To Notch a Stone with Six Birds: Time as a Theory Artifact of Order, Measure, and Arrow

Time is often treated as a primitive background parameter, and empirical discussions frequently conflate three distinct notions—event ordering, clock measurement, and irreversible directionality—making it difficult to determine when a layer _has time_ versus when time is an artifact of description. Building on Six Birds Theory (SBT) [1], we propose a layer-relative account in which time is a _closure artifact_ assembled from stable succession (order), staged repeatable carriers (ticks), and irreversible bookkeeping (arrow). We distinguish _causation-time_ within a fixed closure from _enablement-time_, where the closure itself is rewritten. We instantiate this account in a finite-state Markov laboratory (\(Z = {X \times \Phi \times R}\)) with an audit suite of calibrated null regimes, matched controls, and automatically generated evidence tables from reproducible artifacts. We obtain four controlled separations, each validated against explicit null and control conditions: (i) in a nearly reversible null regime, arrow proxies are \(\approx 0\), whereas in a record-coupled driven regime they become decisively nonzero (with absolute irreversibility signaled by entropy production \({EP} = \infty\)); (ii) under consistent estimation, coarse-graining reduces path-space asymmetry (micro \(\geq\) macro), preventing “fake arrows”; (iii) increasing maintenance budget reduces clock drift and failure, while progress metrics detect stall regimes that would otherwise appear stable; and (iv) closure-defect thresholds trigger theory extension only in an enablement regime (not in a no-birth control), and protocol loops exhibit nonzero holonomy in a noncommuting regime but \(\approx 0\) under a commuting control, obstructing a global time potential. These results provide a reproducible method for separating arrows, clocks, constraints, and protocol effects, and for clarifying when “instant updates” reflect constraints and records rather than causal channels. Throughout, “theory” is used in the SBT technical sense—a closure (lens + completion + audit)—not as a speculative hypothesis or manuscript-type category. We do not derive physical spacetime here; our conclusions rely on audited proxies in a minimal laboratory together with lightweight mechanized structural lemmas.