I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the

Host: The night was thick with fog, curling around the edges of a dimly lit train station on the outskirts of the city. Neon signs flickered, and the air carried the scent of iron and rain. The clock struck midnight, its echo slicing through the stillness like a memory that refused to fade. On a bench under a broken lamp, Jack sat with a cigarette, its ember glowing like a small defiance against the dark. Across from him, Jeeny stood by the window, her reflection faint in the glass, her hands wrapped around a paper cup of coffee that had long gone cold.

Jack: “You ever think about how much time we waste on being wrong, Jeeny? All those hours, all those ideas that go nowhere. Einstein might’ve said it poetically — ninety-nine failures before a single truth — but I see a life spent in error.”

Jeeny: “But isn’t that what truth demands, Jack? Error is the price of understanding. Without those ninety-nine wrong turns, the hundredth would never appear. Einstein wasn’t lamenting failure. He was celebrating the persistence that births wisdom.”

Host: A train roared past, its lights slicing through the fog, then disappearing into darkness again. The sound faded, leaving behind a stillness thick with unsaid things. Jack’s eyes were gray, hard, but his fingers trembled slightly as he tapped the ash off his cigarette.

Jack: “Persistence? Maybe. Or maybe it’s madness. How many people spend their lives chasing an illusion, thinking the hundredth thought will finally be right? Look around you. The world isn’t full of geniuses who finally made it. It’s full of broken people who never did.”

Jeeny: “You think truth only belongs to those who succeed? That the others — the ones who tried and failed — had nothing to give? Galileo spent his life being told he was wrong, that the Earth didn’t move. He died under house arrest, but his truth didn’t. It just waited for the world to catch up.”

Host: The rain began again — a soft, persistent drizzle that blurred the windows. Jeeny’s voice carried through it, steady, quiet, yet burning with a kind of faith that refused to die.

Jack: “You romanticize it. You make failure sound noble. But most of the time, it’s just pain, Jeeny. It’s wasted time, wasted effort. Not everyone gets to be Einstein or Galileo. For every one of them, there are millions who think and think, and all they end up with is disappointment.”

Jeeny: “And yet, those millions are what make the few possible. Without their questions, without their doubt, there would be no progress. Do you think Einstein himself didn’t feel that pain? He once said, ‘I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.’ It was his willingness to be wrong, again and again, that made him right.”

Host: A gust of wind blew through the station, scattering newspapers across the floor, their pages fluttering like wounded wings. Jack watched one sheet get caught in a puddle, the ink bleeding into blurred words — as if truth itself were dissolving.

Jack: “Curiosity’s a nice word for stubbornness. But you know what I see? A world obsessed with answers, not with truth. People will twist facts just to be the one who’s ‘right.’ That’s not curiosity — that’s ego.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But truth has always lived between ego and humility. The ego makes us seek, the humility makes us listen. Einstein’s quote isn’t about being right — it’s about learning to be wrong a hundred times without giving up.”

Jack: “But at what cost? Think about it — the scientist who spends his life chasing a theory that never proves true. The artist who dies in obscurity, their work unseen. The inventor who’s always a step behind someone else. Their ‘persistence’ just becomes tragedy.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. Their persistence becomes humanity. The effort itself is the meaning. You can’t measure a life by how many times it was right. You measure it by how many times it tried to reach beyond what was known.”

Host: The lights flickered above them, casting shadows that moved like ghosts. For a moment, Jack’s face softened — his eyes no longer hard, but tired, almost vulnerable.

Jack: “You always make it sound beautiful. But I’ve seen what trying does to people. My father worked on his invention for fifteen years. He said every failure was a lesson, every mistake a step closer to truth. You know what he got? A pile of patents no one wanted, and a heart attack at fifty.”

Jeeny: (softly) “I’m sorry, Jack. But maybe that heart was beating for something that mattered. Maybe he didn’t find the truth, but he lived closer to it than most ever will.”

Jack: “That’s just a way to make peace with loss.”

Jeeny: “Or to honor it. You call it failure. I call it courage.”

Host: The silence between them hung like fog, heavy, unspoken. A distant whistle echoed through the station — a train coming or going, no one could tell. Jeeny took a step closer, her eyes dark, steady.

Jeeny: “Do you know what I think, Jack? The ninety-nine wrong conclusions — they’re not mistakes. They’re maps. Each one shows where the truth isn’t, narrowing the path to where it might be.”

Jack: “So you’re saying being wrong is just part of the design?”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Trial and error is the heartbeat of understanding. The universe itself is built that way — stars collapse, planets form, life evolves through failure. Even existence experiments with its own mistakes.”

Jack: (smirking) “That’s poetic, Jeeny. But the universe doesn’t have rent to pay.”

Jeeny: (laughs softly) “Maybe not. But we do. And we still dream, don’t we? Even when the world says it’s impossible. That’s what makes us human — our defiance against the odds.”

Host: The rain stopped, leaving a thin mist that hung over the tracks like breath. The station lights reflected off the wet ground, making everything look slightly unreal, as if they were standing inside a memory rather than a moment.

Jack: “You think Einstein ever felt like giving up?”

Jeeny: “Of course. He said once, ‘It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.’ That’s the essence of it, Jack. The world breaks you with failure, but the ones who stay — they find something beyond answers. They find understanding.”

Jack: “Understanding doesn’t feed a man.”

Jeeny: “But it feeds his soul.”

Host: The fog began to thin, and the first light of morning bled into the sky, pale, tentative, like the first truth after a long night of doubt. Jack looked up, the ash from his cigarette falling into a puddle.

Jack: (quietly) “Maybe that’s what I never learned. To stay long enough to see the hundredth time.”

Jeeny: “It’s never too late, Jack. The truth doesn’t vanish — it just waits for us to come back to it.”

Host: A soft breeze moved through the station, lifting a few stray leaves into the air. Jack and Jeeny stood there, the light slowly warming their faces, the world waking around them. For a moment, there was no past, no failure, no doubt — only the quiet certainty that thinking, even when it hurts, is its own kind of faith.

Jeeny: “Maybe being right isn’t the point, Jack. Maybe the point is to keep thinking — to keep trying, even when the world calls it failure.”

Jack: (after a long pause) “Maybe. Maybe that’s how we become right, Jeeny — not by being certain, but by never stopping.”

Host: The train pulled in, its doors opening with a low hiss. Jack and Jeeny stepped onto the platform, their footsteps echoing against the metal, their shadows merging in the light. And as the morning broke, it felt as though the world itself had just thought its hundredth thought — and, at last, found something true.