The man, Elian, knelt in the soil, which smelled not of peat and loam, but of ozone and antiquity. The garden wasn't really a garden; it was a collection of moments in time that had taken root.
Today’s sprout was a fragile thing, a flickering image of a street violinist from 1898 Vienna. The projection shimmered above a patch of dark earth the size of a dinner plate. If Elian watered it with enough concentrated attention, with enough belief in the reality of the music, the moment might solidify, joining the towering, silent redwood of 1920s jazz and the low-growing, thorny scrub of a Victorian factory floor.
His job, as the Chronos Gardener, was maintenance—pruning inconsistencies, feeding faded memories, and ensuring no two timelines cross-pollinated disastrously. He wore thick, insulated gloves, not against thorns, but against temporal static.
A flicker in the corner of his eye drew his attention. A moment from the future had self-seeded, a shimmering blue flower that looked suspiciously like the launch sequence of a starship. It was beautiful, but unstable. It needed to be removed.
Elian reached for his shears, the steel biting cleanly through the temporal stem. The future moment dissipated in a puff of cold vapor. Better safe than sorry. The job was lonely, and the pay was measured in quiet moments of appreciation for history.
As the sun of the current moment dipped below the horizon, casting long, familiar shadows across the true grass outside his shed, Elian finished cataloging his work. He glanced at the redwood of jazz—it seemed healthy, stable. He smiled, packing his tools. He was just a gardener, after all, making sure the past grew properly.
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