Gravitational Islands Connected by the Chaining Web: A New Picture of Cosmic Structure and Causal Isolation

We propose a new conceptual picture of cosmic structure based on two distinct levels of geometry and connectivity. At the global level, the universe is spatially flat — a neutral, homogeneous background filled uniformly by dark energy. At the local level, massive objects create gravitational islands: regions of curved spacetime where matter accumulates, stars form, and complexity grows. These islands are causally isolated from each other by the flat background — matter does not cross between them. However, the Chaining Force, propagating at v ≥ c along null geodesics through the entire flat background, constitutes a Chaining Web connecting all gravitational islands simultaneously. Stars and civilizations that never enter our gravitational island remain forever invisible to us — not only because of distance or dark energy, but because the geometry of the flat background does not route their matter through our local curvature. The Chaining Web is the only physical connection between these isolated worlds. This picture provides a new geometric interpretation of the Fermi paradox within the Chaining Force framework. This paper is explicitly speculative.