Time is the direction of increasing specification. Compare it to a murder mystery. At the outset only a few facts are known, the true state of things is only imperfectly specified. As the action proceeds the interdependency of things forces more events to come to light, possibilities go from open to closed, most are discarded. The process can follow many different trajectories in terms of the kinds of links that are made, but inevitably more and more about the original state comes to light. At the end, if it follows the broad generic conventions, the situation is fully specified according to the parameters of the game, the motives and actors are revealed. If it is mapped as a tree structure, then it could be seen as going from branches to root. In reading the story we accept the idea that the original events were fully specified in the author's mind and it is only our knowledge which has changed, but what if this were not the case and a principle of parsimony reigned, so that the original state only existed incompletely, was only 'filled in' where necessary? This provides a picture of time. The interdependencies of things spread like a wave-front in which the indeterminate becomes determinate. The intentional semantics with which we make sense of our situation is not a fictitious overlay on a positivistic semantics ('all that is the case') but is only a digest of a more complex version of the same thing. The many-worlds are not branching out in the future but are the nature of the present, in the form of collapsing pluralities. Intentional language, modal grammars etc. would all be irreducible, not in the sense of becoming but in that of ceasing to be. Seeing this in a melancholy light is the common mistake, a metaphysical interpretation of consciousness.