Olga Vukavitch, the brilliant and beautiful scientist on the Backstep team, is a Russian defector who once worked in the old Soviet Union, for a project similar to Backstep.
She grew up with several siblings, at least one of whom is alive, and married Josef Vukavitch briefly. She made breakthroughts in temporal displacement and its relation to gravity while a student in Moscow, and was instrumental in applying it in a Russian time-travel program. Josef vanished and was supposed dead in one such flight, and Olga did not wear her wedding ring after that.
At the collapse of the Soviet Union, Olga joined the United States Backstep Team, where her expertise is vital to the missions. She also has an unresolved romantic tension with Frank Parker, the first successful chrononaut.
Josef resurfaced after several years, but intended to sabotage the program and almost killed Frank Parker. His wife inadvertantly shot him with a futuristic weapon. Olga also experienced some family crises involving her younger sister, Svetlana, and died several times in the hours preceding a Backstep.
