Romulus

Still Life, Taj Hotel , Bombay - David Hokney , 1977.

British , b. 1937 -

I don’t know how much I should read into it (time dilation/connections across space-time) but I’m just going to talk about it anyway.

(Spoiler warning!!!)

~~~

First time any of this shows up is when (flashback) Grace finishes breakfast, checks his watch to see how much time before class starts (he notes that he has plenty of time), then reads the email about the Petrova line. (First update on the Petrova problem)

The next time a timepiece is brought up is Grace finding the stopwatch for his gravity experiments. He notes it being blank and brand new it is before pulling out the little (red!) ribbon to get it working. (I consider this a parallel to amnesia Ryland Grace.)

Another timepiece moment I noticed is Grace hiding his watch in a drawer (missing time, maybe?) when searching for the Astrophage, because the watch has glow-in-the-dark paint. This is right before he discovered they had done mitosis. Leading to Ryland getting pulled into the project completely.

(What if his watch is still in that lab? A mini time capsule from that moment)

Then the most obvious scene being Ryland and Rocky comparing clocks.

There are a couple bits of time keeping after this, but that’s mostly just Ryland setting timers for himself.

The one that seemed more relevant is when Grace has the stopwatch (now being noticeably more beat-up)(Ryland now remembers everything he went through) and is using it to make sure that he found Rocky.

Finally, the opening of the epilouge mirrors the first example. The difference is that when he checks the time, he notices that he's running late for class. (And Rocky tells him his last update on the Petrova problem.)

Rocky mocks Grace when he says that Rocky is distracting him by starting complex conversations while he's Trying To Do Science. "Human brain have to stop activity just because talking question? Useless! One track mind!"

Then Grace is on hour six of his "trying to recreate skittles" hyperfocus and Rocky is like What The Fuck. Statement.

Mine was buried even deeper, under Devices -> Typing -> How AI has helped you.