It begins with the fall of Trofim Lysenko in the Great Terror. Butterfly effects ripple outward, and the Space Race takes a different shape as Gemini XIII is America's first big space disaster while Apollo I is a narrow escape, and Gus Grissom becomes First Man on the Moon. Meanwhile, secret human genetic experimentation on both sides of the Iron Curtain leads to a very different fall of the Soviet Union, and sets the stage for a new American Civil War, albeit without the tidy lines of North and South.