Voice over, the solution to all dramatic problems

Since I'm thinking that the perpetual motion idea is confusing, I got rid of the Rube Goldberg perpetual motion intro. In the current version of the voice over, Ben calls the machine an "over-unity device," which is the same thing as a perpetual motion machine, but not as distracting. One of the problems I was grappling with last night was how to deal with the "stars!" scene and the finding-the-spinner-broken scene. They are discrete events, yet conceptually and dramatically linked. My current solution is to mention the stars in the voice over with the broken spinner, connecting the two. Something like—

two events maybe unrelated
last night i discover a crstalline substance falling from the over-unity device contacts
today, I find the spinner plate broken into 3 pieces

I'm now going through the "new day" sequence. The way I originally wrote it, the sequence stops the narrative dead in its tracks. In my original conception of the story, that was OK. That would just be "real," and represent a reasonable character's thinking and action. I didn't want to have Ben getting paranoid. That would drive the story forward, but is so dumb in terms of character. Trying to bridge the two approaches I now have a short voice over during the sequence when Ben is eating and brushing his teeth—

Day 1027
The over-unity device has been broken for almost a month.
A distant memory....
That rises to haunt me now and then....

Here, the voice over becomes vaguely omniscient and pushes the story ahead at least a little. Plus I've been playing around with using a metronomic drum pulse to create a sense of tension. When in doubt, add voice overs and scary music.

I'm trying to resist the tendency to be too obscure. One of the things I learned by working on my last theater project was that you can be painfully blunt without it hurting your project. In that play, not only do you have dramatic monologues, but a psychiatrist character for externalization. I might go so far as to add (in the desert scene)...

it feels like there are two forces at work
one calling out to me. The other threatening, warning me.