The Forgotten Flower Cluster
— The Passion Belt and the Prehistory of Chrono-Bloom
The underground city of Miwall was a space where time itself had accumulated.
Beneath a collapsed canopy, enigmatic spirals and branching patterns carved into black stone spoke eloquently of a place that had once been far more than a mere residential district. Meter advanced quietly, avoiding the rubble. Sound was swallowed here; even his footsteps vanished before reaching their echo.
“—This is the place.”
At the center of the space, a pale light assembled itself into precise geometric forms.
It was the holographic projection of Illumina, the central AI of the Galactic Encyclopedia Compilation Library.
“Underground City, Third Layer. Deepest sector of the archival vault.
Access restrictions concerning you have now been lifted.”
Meter came to a halt, scanning his surroundings.
“To think a place like this still remained on Miwall.
This isn’t a relic of the Federation era… it’s older.”
“Yes.
This layer predates the Federation—indeed, it belongs to a time before galactic history was systematized.”
Illumina’s voice was calm, but its content cut sharply.
“What you have studied as Chrono-Bloom Theory.
This is its prehistory—the era before its formal birth.”
At those words, Meter’s internal processing lagged for a fraction of a second.
“Prehistory…?”
A star map unfolded in midair, flooding the underground space the next instant.
A dark band stretching along the galactic plane, in the direction of Cygnus.
Within it, an eerily silent cluster of stars emerged.
“The Passion Belt.”
Meter murmured while searching his memory banks.
“…A theoretical void.
Even in Chrono-Bloom Theory, it’s treated as a hypothesis—
a ‘static region where historical flower clusters rarely form.’”
“That hypothesis was observed,” Illumina replied at once.
“And at a remarkably early stage.”
The image shifted.
An island world surrounded by vast seas.
Raging skies, and periodic radiation storms tearing across the surface.
“Planet Earth.
From its archipelagic world of Nido arose a human group—the Naxcelians.”
Meter narrowed his eyes.
“Radiation storms…
That explains their extraordinarily precise environmental forecasting.”
“Yes.
They needed to read the future in order to survive.
As a result, they developed a mode of thought that grasped temporal divergence not as mere statistics, but as structure itself.”
“…The prototype of Chrono-Bloom Theory.”
“More precisely,” Illumina corrected,
“before Chrono-Bloom.”
“They realized that the very flower clusters of history—
branching, blooming, and eventually scattering—were dependent on cosmic environments.
And they also discovered that there exist regions where flowers barely bloom at all.”
The dark band on the star map intensified.
“The Passion Belt.
A region where dark-matter filaments overlap with massive magnetic fields, blocking high-energy radiation.
Here, historical divergence rapidly attenuates.”
Meter stepped forward involuntarily.
“Divergence… decreases?”
“Choices still exist.
But their outcomes do not spiral out of control.
In terms of Chrono-Bloom Theory, the flower clusters never grow dense—
a state that requires no pruning.”
Silence fell.
“…That’s why they chose it.”
“Yes.
Around the year AD 16800, the Naxcelians began migrating to the planet Naxcel, located within this belt.”
Another date surfaced in Meter’s mind.
“16800…
That’s when Earth—”
“Yes,”
Illumina’s voice dropped slightly.
“Around AD 16000, Planet Earth entered an irreversible phase of radioactive contamination.”
The image shifted again—
a fleeting glimpse of a devastated planetary surface.
“Amid that chaos, a human group departed Earth.
A migrant population centered on the Amelians.”
Meter showed unmistakable shock.
“…You can’t be saying this was a coincidence.”
“It was not.”
Illumina continued quietly.
“The Naxcelians had predicted the collapse of Earth’s civilization through the Chrono-Bloom flow.
And they had prepared another planet within the Passion Belt.”
A new planetary image appeared.
Calm seas.
A stable climate.
“Planet Compassion.
A world with exceptionally high human habitability, designed to minimize historical interference.”
“They… saved them?”
“No.”
Illumina shook its head—an intentional imitation of human gesture.
“This was not salvation.
They preserved the flower.”
Meter’s gaze fixed on the planetary image.
“To let history keep blooming?”
“To prevent it from being severed.
The Naxcelians refused to become interveners.
They avoided the greatest taboo revealed by Chrono-Bloom Theory—
fixing the future.”
Meter exhaled slowly.
“…Then the Chrono-Bloom Theory we’ve been studying—”
“Is a later systematization,” Illumina declared.
“Nothing more than a theoretical reconstruction of a philosophy already practiced within the Passion Belt.”
The darkness of the underground city pressed heavily upon them.
“The Passion Belt is a forgotten cradle—
a space designed to preserve the flower clusters themselves, even if history collapses.”
Meter smiled faintly.
“…I’m impressed.
We thought we were creating theory,
but all along we were just following in someone else’s footsteps.”
Illumina’s light intensified slightly.
“That is why I told you.
The one who will next stand not as a reader of the Chrono-Bloom flow,
but as one who touches it—
is you.”
The underground city returned to silence.
For the first time, Meter distinctly felt the sound of history falling.
Reference Notes
Earth = Former Earth-position world
Nido = Archipelagic civilization on Earth
Amelians = Migrants who escaped Earth
Passion Belt = Historical preservation space
Chrono-Bloom Theory = A higher-order concept superseding psychohistory
All elements align seamlessly.
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