"Does the earth really travel some fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates? If you think the second seems the more logical answer, then you do see how time rises from action."
You are mixing decks of the games up again. Obviously the earth travels through the single dimension of time, but not through space so a fourth dimension has no meaning since time is not space...time is time. You have shifted back into space again.
So for time, I don't know why you skipped today but the earth had a yesterday that we can measure and know. Although GR gravity necessarily acts in space, quantum gravity is simply an exchange of matter in time with a phase. A bound or stable orbit or cycle is just where phase is some multiple of 2pi, and so theta is a pure quantum phase. A matter exchange between objects is equal to the total matter decay in time, i.e., KM = PM for a stable orbit, kinetic matter = potential matter.
Notice that I am using spatial terminology, orbit, but this is colloquial since it is a quantum phase, theta. Notice that all energy is matter and so there is no velocity in space per se, there is just a change in mass.
The action time of an orbit of bound objects is periodic, but that bound object is still evolving in proper time and is still moving in the universe in a hierarchy of orbits with other objects and other action times.
The earth's rotation is an equivalent two body orbit with KM = PM with a one day period, but with a quantum exchange action. So the rotation of earth is now a quantum phase theta that projects into the Cartesian phase if we want to, so its no wonder our mind works so well that way.
We can make this prediction without space and we can project back into space whenever we feel like it. So, did earth travel through time from yesterday to today. Yes, that is certain. Will earth travel through time and matter to tomorrow? It is very likely but not absolutely certain.
Now without time, obviously, you can project time from the action of earth in space instead of in time. The problem is that the quantum exchange force for gravity just does not pretty in space...it is ugly. Look at the complexity of GR, for example. It is really amazing that old Al got that beast to work with the patchwork of 4-space.
In order to get action in space to work, you need to reformulate the quantum action without time and that will require a proper or absolute 3-space along with an action 3-space. Then you will need a set of proper 3x3tensors and action 3x3tensors to handle all of the off diagonal interactions between spatial coordinates.
There will be six dimensions of space, two of time, and a 2D spinor for phase or a ten dimensional reality, with another 12 off diagonal tensor elements. It just does not sound like fun, but it should be possible.
"How does the very idea of shrinking make sense, when you have eliminated space? And why do you have a thing against space?"
Shrinking simply means shrinking in matter, not space. The math works very nicely without space and is unworkable with space, so mother nature simply does not quite work the way that our minds work.