Dominic Thorne viewed the world as a series of assets to be managed, leveraged, or liquidated. To him, human emotions were merely "noise" in the data, and morality was a luxury for those who couldn't afford a private jet. When the International Technology Corporation (ITC) successfully developed the "Quantum Tether," Dominic didn't see a scientific breakthrough; he saw the ultimate arbitrage opportunity.

"Time," he told his board of directors, "is the only currency with a truly fixed supply. Whoever controls the access to it controls the market."

Joseph Traub was the tool Dominic used to test the Tether. Traub was a brilliant physicist, but he possessed a fatal flaw: he actually cared about the truth. Dominic found this quaint. He sent Traub back to the 14th century not to explore, but to act as a "beacon." Traub was the probe, the sacrificial lamb whose suffering would provide the data necessary to stabilize the bridge for those who actually mattered.

From his office in the 90th floor of the ITC tower, Dominic watched Traub's vitals on a holographic display. He watched the spikes of terror, the dips of exhaustion, and the slow, steady decline of Traub's mental stability. To Dominic, these weren't signs of a man in agony; they were "performance metrics."

"Increase the tether tension," Dominic commanded. "I want to see how much stress the consciousness can take before it fractures."

He didn't care that Traub was trapped in a world of plague and mud. He didn't care that the man was screaming into a void that could not answer. Dominic was interested in the "Quantum Residue"—the shimmering fragments of data that Traub left behind in the past. These residues were the real assets. They were the blueprints for a form of immortality that didn't require a body, only a stable temporal coordinate.

When Traub finally died, Dominic didn't feel a flicker of regret. He felt a slight annoyance that the experiment had ended prematurely. He immediately ordered the "cleanup crew"—the archaeologists—to retrieve the residues. He didn't want the history; he wanted the code.

He sat back in his leather chair, swirling a glass of thirty-year-old scotch, and looked out at the New York skyline. He imagined the city not as a place of people, but as a map of temporal nodes. He would buy the land, he would buy the history, and eventually, he would buy the future.

"The problem with scientists," Dominic whispered to the empty room, "is that they think the goal is to understand the universe. The goal is to own it."

*** OTMES_v2_Code: [L: M3=7.0, M5=10.0, N1=0.9, N2=0.1, K1=0.1, K2=0.9 | TI=44.8 | Theta=6.3° | E=17.1]