I view the “Book of Prophesy” like a message in the bottle. To avoid all these washed up bottles of prophesy littering the pristine shores (ha!) of my brain, I’m going to compile the passages here as they come.
Episode 1
1. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur Clarke
This is narrated by the son, Park Jin Gyum (JG). It’s an epigraph, or a quote that previews to the reader what the book is all about.
2. Dr. Jang rips off the page.
3. Assassin flips through the book.
4. The book is open in the middle and reveals an illustration with two winged creatures, at 11:02. One creature is in the dark, the other creature in the light.
5. Hands are again typing the words, at 13:09.
Taeyi reads the words, “Where should I begin? The tragedy began as she opened the gate to time. Would nothing have happened if the baby did not go through the time portal? Would things have been different if the baby wasn’t born?”
This is like the prologue of the book. It sets the stage of the story.
Notes:
The black birds on the tree as the girl (modeled after Alice?) looks at the time portal. Taeyi saw similar black birds sitting on the power lines. Black birds are omen of evil.
Then as nrllee noted, the symbol on the portal on the book is the same as the symbol on the Alice departure building. The building looks like a horseshoe crab to me.
The three fiends hovering over the baby and girl could be the three drones seen flying back to Alice building.
Taeyi didn’t get to read the page with the drawing of the Ace of Heart card. I’m assuming that the Ace of Heart refers to Taeyi’s loverboy, MH.
BTW, who the heck designed this bedroom? Why are the bedside lamps placed so low to the ground??! Does a guest have to roll off the bed just to switch the lights off at night?
Episode 2
1. Typewriter moment at 0:06.
Taeyi reads, “Science is like a sharp tool. You might cut your fingers while playing with it like a child.”
2. Another typewriter moment at 19:48.
JG reads, “Chapter One. The door of time opens and those that seek revenge become stained with blood.”
And sure enough, he “serendipitously” sees a drone hovering outside a building. He investigates and finds a dead high schooler, killed by a younger brother.
I’m not going to comment about legal matters, but yes, MH is an accessory. As he gets involved with more criminals like “Hammer Killer” and assists them in eluding the police, he jeopardizes the future of Alice, the very project he has devoted his life to.
@pkml3 and @nrllee Thanks for this, and all the screenshots and the great observations. I don’t have the energy to go back to search and this nicely puts different possible connections together.
Those drones look like beetles or stinging insects and are menacing. I was wondering if Tae Yi was shot by a person or that the drones themselves carry a weapon that can shoot tiny bullets that can move on their own and cause damage inside a person’s body. The bullets then exit the body, and are too hard to be seen and identified.
The wormhole symbol looks like some kind of evil eye. What with crows and grotesque demons in the book, it all portends to Alice being abused for evil purposes. As to be expected, (and such a pity) a dream to bring people together, to heal wounds and bring peace, just won’t work when dealing with human beings. Time-travel in the hands of humankind will probably just bring more chaos and evil than good.
It’s of course too soon to guess with accuracy, but I’m thinking of JG and TY as either the ‘saviour’ and his mum or the ‘destroyer’ and his mum. He either saves people from Alice or he saves Alice from those like his father, or both. The Book of Prophecy is likely the book about them (I mentioned that it’s even probably written by a future Tae Yi) and the destruction of Alice/time-travel. The irony is that if anyone should have been sent back in time to retrieve the book, it should not have been Tae Yi. The whole convoluted ‘mess’ (mess to Alice) arose because of whom she is/was/would be. Or taking one step further backwards (or rather into 2050), the people of Alice should have left well alone and not gone back to get the book at all. Then this whole show would be a different story. LOL.
The people of Alice just created the mess they were trying to prevent, by going after the Book.
Thoughts on Dr Jang and his daughter and the Book – the fact that Dr Jang knew the significance of the book and tore out the last page and gave it to his daughter, and was prepared to die for it, shows that his daughter had/has a big part to play in the story.
As @pkml3 says (and I see this raised elsewhere too) she could be the Alice of the future, in which case it wasn’t she who sent back the assassin or Tae Yi, but someone else.
The questions that crop up for me: Why was Tae Yi killed at all, and why only her and why was JG not harmed. They had both seemed to have been under surveillance. And where is the Book? She was killed but the Book was not sought after? What’s on the last page of the book?
I’m inclined to think that the Dr. Jang’s daughter grew up to be Professor Taeyi because of this “alpha and omega” connection. 🙂 I’m sure you know that famous quote from the Book of Revelation. “I am the Alpha and the Omega. the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End….”
Mom Taeyi/SunYoung had the omega tattoo on her neck, but where’s the alpha? The first one? The one who began this time travel? The child seems to be a likely match because she was there in the beginning and she witnessed people coming from the future to kill her dad over the book.
More info:
When Taeyi gave birth to JG, her record said she was 25 years old.
The Date of Birth on her fake identity card as Park Sun Young was October 7, 1968.
She got the fake ID on January 13, 1992.
She gave birth to JG in 1992.
She died in 2010.
She was 42 (or 43 Korean age?) years old then in 2010.
And JG was 18 (or 19 Korean age?) years old in 2010.
The weird things to consider if she wasn’t killed in 2010:
She could return to year 2051 through the time portal in 2020 and she would only have aged one year. She’d be 26 years old.
That’s because 29 years = 1 year with Alice. (no, I’m not doing math again.)
But if she remained in the past and just waited it out, she’d be 83 years old in 2051.
I agree. Of all people to send back to 1992 to look for that Book of Prophecy, they had to pick Taeyi. Too bad nobody knew the content of the book beforehand, or bothered to gather info before they set on the mission.
The drone could fire off a laser beam to kill a person. But the reason I didn’t think she was killed by a drone was because she told JG, “That person left. My son, you’ll be okay.” And there was a leather-clad man with grey hair waiting at the gate.
But did you get the feeling that she was running around the neighborhood instead of running straight back home when the drone suddenly reappeared? She seemed to go on a circuitous route. lol.
Remind me not to retire in Seoul. Their sidewalks don’t seem to be handicapped/disabled-friendly or wheelchair accessible, and I’d hate to climb up and down those stairs.
I like the alpha and omega reference. I too tried very hard to look for neck markings in the shower scenes (I swear 😂 that was what I was looking for)…but no joy for the 2 men.
The winged creatures in the books (like angels – black and white? Evil and good?) – could they be pictorial representations of the drones? I am not great with time travel dramas. I think chronologically and linearly. Any of this traipsing back and forth and intersecting with your past self is unnerving for me. Also the lady who went back to warn her daughter about not going to the US when she turned 17? She had the ability to age suddenly (As she walked past JG) by removing the little ear piece? So presumably she’s the old lady in 2050 that returned to her younger self in 2020. And the ear piece allowed her to appear as her younger self so her daughter would recognize her?
As an aside – the conversation between JG and his reporter gf at the restaurant? Where she asked him if he was a priest? 😂 That sounded like what WGrs are asking of the “repressed” 40yo virgin JWon 😂
Suuuuuuure, you were only looking at neck markings, nrllee. I think it’s cute that they don’t have chest hair, though. Do they shave their chest? lol. Reminded me of my sons when they were swimming competitively. A handful of guys would come over for a group shave. hahaha. Don’t ask me to explain to explain this manly ritual because I’m a mom and I stayed out of it. All I know is they used up a lot of shaving cream and rubbing alcohol.
The lady who warned her daughter about not going to the US
Her Date of Birth is December 12, 1984.
So in 2020, she’s 36 years old.
In 2051, she’ll be 67 years old.
I’m assuming that it’s already 2051 in the other world because of what the boss said to MH, “You two separated in 1992, and that’s 29 years ago for TaeYi. But for you, it’s only a matter of one year ago.” “A year ago” would be 2050.
But who knows with these time travel shows.
The ear piece seems to distort her appearance to make her look young. Removing it returned her to her actual age. The weird thing with the daughter, however, is she began scratching herself that night. Was that the reason she was brought to the US? Because they exhausted all possible cures in SK and wanted to try an experimental drug or something in the US? I don’t know where the story is going with that.
The winged creatures? Could represent good vs evil people, or pro-time travel vs anti-time travel. It’s too early to tell for sure whether the writer is pro- or anti-time travel. I’m assuming the writer would be anti-time travel because who on earth would want to tamper with the past and create havoc with future? It’s a Pandora’s box. But (shrugs) we shall see….
@packmule3 nope. Asian men don’t have much body hair. 😂. My son has no chest hair. And as far as I can remember, that’s the norm for Chinese men so I would imagine it’s the same for Koreans.
https://www.8asians.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/s.jpeg
@nrllee LOL looking for hair on East Asian men. I find that on the face, there are more Japanese and Korean counterparts who have facial hair than Chinese men. I primly do not go to swimming pools to observe other East Asian male chests, therefore I’m not sure. I only know that when I did go, all the male swimmers had no noticeable chest hair. LOL.
@pkml3… your US guys shave their chests???? I wonder why. Shaving just makes the area grow thicker more luxuriant hair, I feel. Is that the reason or do they really want to have ‘bare’ chests? (I just tried to look it up, because enquiring minds and all that, you know, 😂 LOL … and I see that men don’t know either!!!) 😂 😁
@GB all professional swimmers shave (or wax) their body hair off. It’s a given. To make you more streamlined. “Shaves” seconds off your PB 😂
@pkml3
Yes, that’s right. The alpha and the omega. She’s the beginning and the end of this caper, except instead of being just the child, she’s the mother. In this show, that trauma of seeing her father killed over that book, made the child, ‘the mother of the woman professor’ (to paraphrase Wordsworth badly).
While Wordsworth was waxing lyrical about retaining his youthful enthusiasm over the sight of a rainbow, the phrase has also been interpreted to mean that what is nurtured in the child continues into adulthood, and traumatic experiences in youth can affect us as adults.
(https://www.thoughtco.com/child-is-the-father-of-man-3975052)
I was also commenting on the other part of your post, but I decided to re-watch something before posting thoughts without a clear memory of the plot. Will be back later. 😆
@nrllee LOL that’s the best reason ever for shaving off body hair. I thought though, that our new-fangled, techonologically designed body swim suits are supposed to make swimmers practically ‘aerodynamic’ (would that be hydro-dynamic??) but in the water! 🤔 🤪
@GB Not everyone can afford those suits. And some comps don’t let you wear the full suit. So for “poor” College students the cheapest (and time tested) way was to ensure you were as streamlined as possible (hence the swim caps) by shaving. To reduce drag. 😁
@nrllee, true… we’re speaking of kids here, rather than of Olympic athletes who get sponsored.
One funny post on shaving chest hair is that some poor fellows have such thick hair that their bodies under their clothes look misshapen!! And inadvertent pulls on the hair through clothes, cause pain. Poor chaps!
hahaha. Is this our informative topic for this week? Men’s hairless chests in swimming?
My sons wore “jammers” for their swim meets. They’re like leggings but they end just above the knee. As nrllee said, they shaved to reduce drag. My son also mentioned that he could “feel” water better. I don’t know what he meant because to me, water is wet, and wet is wet.
Since my boys weren’t trying out for the Olympics (and even with a few seconds shaved off, no record would be broken), I think the shaving ritual was more for team bonding than anything else. That was how they psyched themselves mentally for the competition. Instead of putting on their shoulder pads, girdles, helmets and cleats like they did in football, they shaved their body hair.
But this was only done for swim meets. There was no need to shave if they were going to the beach, hanging out at the pool, surfing, whatever. That would be weird. Their DAD would find that weird.
Oh! I do remember [I’ll delete this later] telling them to trim first with the electric shaver before using the razor. Otherwise, they’d never finish, and they’d use up gazillion razors. lol. Problems of a hirsute male…..
😂 @packmule3. Trivia. As for why I know all this…I hung around with swimmers in my youth. And listened to their stories. They would recount how their Caucasian counterparts had to shave all over whilst they just had to do their legs and underarms.
LOL @nrllee and @pkml3 Getting so much education that I didn’t know I wanted LOLOL.
@pkml3 You wrote:
On re-reading this, a thought has struck me. There was a reason that the instructions said to not read the book. It’s interesting that both the assassin and the Alice people had received the same instructions.
Either they had been sent by opposing camps, with the same instructions or unbeknownst to them, they’d been sent by the same camp to outwit and out-race each other, which better explains how both parties picked the same day and time to get the Book. Either that or a fantastic coincidence, or their espionage is so good that they know what their enemies had planned.
The ‘boss’ who’d given the instructions or the culture of secrecy surrounding the Book, wanted its contents to be shrouded in mystery. Possible reason: knowing the contents would affect the attitude of the reader (and all those they informed of it), make them fatalistic or give up hope or might make them opposed to time travel, and possibly an enemy of Alice. Worse still, it would probably make people try to change the past to engineer a different future.
The book, like the pistol and the typewriter looked old. It had old style binding and line drawings. However the predictions in them were accurate and about events that were related to Alice from 1992 onwards. With the constant motif of the typewriter, which looks like it had indeed been used to type the contents of the book, this could mean that someone in the future went back into the past to write the book and leave it there, in the safe keeping of Dr Jang. (In Episode 3 we actually do see the typewriter in some future room.)
Dr Jang may or may not have come from the future but he could name the year, ‘2050’ when he asked the assassin if he’d come from that time. The words in the beginning of the book were written in the first person, narrating or writing as in a journal. Later it would be a narrative of sorts of the events that would take place.
The first lines that Tae Yi read: “Where should I begin? The tragedy began as she opened the gate to time. Would nothing have happened if the baby did not go through the time portal? Would things have been different if the baby wasn’t born?”
This sounds like the thoughts of a person who’d seen the ill effects of events and wondered if history could have been different.
More thoughts:
Surely Tae Yi would have read the book, except for the last page, however she had not given JG any information as to its contents and had kept from him her past. Presumably this was to protect him.
Something interesting. The people of Alice have gizmos even the assassin had not seen. He didn’t recognise the horrid device that amputated his foot for eg.
Besides Tae Yi the other person from 2050 living in the past is the assassin.
Question: Why did the police in 1992 ask Min Hyuk to get out of the car?
Wait. 🙂 I’m writing a “quick take” on Episode 3. Just finished the episode.
After Ep3 it’s obvious that the program is flawed. MH seems hellbent to keep Alice going regardless? He spouted the rules of the no murder clause to the DongSaeng who went back to kill his older brother but then he was ready kill JG himself after retrieving the time card? 🤔.
Like PM3 I think there are 2 TYs. Prof TY and another 2050TY. She was with the 2050EunSoo’s mom looking down from a hill?
I broke down the truck of doom scene
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15YYV9aUzXke6QwqH2YHqkjRYTY_T4rdOp4fiS7Czg3I/
I think it’s strange that JG can still move when everyone else freezes? 🤔. Why is he exempt?
Nrllee, I’ll move your comments over to the Episode 3 thread so I can see them. 🙂
Thanks for all the screenshots @nrllee. I had the same questions and the same guesses.
I too believe that there are 2 TYs. The unemotional one that JG saw, who also had Eun Soo’s mum hanging around her, and the Professor TY.
The latter probably did see a drone, but it was a separate incident from the one with the truck hitting JG.
Big question: Why did time stop? – It looked like it was in order to prevent JG from being killed. Then why keep him alive? Because it mattered to someone?
From the little that we know, he seems to be under surveillance by the people controlling the drones. And yet, when it came to Episode 3, they had to find out about him ie they had not kept track of him. They did not seem to know that he’s the son of their ex-colleague, TY who stayed on in 1992.
So who pressed the pause button, and why?
That’s why I suggested that there are TWO groups of drone operator.
The Alice drone (i.e., MH, the Hyung, etc) are working against another group.
One group is protecting JG, and we don’t know their motives.
To me, one motive that they’re protecting him is because they want the Alice project to be created in the future, and JG was key to that Alice project. If he died in 2020, then the Alice project might not get started. He was the bridge.
But then, the other motive is that JG was destined to take down the Alice project in the future, so he couldn’t die now until his “mission” or “destiny” is fulfilled according to the book.
Now, that’s the unknown group. The other group, The Alice group led by MH, didn’t care whether he lived or died in the beginning. But in Episode 3, JG learned too much about “time travel” that MH decided he should be eliminated.
I still don’t think the Alice drones were designed to kill people with their laser. A drone didn’t kill Taeyi/Park SunYoung. And the drone didn’t shoot at the police detective outside the Hammer Killer’s room, and it didn’t shoot at JG in the library, either.
Overall, as of ep. 2, I agree with pm3 that Prof TY is the little girl. This drama kinda remind me of Tom Cruise’s Minority Report. One question, what’s up with the psychopath theme this year? lol Not that I am complaining if I will be getting 5 stars performance and plots ;P. Just my cup of tea, although for now I am seeing some issues that I kinda expected given there are police story line there. JG have no qualms holding the murder weapon without wearing a glove is just, aigooo…. Why do they always always do this thing? *roll eyes* Let see how long I can keep my eyes close over such production/ writing laziness. I am still unconvinced on the some of the action flicks too. But DY’s exchange with JG at the foodstall is funny. A contrast to Ji Won of FoE and Mun Young of PBIO who took action instead of playing hinting games with Hyeon Su/ Kang Tae e.g. “I admit am horny” “Marry me!” “You love me too!” lol
Mental Notes & Questions:
1. The founder of Alice is related to the little girl. Is she the mother who went back to the past (i.e. to heal her own wound), wrote the book and left it with Prof. Jang and returned to the future?
2. The baby that was born, is she her own daughter? Jang’s little girl who then grew up as Prof. TY?
3. The tattoo at the back of the neck – is there cloning involved? Else how do we get multiple TY(s)? Does Alice send people to various time frame to get the same persons they lost in an assignment? We know the Fountain TY and Prof. TY are two different persons. And that the Fountain TY recognised JG.
4. It seems that the old guy standing in front of TY/SY’s house on the night she died was the bad guy who lost his foot in 1992, came back to seek revenge i.e. healing his own wound. If that’s the case why didn’t MH recognised him when he accepted that client? Or because that client was under Manager Oh, so MH wasn’t aware.
5. Is Alice aware that going back to heal wounds like that mother did or the old guy who killed TY, or the bald guy who killed his brother, has a potential effect on future events, despite giving out rules not to kill people of the past?
6. The 29 years = 1 year looks like space travel too. If you experience 29 years living in the past then the future shall more forward 29 years too. So, are we dealing with an alternate universe of the future? Actual future vs alternate future. Hence, no worry about the change of history in the case clients go back and tweak something in the past? Probably too far-fetched lol
7. That young female staff of MH has weird look when she was asked to check on JG. Did she find out about TY/SY and JG, hence, feel reluctant to inform MH?
Hope to catch up with ep. 3 and 4 tonight!
Did a rewatch instead of catching up with ep 3 and 4 kekeke.., Not sure if this has been discussed in ep 3 thread but I will just throw it here. PM3 you asked why little HES was scratching herself? I think this is the side effects of the time travel or changing the past. You also asked why she has to go to US at 17. Little HES told JG she will go to study in the US.
On the drones, all of the drones display same screen (except one in 2010 that was scanning JG) and in all of them there is a digital imprint on the right side i.e. Alice Agent. For that one in 2010, there was a white digital imprint that was blurred. My take is the drone is either monitoring its client’s target or Alice’s client or Alice’s Agent. When that drone flew to the fountain, it is possible that the future HSH was there with fountain TY. Maybe future HSH put a term for Alice to ensure little HES’s safety when she was returned home. Hence, why it was flying outside the building when JG came out. When noticed, it flew back to its agent and JG followed suit. Why it has gone missing from the picture taken by JG is a mystery, though. Similarly, the drones are always nearby the clients and the person the client is targeting. I think also when things get out of hand i.e. clients caused harm to people they are targeting, the drones will find help nearby. Because Alice has a rule of no harm to people from the past. That was why that night it looked like the drone was directing JG to his own dying mom. He was the first person the drone saw that was nearby the crime scene. He was expected to safe the lady that was harmed by the client from the future. Drones work as surveillance tools for Alice.
That night after she saw JG, Fountain TY was standing at some high building and future HSH (HES mom) was standing behind her. I went back to the scene where JG bumped into future HSH. Future HSH got into the backseat of that Kia Carnival MPV. The side mirror of the front passenger seat showed a glimpse of another person. When the mpv was drove on the big road, showing the front shot, I think there was indeed two people at the front seat i.e. the male driver and another person. Maybe my eyes are playing a trick on me but if it were true, then the fountain TY might as well be Alice Agent managing and accompanying future HSH as her client.
Time travel started in 2050, right? But we don’t know at which point in 2050. And we don’t know at which point of 2050 the issue with the book came up and when TY and MH went to 1992. TY has been acting a bit strange when they got the book, like there was something she kept inside.
What if the fountain TY that JG saw is actually TY/SY who, in that 2020, was on her assignment (bringing future HSH to see little HSE) before the issue with the book came up, and before she was assigned to return to 1992?
Yes, an overlapped. Hence, TY/SY warned her son about not approaching her in his future time frame because TY/SY knew that previously she has been in many time frames accompanying Alice’s clients.
What if before her 1992 assignment, TY/SY has met JG in 2020 at the same setting as what we saw in ep. 2, and many other. Later knew she had a son but probably didn’t believe it hence when she saw the content of the book about the baby, she was really shocked and troubled. Consequently, she decided she wanted to keep her baby and preserve JG’s past and future.
Ok. kkeut. hehehehe