Elias drew another line through the layered grid. “We treat distance as navigable because we accept that an object can occupy one depth coordinate and then another. Time should work the same way if a field can decouple local position from the surrounding frame. You’re not forcing the object to endure time differently. You’re moving it in relation to the sequence around it.”

Liora frowned up at the floating curves. “You’re saying Tuesday is a place.”

Elias capped the marker against his palm. “In practical terms, yes.”

“That is not practical,” she said.

Jonas gave her a look. “You’ll find that’s one of his gifts.”

Elias ignored it. He set a flat metal token on the center of the table. It was no larger than a drink coaster, stamped with a serial code and a factory time chip at its core. The simplest test mass he owned. “This stays in a local field pocket. The pocket shifts its temporal coordinate by a controlled amount and then returns to baseline.”

Amara stepped closer. Under the lab lights her face looked carved from control. “Controlled by what margin?”

He touched the display. Numbers unfurled. “Sub-second at this scale.”

Amara folded her arms. “Your paper said that before the accident too.”

A few people looked away. Elias did not. “The old design bled energy into the return path.”