B
erlin, 1879. The city’s most prominent citizens promenade beside the river Spree. Along Unter den Linden, they sit at outdoor cafés, enjoying the warm weather and the blossoming linden trees. They rearrange their dresses and their top hats and breathe in the spring smells: horse manure in the street and fresh-baked pretzels. The abundant foliage casts shadows on the ground.
“What a wonderful time!” these bourgeois may be thinking beneath the tree canopy in Berlin. “I wonder if this particular moment will stay with me for life. Will I remember the breeze making the linden trees sway, when I think back on this a year from now, five years, twenty years? How much of this will I forget?”
Meanwhile, in a laboratory at the University of Berlin, a lone researcher is about to begin a groundbreaking experiment. He is going to attempt something never before tried in history. He ...
