  It is argued that the `problem of time' in quantum gravity necessitates a
refinement of the local inertial structure of the world, demanding a
replacement of the usual Minkowski line element by a 4+2n dimensional
pseudo-Euclidean line element, with the extra 2n being the number of internal
phase space dimensions of the observed system. In the refined structure, the
inverse of the Planck time takes over the role of observer-independent
conversion factor usually played by the speed of light, which now emerges as an
invariant but derivative quantity. In the relativistic theory based on the
refined structure, energies and momenta turn out to be invariantly bounded from
above, and lengths and durations similarly bounded from below, by their
respective Planck scale values. Along the external timelike world-lines, the
theory naturally captures the `flow of time' as a genuinely structural
attribute of the world. The theory also predicts expected
deviations--suppressed quadratically by the Planck energy--from the dispersion
relations for free fields in the vacuum. The deviations from the special
relativistic Doppler shifts predicted by the theory are also suppressed
quadratically by the Planck energy. Nonetheless, in order to estimate the
precision required to distinguish the theory from special relativity, an
experiment with a binary pulsar emitting TeV range gamma-rays is considered in
the context of the predicted deviations from the second-order shifts.
