The brain is said to be the most complex object in the universe although, given that we haven't been everywhere in the universe, how confident can anyone be of that?
But regardless, the brain is certainly a complicated organ - no question. I won't dwell on the number of neurons it has, nor the number of connections each neuron has with its neighbors. For the moment, I just want to introduce the brain as an(other) analogy.
Previously I had us plot the sliver gallery catalogue onto a 2-dimensional plane. Now for the update. I want you next to imagine that plane in the shape of a brain. Imagine slivers as occupying one neuron each. And then try to imagine what a nerve impulse, a chain of neurons firing, consists of.
The first thing to realise is that the process is over in a flash. Let's imagine that it takes no time at all - is virtually instantaneous. The electrical impulse might be thought of happening everywhere along that pathway at once, but in sequence.
Might the reality we experience consist of a set of such neuron-slivers?
We seem to flit from one moment to the next (very rapidly) and infer the passage of time from that. For that to work, the slivers would need to be 'permissible' i.e. neighbors in the sense that they follow the physical rules of the universe. They need to 'bridge'.
Extend the analogy: from gallery to brain to tree. As any one nerve impulse travels the gallery, selecting from a range of permissible extant slivers, it is not, in fact, bringing into existence the future, but bringing into focus, or choosing, one out of a multiplicity of all possible futures. There is a branching out from every instant.
The trunk forms branches, sub-branches, twigs, and leaves. Reality radiates from every sliver. At most one path can lead to it, but many paths lead from each one.