My own pet theory is that we model time backwards. It isn't the point of the present moving past to future, which physics codifies as measures of duration, but change turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events come and go.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.

Time is asymmetric because it is measure of action and action is inertial. The earth only turns one direction. At the microcosmic level cause might be indistinguishable from effect, but actually reversing the process requires much more energy.

That different events can be observed in different order from different locations is no more consequential than seeing the moon as it was a moment ago, simultaneous with seeing stars as they were years ago. It's the energy being conserved, not the information. That the information changes is time.

So time is an effect, similar to temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes.

It's just that as these mobile organisms, navigation requires this process of sequential perception, which evolved into ever more abstract thinking.

Obviously I live in my own world, but there are no multiverses here, as space is both equilibrium and infinity.