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Prologue
Time branch ‘x’
March 10th, 1978 – Ignition.
Next ignition minus 30 years.
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A young scientist, Dimitri Popovic stared at his best invention, still in awe. It was late evening, and high up in the Siberian foothills, inside his secluded research laboratory, he was preparing to use it again. He was about to make another leap through a dimensional portal.
His first jump was a week ago. This would be jump seven.
Six times previously, the circular doorway of light had led him into dimensions beyond the limits of time and space, opening new vistas and opportunities for the betterment and understanding of the human condition. Each inter-dimensional excursion had returned him to earth with more knowledge than before. This time Dimitri stood in his laboratory getting ready for a different sort of jump; this dimensional voyage would be one-way.
Late in the evening on the March 10th, 1978, Dimitri Popovic made his fateful leap into the portal’s shimmering veil of light and was gone forever; destined to remain hidden in dimensions unknown.
Five minutes or so after his final leap, the dimensional doorway became unstable and was violently slammed closed from the other side. It catastrophically exploded, taking with it Dimitri’s whole research station and engulfing the dark Siberian night in a flash of brilliant white light and an immense ball of heat and destruction.
First responders on scene reported the explosion decimated everything in a five-hundred metre radius. Loss of life only one: Dimitri Popovic.
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