Redewenur. Thanks for the link. I have not struggled through all 5 pages yet, but I found a quote that says exactly what I was trying to put into words. I hope Lee E will not mind if I reproduce part of it.

"Although we can move through three spatial dimensions, at any point in time the movement vectors for all three spatial directions can be summed to a single vector. Thus movement is essentially in a single direction and can be expressed by a single value, just as when we drive heading North-West we don't say we are driving West at x mph and North at y mph; we just use the summed vector.

With movement induced time dilation, the same thing is happening, except this time the two vectors being summed are the summed spatial movement vector and the temporal movement vector. The reason we get time dilation is because it is the sum of these two vectors, spatial and temporal, which cannot exceed 'c', so as the spatial movement vector increases, the temporal vector must decrease. With zero spatial movement then, we move temporally at 'c', which in turn implies we have zero length in that direction."

There never was nothing.