# A Maxwell Universe - PART I — FOUNDATIONS OF REALITY ## Summary Part I develops a framework in which events are the starting point. A registered change creates the basic distinction between “before” and “after.” Systems that update their state in response to influences build internal orderings, and from these orderings time emerges. Causal steps link events into chains, and then loops. Loops support recurrent patterns and can act as clocks. Counting causal steps gives duration and also distance: the minimal number of steps between two subnodes. Collecting all pairwise distances produces an effective geometry. Space and dimension arise when these distances can be embedded with low distortion into a space of some dimension. Multiple embeddings imply non-unique dimension; failure of all embeddings implies that geometry does not apply. Space and dimension are therefore relational constructs, not fundamental ingredients of reality. The same compression mechanism explains arithmetic and mathematical laws. Stable patterns become symbolic rules; when the patterns shift, the rules shift with them. Mathematics succeeds where reality presents regularities, and fails where it does not. Across Part I, a single theme recurs: we do not access the underlying causal structure itself. We access only its effects, and from these we construct representations that remain valid only while the observed patterns stay stable.