Fundamental entity
Think of time as a dimensionless duration that everything exists within, with dilation a one-dimensional outward motion within this duration as the only motion. The inward motion we detect as energy is a subset within space/time, and all energy, moving outward from a point is what we detect as a single motion we call the present. One is a temporal entity and like all numbers dimensionless. Time does not run fast or slow, think of space as the present, our motion through space describes our own duration in the present. The faster I move through space, the present, the longer my duration through space/time hence the slower my clock ticks.
Energy twisting and bending while interacting with itself makes its own duration intrinsic, or forms a field of temporal motion, we measure this motion as the outward force of gravity. Even the names given to energy define them; Potential, energy of the future; Kinetic, dynamic energy of the present; and Annihilation, energy of the past, all of them together make up our present. When this motion is intrinsic we name it one, which is the only way we can separate time, where it separates itself. With this in mind, the statement “Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time” can be finished with "because all objects are separate parts of the same motion we measure as time".
This field of time is our first concept of time as a circular motion, an atom, one object dilating in time as a whole, and starts our continuum with its creation. When a second clock is created we begin to see things as relative, our concept of zero motion begins. This creation of juxtaposition produces an inflating time between atoms which lead to our concept of relative length. We have to wait for the solar system to form and for the appearance of an observer to focus these ideas together as the present. The present we count as a second with a standard clock today, the same second that sets our passive observers Minkowski's reference frame. All of this within a duration determined by the local energy and because of dilation. Now think of our atomic clock, the hyperfine transitions present in the ground state of the cesium-133 isotope that we use to standardize a second, is time dilating. Everything dilates we can see this effect, 'when' an observer is changing his relative position in space/time, Objects getting bigger as each present moment is brought closer together, and get smaller the further into the past they appear. Everything is emerging, from Big bang til now. At the smallest scale, relative to now, it must still be emerging, repulsive, as a focal point stuck in the present. Every object is visible as a worm-hole over time, but in the instant as a point of one. Color from a point, how our minds see photons, makes up our visible universe.
Every single ponderable entity, is its own clock, keeping track of its own duration in its own present, because everything that exists in time occupies space and we can only detect the interactions (duration) between these spaces juxtapositions of time. The motion of time is dilation and it is the duration of all our static present(s) that are dilating, we only receive signals from the out side of objects. On Planck’s scale time is the smallest common denominator, and even with time being so compact, and without measuring it directly, we do detect where its motion masses, in one form or another. Time is the smallest common denominator on Planck's relative scale and it is the juxtaposition of an expanding field of time we call a photon, that is its single quanta. Time is also the largest common denominator, with everything that exists being nothing more that a subset of this one-dimensional outward motion that we visualize with our “arrow of time” that started at big bang. Let us step back in time far enough to see the leading edge of the entire light sphere of our one visible universe, reach out, pick this field of time up, and place it under a microscope. We would see this electromagnetic field that is dilating at the speed of light squared, relative to itself, with all its mass centered relative to our new reference frame as a single duration, an atom, our next repeating juxtaposition in an infinite homologous universe.
That first atom must be in direct temporal contact with the chaos of time from which it was formed, a small wormhole to all that potential energy back through the center connection we call mass, within the ever changing form of an atom. Particle physics looks back through time to Big bang through atoms, which uses less space but large amounts of energy. On the other hand Cosmology looks back in time by gazing out at the stars, less energy required but with more space between. Both paths through time to a big bang follow or trace energy, one potential and the other kinetic. We can see how space appears curved drawing a time line between both paths from deep within every atom, all the way out to the stars and back in again. We are a part of this dilating sphere, riding through time on earth in the present between this one event. All observers are riding Earth’s accelerating frame out of the same gravity well and it is where and when these two forms of the same motion interact, that is the present. Matter is the contained and gravity is the container in space, in time the present is the container and energy is the contained. Duration is the variable of the present in the form of one, that makes the geometry of space that we see, fit with the structure of matter that we feel.
How can you tell time without looking at matter? If the present is emission, we can only "see" the past no matter how close we are therefore "anything you do because of something you see is trying to change the past", which explains why mass resists changes to its position, no matter the direction in space you approach an object in time it is from the past. The little twist that we now call big bang started time, or the dilating area that we see today as our one visible universe. Matter or what we think of as atoms are our tie to the past, created almost 13.7 billion years ago and I think there is still some of that original motion centered within each atom. We exist as an accelerated frame called earth, with a dilation rate of 9.8 meters per second in time but our lying eyes tell us we are static because of the way we see a continuous past combined in our minds as our present and our future. Just as with the earth being flat I think that in time we will begin to think of mass, the dilating momentum of matter, as the past started the little twist we see today as big bang.
To sum up, we measure the dilating momentum of matter as mass which is a juxtaposition, centered in the past, that we see as individual entities in space. Juxtaposition is a measure of time with a beginning that we never see and an end that only happens in the present, we never see the beginning of the photon's duration we only see its end. Think of a Photon as the radius to its own duration's dilating sphere, Planck's length in four dimensions, making time quantized to a photon. This fits with the idea that a photon is the smallest, one dimensional motion, part of my present as far as I can see.
My Consciousness is the clock that keeps me centered in the present.
Space is the present moment we all share as observers.
Mass is my anchor to the past, while this accelerated frame we call Earth is just all of us dilating into the future.
Outward from a point is the only direction in time, dilation it's only motion, the illusion is thinking there is more than this one direction in space.