Chapter 150: Young Sheldon: Even a Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day
"Is that why you brutally murdered my brother?"
Noah's brother finally understood what had happened and cried out in anger, "Noah was fine, but you insisted on pursuing him. You're only engaged now, and even if you were to get married in the future, if you couldn't stand Noah anymore and didn't love him anymore, just leave him. Why kill him?!"
Daphne was silent.
What else could it be?
It was indeed she who had fallen for Noah first, and it was she who had pursued him despite everyone's strange looks, even taking on the responsibility of supporting the family. For this, she was often mocked by her friends. She had already invested so much, and the sunk costs were too high.
"Noah built a device and hid it. I thought he hid it in a safe, but when I opened it with his fingerprint, it wasn't there."
Daphne looked at Chuck: "So there really isn't such a machine worth $2 million? I clearly saw him building it."
"Even if Noah had a moment of brilliance and solved the century-old problem P=NP, do you know what else is needed to go from theory to application?"
Chuck looked at her expressionlessly: "It still requires at least a top software engineer to spend considerable time writing a software program that can implement it, so that it can actually be used. Is Noah a top software engineer? Is he even an engineer at all? Just buying some electronic components and assembling them creates a universal decoder? If you had paid more attention to Noah, learned more about his world, and understood more basic scientific knowledge instead of wasting time reading Amazing Amy, you wouldn't be so ignorant. Then, for this ridiculous reason, you wouldn't have brutally murdered your fiancé by disguising yourself as the clown he feared most."
"Hahaha."
Daphne suddenly burst into hysterical laughter. "Really? Really? Really? Hahaha."
Detective Amy Santiago pulled out the handcuffs and put them on her.
Chuck's phone rang. After answering, Sheldon's disgruntled voice came through, "I haven't finished talking yet."
"Go ahead,"
Chuck said calmly.
"Am I wrong?"
Sheldon seamlessly continued the previous topic: "I'm smarter than Noah, and I don't have a woman distracting me. I couldn't figure it out, so how could he?"
"You're right,"
Chuck nodded.
"What's wrong with me? I was... what did you say?"
Sheldon, as usual, was about to refute Chuck's expected denial, but he had never anticipated hearing such affirmation from Chuck. He was stunned. "You said I was right?"
"Of course not!"
Chuck shook his head.
"...I knew it!"
Sheldon thought he had misheard. This was Chuck's normal attitude. How could he possibly agree with him?
"When I say you're right, I'm not referring to you right now, but to the possibility that one day in the future you might be right,"
Chuck said bluntly. "After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Get along well with Leonard, and you'll learn a lot."
"I'm never wrong,"
little Sheldon finally confirmed he wasn't hallucinating. Despite Chuck's explanation, praise is always praise, and that's unchangeable. Feeling incredibly proud, he raised his head and said, "And you're asking me to learn from Leonard? You've got to be kidding."
"The working clock I'm talking about is Leonard, and the broken one is you,"
Chuck told the truth.
The reason he was giving little Sheldon any credit was because Daphne's murder of Noah reminded him of a plot from The Big Bang Theory.
Daphne's relationship to Noah almost perfectly mirrors Penny's relationship to the adult Leonard from The Big Bang Theory. It's the love story of a genius scientist and a blonde waitress.
In The Big Bang Theory, Penny, a waitress pursuing her dream of becoming an actress, suddenly appears in the lives of Sheldon, Leonard, and the other nerdy quartet, completely integrating herself into their lives.
Years later, Sheldon and Leonard develop a potential commercial application. Leonard and his team are about to discuss the details in front of Penny, but Sheldon keeps interrupting them.
He raises an intriguing question:
Why does Penny, the former high school cheerleader, the nerd's nightmare and goddess, who only dates handsome, athletic men, hang around with the four science nerds for years?
Besides freeloading, can anyone come up with a plausible reason?
Leonard and the other three nerds all look at Penny, who's casually eating their food, drinking their drinks, and using their internet, with suspicious eyes. They're shocked to realize they can't think of why.
Putting aside the freeloading, they can't imagine why Penny would hang around with them; it's unprecedented in the nerd community.
Sheldon then offers what he believes is the most plausible explanation: Penny is lurking around, waiting for them to come up with a brilliant, lucrative business idea so she can steal it.
In The Big Bang Theory, that's a perfectly comedic theory, since they've simply overlooked the obvious answer.
But Chuck, familiar with the Big Bang Theory plot and having now experienced the Noah-Daphne case, sees this hilarious theory in a completely different light.
Sheldon and his team's business idea, too niche and unprofitable, ultimately went nowhere. But if they'd actually developed something truly valuable, perhaps the story would have been quite different.
Sheldon, the social idiot, posed this cynical question, perhaps not entirely as a joke, but rather showing that sometimes even fools stumble onto the truth.
From this perspective, Chuck's comment about broken clocks isn't surprising.
"Did you hear that? I'm the working clock!"
Little Leonard, who had been listening the entire time, grinned smugly at hearing this.
"Oh, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard!"
If little Sheldon couldn't handle Chuck, how could he handle little Leonard? Looking at the smug little Leonard, he scoffed, shook his head, and sighed condescendingly.
"Oh, what's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong?"
Little Leonard was so irritated by the patronizing tone that he lost his smile. He imitated Little Sheldon and retorted angrily.
"He said you're working and I'm broken. How can you believe such obvious manipulation?"
Little Sheldon said spitefully, "No wonder Beverly said that sometimes you can be extremely gullible when seeking validation. But Beverly is right. This is a weakness of simple minds. It's not surprising."
"Don't bring up my mom!"
little Leonard yelled.
"That's exactly what Beverly said,"
little Sheldon said matter-of-factly, "If you don't believe me, go ask her. I can call her right now if you want."
"..."
Little Leonard's face darkened as he fell silent.
"Did you hear that?"
Little Sheldon saw that little Leonard was quiet, and proudly addressed Chuck on the other end of the phone: "Who's working and who's broken now?"
"Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is play dumb,"
Chuck said calmly.
Little Sheldon paused and grumbled, "What kind of saying is that? You're talking in circles."
"American wisdom."
Chuck said simply.
"I love America!"
Little Sheldon blurted out instinctively. The trauma he'd developed in Texas for his political comments immediately kicked in. His mind was filled with his father's scolding, his mother's worry, his brother's anger, his sister's eye-rolling, his grandmother waving the flag at the door and singing the national anthem repeatedly, and everyone's hostility toward their family.
As soon as he finished speaking, he no longer cared about arguing who was smart and who was dumb, because at that moment, he suddenly understood the meaning of Chuck's "sometimes the smartest thing you can do is play dumb."
Even as intelligent and wise as he was, he had only managed to survive those difficult times, when everyone was condemning him, by pretending to be a simple patriot and spouting "I love America" on TV in front of everyone.
"Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is play dumb"—that's exactly what he had done!
"I see..."
Young Sheldon paused for a moment, then expressed his understanding. "I hate to admit it, but thank you for giving me a very accurate description of how I handled a difficult situation."
"Chuck, that's not what you meant at all,"
young Leonard exclaimed, unable to bear it. "You said the smart one is me, and the dumb one is him, not the other way around!"
"What do you know about smart and dumb?"
Young Sheldon scoffed. "Chuck, am I understanding this correctly?"
"No,"
Chuck shook his head. "Leonard understood what I meant."
"Did you hear that?"
Young Leonard smiled triumphantly.
"You, you..."
Little Sheldon's mouth twitched, his eye spasming as he looked at Leonard, who seemed completely different from his usual timid self, and thought about Chuck being just as infuriating as ever.
Chuck didn't continue to push little Sheldon to his breaking point and hung up the phone.
Only by maintaining a balance between pressure and relief could he sustain this dynamic.
Otherwise, he was sure little Sheldon wouldn't be able to handle it.
So, this time, he didn't reveal anything about the connection between Sheldon's theory and Noah's case.
Brooklyn, New York, NYPD 99th Precinct.
"That was fast?"
When Chuck and Detective Amy Santiago escorted Daphne in, Jake Peralta's smug grin widened.
"Is solving a case really this easy?"
Chandler was also shocked by the speed of the resolution, and couldn't help but joke, "Am I really standing in Brooklyn, New York?"
Brooklyn's crime rate remained stubbornly high, becoming a source of jokes, because of the vicious cycle of low clearance rates and an increasing number of criminals.
If the NYPD could solve cases like this consistently, the serious crime rate would surely drop significantly, perhaps even transforming Brooklyn from being notorious for crime to being known for effective policing.
"Cool cool cool,"
Jake chimed in with his catchphrase.
"Really cool?"
Chandler exclaimed dramatically.
"Cool cool cool!"
Jake also echoed with an exaggerated expression.
"..."
Watching the two men enjoying their comedic routine, Detective Amy Santiago rolled her eyes in exasperation.
(End of Chapter)
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