There was a couple of Train Mysteries in Episodes 1 & 2, and I’ve one theory to explain them both.
Here are the mysteries:
1. How did SeoHae escape the soldiers and agents of the Control Bureau at the train depot?
2. How come TaeSul didn’t wait to catch a glimpse of SeoHae? He just disappeared.
What’s so special about the trains?
Here’s my short answer: Different clocks. Time is NOT uniform for all, and what you perceive as your present time – or your “now” — is different from what I perceive as my “now.”
Let’s put it this way: I’m on Planet Bitches three light-years away from Earth. Now, you look at me through the telescope and you see me waving at you hello.
You think that I’m waving at you *now* when actually, what you’re seeing is something that I did three years ago in my time, on my Planet Bitches. Do you get it? 🙂 Our *now* times are different. For all you know, I can already be back on Earth, being treated to Girl Scout cookies upon my arrival while you’re still viewing me on the telescope. Ha! I’m in two places at one time.
If you keep all this in mind, you’ll get how SeoHae escaped the Control Bureau and why Taesul disappeared in front of Seohae.
Here’s my long answer:
Jaesun hints at it when he rants about the prices of the Busan train tickets at the train station because:
SeoHae’s cheaper train leaves early at 10:20am, but arrives later.
Taesul’s expensive train leaves later at 10:30am, but arrives sooner.
Sun: Gosh, these thieves! They always try to make you buy the expensive ones. Isn’t it funny? Look at the screen over there. The KTX Train leaves ten minutes later than the Mugunghwa Train, but it arrives three hours earlier. Doesn’t that resemble our lives? People who have wealthy parents get to ride KTX Trains and arrive earlier than other guys even when they leave later than them. Life is so unfair.
SeoHae: (didn’t answer)
Jaesun makes an issue about social injustice when it’s really all about Einstein’s special relativity. 🙂 SeoHae is travelling faster thus time is slowing down for her.
Many viewers probably don’t realize that the opening scene with SeoHae’s departure from her post-apocalyptic world is similar to the 10:20 train that’s leaving early but arriving later.
VISUALLY, SeoHae embarks on her voyage EARLY. Do you remember? She was present at the departure area before the place opened for business.
TEMPORALLY, however, when she arrives in Seoul 2020, she’s already LATE for many of the important events that happened in Taesul’s life. By the evening of August 12, when SeoHae watches the late evening news on TV, Taesul already lived through the following:
a. the near-crash of his flight
b. a month-long recuperation at the hospital
c. the visit to the therapist Seojin
d. the encounter with the copilot who gave him the USB stick, and
e. the discovery that a suitcase, and his hyung Taesan slammed against the cockpit’s windshield.
Do you see that? The slow 10:20 train was a metaphor for her journey.
Many viewers also assume that once SeoHae arrives in Seoul 2020, she’ll be automatically “assimilated” back into Earth’s time. But since we’re watching science-FICTION (emphasis on the fiction), I say that her “internal clock” is still NOT in sync with the clocks on Earth. She’s on different time.
And THAT’s how she evaded capture by the Control Bureau at the train depot.
WE all noticed the men were using a detector. Since she just arrived from time travel, she would be emitting radiation, and could be tracked down. Also, since she would expose the agents to radiation, the agents were wearing protective suits. The agents didn’t need their protective gears anymore when they hunted her down at Jaesun’s place.
Her plan was to stay under the train long enough for them to track her there and then move quickly to a location exactly above it.
Her plan tells me two things:
One, there’s a special significance to the word “run.” Her father drilled in her to “Start running” once she arrived. (Note: Mr. Park also told Taesul to run. “I’ll tell you what I tell all my clients. Run!”)
Running here simply doesn’t mean to dodge an enemy. I suspect that running in itself gives the illegal immigrants a special power to flee the Control Bureau, and that there’s a scientific reason to her father’s and Mr Park’s advice. Like… running slows down her time.
After all, a moving clock ticks slower than a stationary clock. That’s the principle of “time dilation” that Einstein predicted in his theory of special relativity.
When Seohae ran with her suitcase, she created a space-time bubble around her which allowed her to elude her hunters.
At one point, an agent (let’s call him Agent A) was about to follow her up the train. I thought he spotted her. But then another agent with a Geiger counter (let’s call him Agent B) arrived and pointed toward the opposite direction. When I rewatched this scene, I realized that time had split up or diverged. At this particular moment, two different “now” were passing by.
For a fleeting instant, Agent A spotted her, but he couldn’t trust his eyes, since he knew from that she was a TIME traveler (with emphasis on TIME. She could travel and disappear in time. One second, she was there, the next second, she was gone). So he relied on Agent B to guide him to the “right” direction with the use of the radiation detector.
And that’s when they lost her. 😂
Two, when she waited on top of the train, her internal clock was already different from everybody else’s clock.
Because she ran fast, like she was told to by her father, she slowed down her clock, while the men’s clock continued to move fast. The end result? The men were ahead of her in time.
They were in the same location, but different time. Seohae and the men weren’t doing things in the same timeframe.
That’s why she peered down at them without worries. As long as her radiation signal stayed fixed at the same spot, the men thought she was still “there.” They didn’t realize however that she was no longer with them in the same space-time.
She saw the men surrounding the train, but in HER *now* moment, she was no longer under the train.
Again, just think of me waving at you on Planet Bitches. You can see me wave at you when I’m not there anymore. Your “now” is really three light-years “ago” to me. I’m gone.
Likewise, the agents weren’t going to find her under the train. She was gone.
As for the drone, it could hover above her and light up the whole place with LED lights, but this exercise was futile. In the Control Bureau’s “now” moment, she hadn’t yet appeared on top of the train. The drone operator wouldn’t spot her on top of the train, because in his time period, she was still under the train.
Ha! You could say that Seohae was in two places at one time. Just like a quantum superposition…lol. Is this why Taehul’s company is called “Quantum & Time”? Interesting… 🤔
The Control Bureau agents needed to be in the same space and the same time (or space-time) as Seohae in order to capture her.
That’s why she could rest easy. As long as the men were ahead of her in time, she could adjust and prepare for them.
Helllooooo. I’m not here!
Seohae was very much aware of the fluidity of time and the advantages of slowing it down.
By the way, that’s how she was able to guess the lotto numbers. 🙂 I don’t think she was psychic. She and the tv announcer were just on different clocks. The tv announcer was on “normal” time while she was on a slower time. To Jaesun, she looked as if she was PREDICTING the numbers when actually, she was only REPEATING the number a second or two AFTER the announcer said it. There was a time delay and she pretended to guess the number. 🙂 Look, if she was truly psychic, then why didn’t she buy lotto tickets tickets and win some money for herself, instead of borrowing money from Jaesun. Or why didn’t she foresee the Control Bureau dropping by at the minute at Jaesun’s house?
Let’s move on to her meeting with Taesul.
— Whoops! Will finish later. Have a zoom meeting.
This is much better than I originally thought. My initial belief was she disappeared or simply became invincible.
Ahhh, so that was it! 😂 delaying time. Thanks pm3! I am off to bed now. Mystery resolved🤭🤭🤭🤭 night night.
This is also the reason why the agents were firing at SeoHae and Jaesun but only managed to nick her. At first, I thought she was really a lucky girl to encounter agents who were lousy shots. They reminded me of stormtroopers in Star Wars.
She was actually moving so fast that time was slowing down for her.
And you can see this in one scene when she pushed Jaesun off the rooftop, and onto a netting then she leaped after him. In that brief moment, not a single bullet was fired.
The agents weren’t shooting because they developed a brain freeze or had slow reflexes. They “seemed” to have paused shooting because SeoHae moved quickly that time stood still.
Hmmm…I might have to repost something about special relativity that I wrote for “Alice.”
Thanks @pkml3 that was great! When you explain it, it sounds so plausible and likely that it’s almost no longer just a theory for this show. Which means we may have to get used to SH disappearing or seeing others disappear from time to time, until their times cross, or she gets her time to coincide with theirs. Rooting show’s logic in Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity is far better than creating some new logic that may not hold up to long scrutiny. It would be great if show keeps the logic and gives us more scenarios where Einstein’s theory can be seen to be at work.
This would fulfil @WEnchanteur’s desire that Science rather than just Fiction or Fantasy be the basis for the strange occurrences in this show. It would be great if we could explain everything that appears ‘weird’ with a known theory of physics. I wonder why I’m so excited!?!
≧(´▽｀)≦
Eureka! By George I think you’ve got it! Brilliant as always. 🍪🍪🍪
“The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.”
Be ready for an insane mass of text. 😉
@Packmule3,
I was very close to this solution in my analysis of the end of scene 2. And yet, you manage to surprise me again in a great way! Your analysis has a more global and synthetic vision, giving coherence to many other elements of the drama, within a single theory “Run”. This makes it possible to better identify the special capacity of heroin. For now, I call this “Timeshift” or “Timeshift Run”.
The only problem is that your analysis is much too far ahead of what the ordinary viewer is supposed to guess. And so it’s a spoiler! Boooh! a new spoiler, added to the spoilers that other drama fans have provided, here or on soompi. Fortunately, drama has a very good resilience to that.
@GB,
This drama generates an unhealthy enthusiasm in me! It’s the kind of huge thing I didn’t dare to wait for a long time. Ah ah!
Drama uses science to explain its principles. But necessarily, in science fiction, we use a science that doesn’t exist yet, or even a science that may never exist, like the time machine.
Since general relativity, and even more so, quantum mechanics, have properties that are impossible for the human mind to visualize or imagine, the drama can use this to :
– Find an original theory inspired by this, “pseudo-scientific”, and make a story out of it. While referring to known scientific principles, or study. So… Science fiction. ^^
– Restore the scenes in an aesthetic form, or trying to show what is impossible to show. As symbols reaching immediate understanding rather than reasoning.
— Usual restitution of temporal abilities. —
The drama brings something new, compared to previous time travel stories. It is difficult to say for the moment the extent of this novelty concerning the fictional principle of phenomena. But at least it is identifiable for the way it is rendered.
In the existing films, this is done through visuals that are very easy for the viewer to understand. Probably too easy and too far removed from the incomprehensible notions of certain physical theories. But a film still has an imperative, to be easily understandable in less than two hours.
– Time travel in a single bound: very simple, see how Terminator, a teleportation, does it.
– Time acceleration: very simple too. In Matrix or for the superhero QuickSilver, we use bullet time. Time is seen from the point of view of the character, who moves while the rest of the world is frozen. For the Flash superhero, the point of view of the surrounding world is used more often, and the hero becomes a light trail because he is so fast.
– Direct effects: Here, I classify several other miscellaneous effects, but rendered in such a way that the viewer understands immediately. I’m thinking in particular of the film Cube 2 (Hypercube), which is crazy about temporal phenomena, and which makes it acceptable, insofar as it’s an enclosed space. A character who freezes, with several persistent images.
— Restitution of the temporal capacities in Sisyphus. —
As written by Packmule3, the drama uses the strangeness of real physics. Macroscopic logic is incapable of representing quantum phenomena, and hardly relativistic phenomena. The director gives a new visual interpretation of phenomena that are impossible to visualize anyway! Cf the final appendix on these physical phenomena.
Juxtaposition :
By showing the hero’s brother (presumed dead) as a hallucination, the drama gives a clue that it will not show the facts as they are. Scene 2 uses a juxtaposition by simultaneously adopting the point of view of the pursuers and that of the heroine. What amazes me about Packmule3 is that she found THE detail that everyone missed! The moment when the officer points in another direction with his detector. It was obvious that the scene was pointing in the opposite direction to where the heroin was (or was supposed to be). But it is impossible to see such a thing coming, and even when you see it again, you get caught up in the hide-and-seek game, and you miss it.
But this leaves me with questions, such as: Are sensors capable of detecting not only in space, but also in time? Which explains why she has to go to the roof of the train instead of running away in another direction, leaving her ghostly image under the wagon (which is what the pursuers are supposed to see).
And is this a true juxtaposition? I assumed it was, and that the heroine did not see the pursuers when she looked down (that’s why she is relieved), so that they are separated in time, but not just 1 minute, much more. Or is she relieved because she sees that they are looking under the train? Otherwise, how does the scene end, because even at two different points in the space, if she is on the roof, she will end up being spotted? Or is she in a temporal frame of reference, where she is systematically a minute or two ahead of time? Or is she in a state of ubiquity, so she sees the troops looking under the train, and at the same time she sees that the troops are no longer there and have given up searching?
Camouflaged acceleration:
Here, it is the scene of the pursuit on the rooftops, especially the crucial moment when the whole ICB team is on an elevated roof and does absolutely nothing! The heroine has time to catch Sun, to throw him, to run, to jump from rooftop to rooftop. Then finally, we see the ICB team opening fire. Either it was horribly badly turned, or it was turned in such an absurd way, that it was an obvious clue to make understand (but by preserving a mystery) that a phenomenon of science fiction was at work. Here, one can suppose that the ICB team just sees a persistent image of the heroin, in the place where she was before she did all her stunts. At the moment when they shoot, they aim at a target which does not exist any more! In this case, the scene gives a slight indication of when the heroine begins to “run”. There is a slow motion when she catches Sun, just as he surrenders (34:35). The only technical problem is that a second before they shoot, one of the agents bend down slightly (34:50). The extra will be fired!
— Problems coming from the rendition used. —
Audiences are used to films and dramas that make mistakes or do not render things well. The director chooses a risky treatment: he shows events whose apparent restitution is so absurd that the viewer should understand as soon as a different phenomenon is happening. However, this is not the case, used to badly made scenes, the spectators interpret this as an even worse, horribly badly made scene.
It’s all or nothing! Either we show things in an obvious and explicit way (effect of temporal freeze on the troops, subjective vision of a ICB member seeing the heroin accelerating). Either one shows a normal and well-made action scene, but not having a science fiction phenomenon.
Concerning the train scene, and in spite of the few mysteries it still holds for me, I find the rendition used better. This scene is perfect on all levels. An original rendition, which breaks with what other films on this theme have proposed. Aesthetic, a bit poetic, quite typical of the originality of Korean dramas, which seek more subtlety than exhibition.
— Lottery. —
Here, the principle of information lagging behind reality does not work, I am not convinced by your explanation. Even if she was ahead of her time to know the results, she needs to be present in normal time to say the numbers. Either she goes into the future for a short while and comes back to the same place in the same position to recite the number. Or she also has a gift of temporal ubiquity: present both in the past and the immediate future, with the possibility of transmitting her future thoughts to the past. Or it can also be seen as a more integrated system, where she simultaneously perceives her present, and the moments that follow. In appearance, a power of prediction or medium. In reality, a mental superposition in two different times.
OR… She just got the numbers because a previous travel, writed it in her book, a less probable hypothesis now.
— Resilience to spoilers. —
The drama is resistant to analysis! The mysteries it contains are so numerous that we are not close to seeing the end of it. By that I mean: it’s as if the screenwriters had anticipated the usual intelligence of the spectators to grasp and guess what you usualy get in a SF movie. And they chose to be several steps ahead, to make the puzzles more resistant, and offer more surprises. As a joke, I would say that the scriptwriters are similar to the heroine compared to the spectators, they are already in the future, and have seen the way we react, and have retroactively modified their script to offer a challenge capable of trick us!
Will it continue on this path?
A few worries though: will there be a clarification of the phenomena, so that our hypotheses are confirmed? Is there a risk of entering into a confusing narrative or one containing holes?
— Appendix. —
Simple example with Theoretical Physics, General Relativity.
What happens when we see someone falling into a black hole? The person approaches the horizon of the black hole, but the image sent by this person (the luminous information) is slowed down, and ends up freezing when the horizon is crossed. To the outside observer, this person is motionless. For the person who falls into the black hole, his objective speed has not changed, but his time frame is slowed down. Here, while outside people live 1000 years, the person in the black hole lives 1 second, while moving at a speed close to the speed of light.
Complex example with Quantum Mechanics :
Wheeler’s experiment, based on Alain Aspect’s experiment, based on Young’s experiment. Delayed choice quantum gum. It would be really too long to describe here. I spent days studying and understanding Alain Aspect’s experiment, I forgot half of it, and now I find that I am unable to quickly understand Wheeler’s experiment, yet in the same continuity. Basically: the experiment uses a particle that is split in two, becoming two intertwined particles A and B, which seem to be the same particle, which can be distant and present simultaneously in different places in our space. One could also imagine that this particle remains indivisible, as if it had become a wormhole connected to itself. A particle can be either a particle or a wave (Young’s experiment, easy to understand). The shocking aspect of these experiments comes from the fact that it is the act of observation that determines the nature of the particle (wave or particle). As long as the particle is not observed, it is similar to a small Shrodinger cat. In the delayed-choice experiment, it is even more shocking: the path taken by particle A (in the past) depends on the observation (in the future) of particle B. One could say that particle A obtained information from the future to know which path to take. And today, particle entanglement experiments could be conducted on objects more complex than a photon or an electron! Groups of atoms (if my memory serves me right). Interpretation is difficult for physicists. The experiment could be done over a very long period of time (a journey of several days, or thousands of years path). Is there feedback from the future and is relativistic causality questioned (exceeding the fixed limit of the speed of light according to Enstein’s theory)? In fact, no (although some physicists dare to say yes), because the information from the time feedback can only be obtained after the experiment is over, which cancels out the temporal benefit. But a science fiction story can very well exploit this!
Wow, this makes sense! And there’s science to support it. Very cool, @PM3.
The ability to speed up/slow down at will is very useful! How about the lotto numbers she shaded for Sun as she left for the train? She seemed to be doing this by memory though. Else she’d have to advance her clock to the raffle time (evening) to be able to provide them way in advance? Not sure how long the duration of time she can manipulate.
@WEnchanteur I read through what you wrote with great enjoyment, although maybe with not as much understanding of your Appendix, but still, enough to continue to be excited about what more the show may do to ‘expose’ the theory(ies) we are assuming.
I’m very happy to see you use the term “time shift”, because I have been pointed to this as an explanation to what we are seeing that Seo Hae does or how she appears. Not being anywhere near a physics student, I cannot put it clearly in words, except to quote from this RealityShifters.com blog.
http://realityshifters.com/pages/articles/timeshifting.html)
And so like what you say in you “Juxtaposition“: According to my ‘informant’, this is supposed to mean that although Seo Hae and others like the ICB or Tae Sul are in the same spacetime, they are in different phases or states. An eg. given to me was that we can say that the afterlife/heaven is not a place but a state that coexists with us in the here and now, seemingly occupying the same spacetime, but we cannot see/hear each other because we are in different ‘states of being’. However, some people who are more sensitive/or who have near death experiences, etc have the ability to touch the other ‘state’ and sense the afterlife. They may see spirits/ghosts among us.
Seo Hae may appear to be with us in our ‘state’ but now and then, and it seems, beyond her control, she may pass in and out of or be inbetween ‘states’ hence the glitches and disappearances.
On top of the train, she was in another ‘state’ from the pursuers and she possibly didn’t even see them and therefore sat relaxed. The ICB depended on the radioactive signature to figure out where she was in their ‘state’, but they could not see her.
As for the fore-knowledge or ‘memory’ of Lotto numbers. My guess … if we are positing that SH has made this trip many times, might it also mean that she’s met Sun before and knew that he’d value knowing the Lotto numbers? She may have made a note of them in her mind, assuming she can bring up the memories of her past trips.
I remain happy to consider all ideas which are rooted more in theoretical physics and to see how far we and the show can take them, to explain the unexplainable!!
Wow! Thanks PM3 and WEnchanteur for sharing your analysis in explaining the train and time mysteries. This site is always my go to place to get more information on kdramas.
I have the same question as Janey about the ticket SeoHae filled out for Sun.
Thanks, Au0101. 🙂
It’s because in this blog we try to go beyond the usual commentaries of drama fans who go for the “feeeeeelllls.” If you see comment after comment after comment saying, “Wow. This is exciting! I’m never seen a concept like this. I’m in love” how does THAT really help the conversation? It’s just one cluster of viewers expressing their excitable state. That’s it.
Instead, I think it’s better if we try understand WHY we were *made* to feel that way. What was the point of the writer and the director? What was the message? How does it connect to reality?
However, for this kind of conversation to come about, the posters should be comfortable to express their interpretations, theories, analyses and guesses backed up with scenes and dialogues from the script. And this blog is a “safe space” for these people. If we get something wrong, then it’s wrong. No big deal. Move on and do another one next time.
To me, it’s infinitely better to ATTEMPT to delve into the nitty-gritty of the plot — even when we over-analyze or misinterpret some — than to simply skim the surface of a drama. It enriches our viewing pleasure when we *understand* things, and not just “feel” things. 🙂
Wait, @WEnchanteur. 🙂
For the lottery, you wrote this,
I think you got me wrong. I didn’t say she went FORWARD in time. I said she SLOWED down HER time. She DELAYED her time so that the announcer, who was speaking in normal time, revealed the number already, while she was still two seconds behind the announcer.
It’s like this:
You’re telling me (I’m Park ShinHye, lol) and Jaesun, “The winning number is 13579.”
But I slow down time so Jaesun and I are hearing this:
“The winning number is…”
We hear a pause. That’s actually time slowing down by a few seconds.
But you, because your time hasn’t stop, proceed normally. You keep going and blurt out all the numbers, 13579.
Because I’ve the special power to slow down time and be in both time zones: your normal time and my delayed time, I now know the numbers you just revealed. Thanks to you saying the numbers aloud, I now have *foreknowledge* of the numbers. So, I say 131579 to Jaesun quickly before your announcement happens in *my* time.
Do you get it?
Or if you want, think of this scenario.
I’m going to give a 30 minute test to students in Pennsylvania and California. To prevent somebody from Pennsylvania calling up (or texting) a cousin in California and revealing the exam question, I’m going to schedule the test at 10:00am in Pennsylvania and 7:00 am California. The clocks are different but they’re all on the same, synchronized time.
Now, if I were a stupid teacher and just scheduled the test at 10am in both states, then the Californians would have a big advantage. The students there could just wake up at 7:30am THEIR time, and wait for a Pennsylvanian snitch to reveal the questions. They’d then have 2 hours and 30 minutes to prepare for the test at 10am California time.
Do you see it? That’s how Seohae was getting the right answers — well, at least, that’s how *I* view it. Somebody can always come up with a better theory…
Seohae was getting the right lotto number because she was on “later” time than the announcer. She slowed down her time. 🙂
@PM3, I get your explanation on time slowdown while the lotto numbers were being announced on TV.
You may have missed my comment earlier. I’m with WEnchanteur on this because of the other lotto instance without the announcer. SH shaded the lotto form for Sun before leaving for the Busan train. That’s way in advance for a time lag unless SH can control the time latency of her time shift for longer periods. Or she has it memorized. It’s an auspicious date for her and TSul anyway, the lotto number might just come in handy. 😊
👍🏼 pm3! I just done listening to a YouTube talk on quantum mechanics by some academics, n here you sounds like one of them 🤓 I buy your time lag theory-different clocks.
Quantum spacetime is very intriguing. A few times, I’ve had experienced ‘my time’ slowed down when I was a kid, but till now haven’t figure how to do that again 😹 Now I’m reminded of dodging bullets in The Matrix – one of my fav film all-time lol
Janey, I haven’t figured out the second set of lotto numbers (the one without the announcer).
Yes, that’s one possibility: that she memorized the numbers but I don’t think so. She had to write down a reminder to herself about the suitcase so I doubt she’d be able to memorize a string of random numbers.
The reason I can’t figure out the lotto numbers is because I’m missing so many variables. I don’t know these things —
a. I don’t know how lotto works. To be honest, I’ve never played it. 🙂 Is it a same-day drawing? Is this like a daily or weekly event? Or every other day? When are the announcements made? Daily? On weekends?
b. I don’t know how long she can slow down time. I suspect 24 hours.
We assumed that the night she was spotted going through the trash, August 12, 2020, was the same night that she arrived (but what if it’s not??)
We can’t tell how long she was on top of that train relaxing and how much time elapsed while she was taking her sweet time.
c. I must know when she actually arrived on Earth 2020.
You see, the tattoo on her arm could be her Date of Departure (and NOT her Date of Birth as I suggested). But if that was her Date of Departure, then she arrived on earth on August 11, 2020, and that the agents found her shortly after arrival.
So…where was she for 24 hours? Between the time she landed and the time she appeared at the restaurant, where was she? Was she on top of that train the whole time?
With my slowed-down time theory, I assumed that she lost hours — maybe even up to 24 earthly hours while sitting there on top of the train — because her first sighting was on the night of August 12.
24 hours is enough for her to know the lotto results, if lotto was a daily occurrence.
d. I don’t know how she resets her time, if ever she does.
After she slows down time for herself, she still has to return to normal time. It’s like plane travel from California to New York. I’m on California time when I land in New York so I must set my clock FORWARD.
e. I cannot make out her timeline.
I can easily write Taesul’s timeline. There are no gaps. But for Seohae there are big gaps, and there’s an anomaly (I’ll show you in a bit). WE cannot assume that her timeline is synchronized with Taesul.
Take for instance this shoot-out with the Control Bureau. In a normal linear timeline, this is how I’ll do it:
August 14:
CB hunts down SeoHae. Bullet grazes her on tummy.
They let her escape.
CB chief finds out that she contacted Taesul on August 13.
So they go after Taesul.
They bring in Taesul for interrogation and release him after 4 hours (wasn’t that what the bodyguard said?)
August 15:
Taesul decides to go to Busan by train.
Jaesul and bodyguard meet each other at ticket booth.
**Seohae takes care of her body wound.**
There!! That’s the anomaly. Why is only she taking care of her wound the DAY after she was wounded? Is this similar to the train experience when she was sitting out there and waiting for the men to leave?
So… as an extension of my slowed-down time/different clocks theory, I say that when she returns back to earthly time, she has “fast-forward” time and “loses” time (kinda like when I travel from California to New York, I lost time).
Now, when I can get more specific answers to these variables, then I can figure out how she got the second set of lotto numbers. Time will tell. 🙂
@PM3,
Yes, I understand what you mean. I was confused because your explanation also incorporates a notion of progressiveness. And the word “slowing” can be understood in different ways, depending on which part of Seo Hae we are talking about. You could also see it as one part speeding up its time and the other not. I also made the mistake of taking your interpretation according to the relativistic physics model you presented at the beginning.
I’ll put it neatly and simply, as I understand it:
A = Seo Hae.
Then I set an absolute time frame :
M1: Moment 1, the presenter starts the draw.
M2: Moment 2, the presenter starts talking but doesn’t reveal anything.
M3: Moment 3, the presenter declares what the result of the draw is.
M1: “A” makes her superpower act and splits into A1 and A2.
Even so, A1 and A2 remain a single entity “A”, which can be located at several points in space-time.
A1 moves normally in time and obtains the information of the draw, once she arrives at M3.
A2 moves more slowly in time, and when A1 is in M3, A2 has not yet reached M2.
The information A1 has in M3 changes the state of A2, which gets the draw information, since A1 and A2 are a single “A” system.
Once A2 has reached M2, she reveals the result of the draw.
A1 and A2 join at the end of M3, and become A again. End of the superpower.
This process is that of the delayed-choice quantum gum experiment.
In this experiment, A is a photon. The photon is divided into two, A1 and A2.
A1 and A2 are intricate particles, and retain their uniqueness A, despite their different space/time positions. When A1 is captured, the state and path of A2 are determined according to the state of A1, while A2 has not completed its path.
It is as if A2 knows in advance the result of A1 to determine its trajectory.
This temporal feedback can exist without violating other laws of physics because the experiment takes place in a closed duration. By this I mean that even if A1 changes the result of A2, this could only be verified once A1 has been captured at the end of the experiment. One cannot therefore take advantage of A1’s lead over A2 to know in advance the future result of A1 by reading A2. The fact of observing (capturing the particle or emitting another particle to read it) destroys its state of superposition. This means that if I observe A2 before A1 has reached its destination, A1’s result will be different.
If I apply this to the drama, between the beginning of M1 and the end of M3, we are in the closed duration of such an experiment. Seo Hae cannot change the events that take place. Because she gets the result in M3, she necessarily reveals it in M2. This scene is somehow in an isolated bubble, it is the only way to explain that she can reveal the numbers.
But as we are in a science fiction story, it is possible to imagine this applied on a larger scale, people instead of a particle, for example, or a larger system of experience, the planet why not. This could involve notions of ineluctability, or on the contrary, of modification of a future state. What I suppose is that every time someone tries to take advantage of information in advance, it will inevitably lead to a different (and dramatic) result than expected.
However, I don’t know if this is how the lottery prediction took place, and if it wasn’t just notes written during a previous time travel.
It is true that the scene makes one think of it, because Seo Hae waits an unusually long time to make her prediction, at the risk that the presenter might do it beforehand.
I also don’t know if the drama will use this quantum physics process. At least I hope so, and it looks like it will.
I forgot: the phenomenon as I described it is different from the train scene.
In the train scene, it is rather an accelerated temporal displacement, since the ICB troops won’t be able to find Seo Hae under the wagon. She is not in two places at once, as I understand the scene. She disappears from under the wagon, moves in time, and appears on the roof of the wagon at another time, at a different time than the troops.
It’s weird. I am confused.
Are we having fun yet or what? 😂
@WEnchanteur and @PM3 – I’m so reminded of my college physics word problems where there’s always a moving car or train with a person throwing a ball inside and being seen by a stationary person outside. The kdrama dissection is more fun and not graded. 😂
@WEnchanteur, I hope you’re not neglecting KSH and RWTMR. I was able to squeeze in ep3.