Dr. Thomas Placide is a physicist born in America, but currently living in Germany. It is currently the early 20th century and he makes the decision to murder a general named David E. Twiggs, who lives in 1860. While he is watching the Olympics with a fellow scientist—a man named Yaakov Fein—they talk about the racism that many African Americans are facing during that time. Placide realizes that he needs to do something about it so he goes to his group of scientists and talks about their discovery of the Placide-Born-Dirac Effect. He has created a cage that can travel through time and he asks for volunteers. When no one offers, he and Fein go together to the Confederacy during 1861. He doesn't tell anyone about his plan. While Fein is observing the area, Placide goes down to the tent of General Twiggs and kills his bodyguard. He then walks into the tent of the general and holds a knife to his throat and interrogates him. He asks the general about his position in the army and the general's plans for the battles ahead. Hearing that the general's plans do not align with his own, Placide kills the general and then returns to Fein. Fein becomes upset with Placide, saying that his alteration of the timeline will ruin history. However, they both agree to go a few months in the future to see how history has been changed. In February, the two notice that history has been changed and that instead of Twiggs, Robert E. Lee is in command of Texas. However, they jump to a few days later and Lee dies in a fight. Placide realizes that his plan succeeded too well. When the two scientists return to their timeline (T0), the other scientists are upset that they messed up and altered the timeline. They put a restriction on time travel until new rules are put into place. Placide decides to break these rules and goes back into the time machine. He visits early 1861, before his previous visit and alteration, and goes to talk to General Lee in DC. General Lee agrees to talk to him, but eventually leaves after hearing Placide demand him not to take the position of general. Placide begs Lee to reconsider his choice because it will affect the outcome of the war and also cause his people to suffer. Even though Lee leaves him behind, Lee ends up not taking the role, which alters the timeline once again. Placide journals about this experience and is then notified of a battle that has suddenly occurred that wasn't apart of history before. Placide proceeds to ask the local people of 1861 about where this battle is occurring and makes his way there. His second journal talks about what he saw during the battle and how it altered the timeline as well as the people it affected. He talks with a woman named Lisette, who becomes interested in his gossip and stories. He stays with a family known as the Le Moyne's and journals about his influence on General Lee and the war at hand. He also talks about how free his people are and that it was because of his changes to the timeline. When Placide returns to his original timeline, he discovers that all of his friends are not in the science lab and don't know that he exists. Upset, he walks around and is eventually arrested. The person in his cell is named Schindler. Schindler is a thief and explains what is currently going on in that time period. He talks about how numerous, smart scientists are getting sent to camps. Schindler ends up being a spy and Placide is taken to another cell by the Nazis—who exist and won the war because of Placide's alterations to the timeline.