Asteron had good reason to want to stop The Institute. It wasn’t just some philanthropic aversion to human experimentation – although that certainly left a bad taste in the mouth.
Their motivation was somewhat more… existential. Namely, a future nuclear crisis leading to untold casualties. Of course, Terrence and his team didn’t intend for this to happen, 50 years hence, but equally bore the burden of accountability for not factoring it in, human nature being what it is.
Asteron, then, had a plan. Once decoded, the cryptic internet messageboard posts finally resolved to this; work the loops, drop Terrence in the midst of a nuclear holocaust and get back in time for tea and cake.
Why Terrence? Because it was his beautiful, brilliant, deadly mind that stored the idea, the spark that caused General Magic – and the inevitability of human psyche and deeply integrated digital technology that nobody really understood – to bring human civilisation to an end.
So there it was, and Sheila and Alan and Darren and all the other pawns on the chessboard finally understood their role. Dr Terrence had to be isolated, thrown into a loop of his own, and ejected in 2056 just as the bombs dropped.