When the time portal was first switched on, it produced a torrent of blood and chunky bits of flesh. It fired with such pressure, one of the undergraduate researchers was knocked backwards onto the ground. The head of the physics department was aghast. The alumnus considering giving a grant for my research was so disgusted that he left immediately.

We made numerous hypotheses over the next year, but none could explain where the blood had come from. Then one of my junior researchers, an avid gamer in his spare time, made an offhand mention of DOOM, and I figured out what happened. With the initial activation of the portal, we had unknowingly become the first people to create a device for travelling through time. Significant as the moment was, many future time travellers wanted to see it. And they had all set their watches for the exact same time.

Thus, the blood and gore was thousands of time travellers, all attempting to emerge from the same portal occupying the same space…and getting ‘chronofragged.’