The scene cuts abruptly to the next moment, where the scientist places two bullets on a sleek, high tech table. The table and the video equipment she is about to use are as advanced as the shooting range itself. She wears a green protective glove as she handles the bullets, and her manner is that of a teacher instructing a complete novice. Their interaction is so impersonal that the Protagonist occasionally seems less like a trainee and more like a subject being observed in an experiment. She is patient with the procedure, not with him, and her tone carries flashes of amusement and a barely concealed condescension.
She explains that one bullet is normal, while the other is inverted. Its entropy is reversed, causing it to travel backward through time. The camera alternates between her as she demonstrates and explains, and him as he reacts or attempts to answer. Each time, the background remains blurred, isolating the two characters in a visual dialogue.
She asks whether he can distinguish between the bullets. Of course he cannot. She knows this already; it is simply part of the ritual. “How about now?” she asks, hovering her gloved hand over one of the bullets. It twitches, then leaps upward into her palm, which she catches with practiced ease.
She continues her lesson: the bullet is inverted, its entropy reversed, and so its movement appears backward to us. “We suspect some kind of radiation. Nuclear fission,” she adds, while he watches, thinking.
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