets and begrudgingly bunched up ten thousand ryo in cold hard cash and handed it over to Haruto one by one.
When the spectacled man handed over his share, he looked deep into Haruto's eyes and spoke calmly, gone was the arrogant tone and the superior look, in its place were something that Haruto immediately recognised, recognition of an equal.
"How does it work?"
"Well…" Haruto began, wondering if he should reveal it, he thought about it for a moment and saw no harm so he spoke at length, "It works using convolutional neural networks."
"Convolutional neural network? What's that?" The researcher asked for everyone else since they were all intrigued.
"A convolutional neural network…"
As Haruto explained to everyone present how the software worked their eyes widened.
'Machines could mimic the human brain!?'
'They could learn on their own?!?'
'Recognise patterns and form features like humans?'
'How!? How was any of this possible!?'
'And for a mere kid to think about it!!?? Are we living in a dream!?'
The questions rang across every researcher present but they were too stunned to speak.
Eventually they all filed away one by one with a spectacled researcher leaving last since he wanted to take a printout of his converted receipt.
Haruto fixed his desk and tidied it for the presentation that he was about to give Danzo before finalizing on three receipts that he'd just picked up.
There was no time for any changes in the software or Haruto would've added a small change to make the software display the accuracy of each converted letter and highlight conversions it was the least confident in.
'I guess things for the future me to do.' Haruto thought to himself and sat at his desk patiently, waiting for Danzo to arrive.
Danzo arrived at exactly eleven fifty eight.
Haruto learnt of his arrival by the sudden and true silence in the R&D department. It allowed him to quickly stand up from his desk and look at Danzo who was arriving with two ROOT agents and what looked to be an administrative staff member guiding him.
As Danzo moved quietly, the ROOT agent to his left whispered something in his ear that caused his gaze to sweep past the R&D department floor, specifically on the few people that had come up to Haruto to scope out his research beforehand.
Eventually however, Danzo's gaze reached Haruto's desk before finally stopping on Haruto.
***
A/N: If you're enjoying this story, I'd really appreciate it if you could check out my new original novel, Glitched System: I Farm Lifespan by Making Video Games!
A guy transmigrates into a fantasy alternate universe world of our timeline with only 30 days left to live. His Game Development System is glitched; Every skill and item costs his lifespan instead of points. The only way to survive is to create video games that make people laugh, cry, and dream, converting their emotions into more time to live.
As his games spread across the world, impossible dungeons awaken, corporations move to silence him, and demons begin hunting him. Somehow, if he can't make the world fall in love with games...
...there won't be a world left to save.
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