Looking for time displacement that references "absolute" time not "relative" time

Thanks for the replies folks.  While I would still love to find some genius solution via native AE effects I've found that the Boris Saphire S_time plugin does exactly what I want with the "time relative to: 0" option.  Too bad it's $300 😕😕 https://borisfx.com/products/sapphire-units/time/?collection=sapphire-units&product=sapphire-units-time

Perhaps some third-party plug-in suite might have something like that, but natively in AE I'd probably do it using time-remapping and suitable mattes all rigged up with expressions. similalrly the Time Displacement could be made "absolute" by modulating the displacment map itself, i.e. adhusting its brightness and offsets. That would only work reasonably on short segments, though, as quickly you will run out of headroom and eventually the map is all white or all black and the displacment effect has no differential to base its magic on.

Mylenium

I don't have time to try and figure this out right now, and a sample comp would be extremely helpful, but I think your approach might be a little wonky. I will take a look at it this evening if you provide a sample comp.