The rendering of the quality of proportion of any higher order system has a trajectory. The conduit or system that transmits is likely always fixed. The touchpoints of higher order and smaller order fields possibly house the capacity for flux. What is intervening (the conduit) is a medium for shifting phase, as it were.
Say, we had a field of gas above and a pool of fluid below. The relay of the capacity for volume from above to lower down cannot contain volume but transmits its capacity equivalent. This means that the intervening channel is restricted in absolute magnitude parameters but not in capacity. If something were to occupy this medium it would continue doing so if the movement were from lower down to above. If the magnitude differential is immense, then it would stand to reason that the movement described would last indefinitely.
The larger the higher order system, the more capacity equivalent of the conduit and the longer the transit time.