Consider an unchanging singly-linked list as a universe. Time (or perhaps "the passage of time") in the intuitive sense does not exist for this universe, but it

Consider an unchanging singly-linked list as a universe. Time (or perhaps "the passage of time") in the intuitive sense does not exist for this universe, but it does exist in the sense that there is a global ordering of values. But does the ordering of the values come from the edges or the nodes? The ordering requires both. Or, more humanly(?), a film reel. At least, this is how I would think of it if required to give a simple-but-possibly-off-base answer for a possible way time could be emergent (would love it if someone more educated could correct me). This is also known as the Einstein block universe model. Otherwise, since my physics education is far below the actual bar needed to understand quantum gravity stuff, I think back to thermodynamic microstates and macrostates, and how temperature is emergent.