Putting together a puzzle during a meteor shower

Okay, here's a new snag. After completing my second animattic I've realized that there is no way Justin can assemble the entire puzzle ball between the 2nd meteor shower and the end of the song...its about a third of the entire piece--maybe if he knew exactly how the pieces fit together this would work, but the whole point is him exploring these pieces and figuring out how they fit together.

Brainstorming Ideas:

The Texturing Solution:
Unlike the original puzzle ball which has completely random solid colors so that the pieces don't relate, if I texture the ball as a solid piece (a la the soccer ball assignment) then it will be far more obvious how the pieces fit together. This still doesn't solve the timing issue, but its a start.

The Timing Solution:
Instead of having all the pieces fall during the 2nd meteor shower, they could fall progressively, one after another (in the right order, even) which would allow a little time for Justin to interact with the new piece and to figure out how to fit it in to the growing orb.

The Hosenfeld No-gravity Idea:
As Hosenfeld astutely pointed out--this is outer space--there doesn't have to be normal gravity. I had already been picturing duplicated versions of the pieces I've built floating around in outer space to fill out the environment somewhat. In addition, the pieces don't necessarily have to fall to the planet, they could merely float by. This makes the border between fate and chance a little blurrier, so I'm thinking perhaps I will have pieces float around, but not the ones he interacts with. (Another good idea from Hosenfeld--have a piece or two float right in front of the camera, really bring the camera into the environment)

Issues:
These are all good ideas and can be incorporated together to work as a whole, however, the timing solution breaks up the three distinctive meteor showers that I had occurring at the beginning of each stanza. I really like the visual structure of these showers...the repetition of three...the progression from medium to heavy to light. Somehow I have to integrate pieces falling in a paced manner--ideally in relation to the song--while still having three distinctive showers. As well, how the meteors in these showers interact with the asteroid fragments floating in space needs to be addressed.