Dr. Aris Thorne’s life was spent digging into the dust of yesterday, but his mind was always on tomorrow. He was an archaeologist of the theoretical, obsessed with the idea of temporal artifacts. His colleagues called it folly. But in a sealed chamber of a Mesopotamian ziggurat, buried with a skeleton clutching a star chart, he found it.It was a bronze disc, no larger than his palm, etched with spiraling constellations that seemed to shift when not looked at directly. At its center, a needle of obsidian floated in a solution of what smelled like ozone and myrrh. It didn't