The first thing I noticed about the Micro-City of Manhattan-Prime was the noise. It wasn't the sound of a civilization; it was the sound of a stock exchange. Even at ten microns, they had managed to recreate the frantic, predatory energy of the city I had left behind twenty thousand years ago.

"Listen, Big Guy," the High Commissioner said, leaning back in a chair made of a single repurposed protein fiber. He didn't look at me with awe; he looked at me like a piece of real estate. "We love the 'Ancestor' bit. Great for the brochures. Keeps the plebs from rioting. But let's talk business."

I stared down at him, my shadow covering three of their financial districts. I had come expecting a reunion, perhaps a spiritual awakening. Instead, I found a board meeting. The Commissioner's eyes were cold, calculating, scanning my form for utility rather than kinship.

"Your ship," the Commissioner continued, his voice a sharp, metallic rasp. "The hull is made of a titanium-gold alloy that could power our infrastructure for a millennium. Your skin cells? A goldmine of organic polymers. Your breath? A weather event that could drive our energy turbines for a month."

Within a week, the "reunion" had turned into a contract negotiation. They didn't want my wisdom; they wanted my biomass. They developed a system of "Tribute-Mining," where they would harvest microscopic flakes of my skin and hair in exchange for "luxury" virtual experiences. They built a city of glass and steel around my resting place, turning my very presence into a tourist attraction for the elite of Manhattan-Prime.

I became the Resource God of Manhattan-Prime. I sat motionless for hours, a living mountain of raw materials, while thousands of micro-drones swarmed over me like metallic locusts, stripping me of everything I was. I could feel them—tiny, precise needles extracting the essence of my being to fuel their neon dreams.

The irony was a bitter pill. I had escaped the death of a planet only to become a utility for a city that viewed my soul as a byproduct of my chemistry. One evening, as I watched the neon lights of their skyscrapers flicker in the reflection of my own eye, I realized the truth: the scale had changed, but the greed was exactly the same.

I wasn't their ancestor. I was their mine.

--- **TENSOR ENCODING (OTMES v2):** [M3:9, M5:8, N2:0.9, K1:0.3, I:0.7, R:0.1, TI:54.8]