The setting sun painted Manhattan's skyline in hues of gold and crimson, casting long shadows through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse office atop Chen Tower. James Chen stood motionless at the window, his reflection a ghost against the darkening sky. Sixty-five stories below, the city that had made him a titan of industry pulsed with the evening rush.
His empire stretched before him - not just the gleaming towers bearing his name, but the invisible networks of quantum computers, AI systems, and renewable energy grids that had revolutionized human civilization. The Chen Industries logo blazed from a dozen buildings, each one a testament to his journey from nothing to everything.
"The quarterly reports, Mr. Chen."
James didn't turn at his assistant's voice. Sarah had been with him for fifteen years, one of the few people who'd survived his periodic purges of upper management. Not because she was exceptional - she wasn't - but because she understood something crucial: in James Chen's world, loyalty meant more than talent.
"Revenue?" he asked, his voice carrying the faint traces of an accent he'd never fully shed.
"Up 47% year-over-year. The quantum computing division exceeded projections by 112%."
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. The quantum division's success wasn't surprising - he'd engineered it months ago by strategically leaking patents to his competitors, letting them waste billions on dead-end research while his own teams pursued the real breakthrough.
"And Project Oracle?"
Sarah hesitated. Even after fifteen years, she still hadn't learned to hide her nervousness. "The multiverse quantum computing initiative is... ahead of schedule, but the ethics board is raising concerns about-"
"Fire them."
"Sir?"
James finally turned from the window, his movements deliberate and precise. At forty-five, he cut an imposing figure - tall and lean, with silver threading through his black hair and eyes that seemed to calculate profit margins with every glance.
"The ethics board," he said calmly, walking to his desk. "Fire them all. Have legal draw up the papers citing conflicts of interest." He paused, considering. "Make sure they receive generous severance packages. And Sarah? Make sure they understand the non-disclosure agreements are permanently binding."
"Of course, sir." She hesitated again. "There's also the matter of the Princeton investigation into the Morrison bankruptcy..."
James picked up a small stone from his desk - his first dollar, converted to its weight in gold and cast in the shape of a small pyramid. He'd bought Morrison Robotics for pennies on the dollar after their mysterious collapse, acquiring patents that had later proved instrumental in Chen Industries' rise to dominance.
"Have our friends at the SEC handle it," he said quietly. "The usual arrangements."
The pain in his chest, which had been nagging all day, sharpened suddenly. He ignored it. There was too much work to be done.
Sarah nodded and left, her heels clicking on marble floors. James waited until the door closed before pressing a button on his desk. Hidden panels in the walls slid open, revealing screens that filled the office with a pale blue glow. Real-time data from every division of his empire flowed past - stock prices, research updates, market analyses.
He walked slowly around the room, scanning the information with practiced ease. The chest pain intensified, but he pushed it aside. Physical discomfort was merely another variable to be calculated and controlled.
His eyes fell on a small screen showing security footage from forty stories below. A hot dog vendor was packing up his cart for the day. James paused, memories surfacing unbidden.
Twenty-five years earlier
"Two dollars," the vendor had said, holding out the hot dog.
James, twenty years old and fresh off the boat from China, had counted his coins carefully. One dollar and eighty-seven cents - his entire net worth. He'd looked up at the towers surrounding them, calculating.
"I'll give you one dollar now," he'd said in broken English, "and five dollars tomorrow if you let me study your operation today."
The vendor had laughed. But something in James's eyes had made him pause.
"Kid, you're either crazy or smart. Either way, I want to see what happens."
That vendor, Mario Rodriguez, had become James's first business mentor. A year later, James had owned five food carts. Two years after that, he'd bought the building their carts operated in front of. Mario had died rich, having sold his cart business to James for a hundred times its value - partly out of gratitude, partly because James never forgot who helped him climb.
The memory faded. James touched the window, looking down at where that first cart had stood. The vendor there now was one of a thousand employees in his street food subsidiary - a business that generated mere millions in a company measured in billions, but one he'd never sold.
Some sentiments were worth their cost in efficiency.
The screens around him flickered with new data. Project Oracle was proceeding faster than expected. The quantum tunneling experiments had detected what his scientists called "dimensional resonance" - proof that parallel universes weren't just theory. More importantly, proof that they could be reached.
And where there were new universes, there were new markets.
The pain in his chest exploded suddenly, dropping him to one knee. Warning signals flashed across his neural implants - another innovation his company had pioneered. Heart rate critical. Blood pressure plummeting.
Not yet, he thought desperately, crawling toward his desk. The multiverse trade routes... I was so close...
His hand found the neural implant's emergency beacon, but his fingers wouldn't respond. The world tilted sideways as he collapsed.
Through fading vision, he saw the screens still flowing with data. Project Oracle's latest results were particularly interesting - the quantum resonance patterns showed evidence of...
The thought slipped away as darkness crept in from the edges. The last thing he saw was the evening sun glinting off his towers, turning them to gold.
Then darkness.
Then...
Connection established.
Dimensional transfer protocol initiated.
Searching for compatible resonance patterns...
Match found.
Transfer commencing...
Then light.
In a world far removed from Manhattan's gleaming towers, in a realm where magic mixed with commerce and power resonated on frequencies beyond mortal understanding, a child opened his eyes for the first time.
And somewhere in the vast expanse of reality, markets shifted ever so slightly, preparing for the arrival of one who would reshape the very foundations of universal commerce.
Aldrich Thorne had been born.
And James Chen's last invention - the quantum consciousness transfer protocol hidden deep within Project Oracle - had worked perfectly.
Death, it seemed, was simply another market to be conquered.