There may be a sneaky way around the problem. One idea begins with an odd notion. That the reason science has so far failed to discover “the gravity particle”, despite decades of trying, is for a silly reason: that they don’t exist!
Start with the notion that time and space are basically two axes of the same thing, called time-space. This makes more sense when you think of Einstein’s model of space as a grid, with planets and stars making indentations in it.
Just by their mass being there, space is distorted and so is time. But like time-space, mass and gravity seem to be the same thing as well. But unlike time-space, where when you change one, you change the other, mass-gravity seems to be the same thing.
So what if gravity is not independent of mass, but is a *function* of mass acting on time-space?
That is, mass *bends* space time, so another object in that bent area no longer moves in a straight line, but their path is bent around the massive object.
However, Einstein’s grid isn’t 2 dimensional, but 3 dimensional. So as you stand on Earth right now, all the time and space around you are bent towards Earth. But it feels like Earth is dragging you toward it. It feels like gravity.
Yet you don’t need an energetic force to do it, thus no gravity particle.
The ‘grid’ is four variable, three of space and one of time. Now, add a second variable of time and see if time then becomes volumetric rather than linear.