You’re familiar with the Manhattan Project? As they approached the first atomic test, Oppenheimer became concerned the detonation might produce a chain reaction, engulfing the world.
PROTAGONIST:
They went ahead anyway, and got lucky.
PRIYA:
Think of our scientist as her generation’s Oppenheimer – she devises a method for inverting the world, but becomes convinced that by destroying us, they destroy themselves.
PROTAGONIST:
The grandfather paradox.
PRIYA:
Unlike Oppenheimer, she rebels, splitting the algorithm into nine sections and hiding them the best place she can think of...
PROTAGONIST:
The past. Here. Now.
PRIYA:
There are nine nuclear powers. Nine bombs. Nine sets of the most closely guarded materials in the history of the world. The best hiding places possible.
PROTAGONIST:
Nuclear containment facilities.
PRIYA:
Sator’s lifelong mission, financed and guided by the future, has been to find and reassemble the algorithm.
PROTAGONIST:
Why did they choose him?
PRIYA:
The necessary combination of greed and ambition. But mostly, he was in the right place at the right time.
PROTAGONIST:
The collapse of the Soviet Union.
PRIYA:
The most insecure moment in the history of nuclear weapons.
PROTAGONIST:
And there he was. How many of the sections does he have?
PRIYA:
After the 241? All nine.
PROTAGONIST:
Christ. And that’s why you’re going to do it differently this time.
PRIYA:
To change things? So Katherine won’t get hurt?
PROTAGONIST:
So Sator won’t get the algorithm.
PRIYA:
If that universe can exist, we don’t live in it.
PROTAGONIST:
Let’s try. You’re going to warn me.
PRIYA:
No. I’m not. Ignorance is our ammunition. If you’d known what the algorithm was, would you have let it fall into Sator’s hands?
PROTAGONIST:
You want him to get the last section?
PRIYA:
It’s the only way he’ll bring together the other eight.