“Most people who haven’t heard of the Wardship are familiar with a few kinds of matter: your baryons, your leptons, your dark matter and dark energy and so on - though I’m a design engineer, not particle physicist, so don’t take that as orthodoxy. Imagination is another type of matter like any of those. It has certain physical properties that interact with those kinds of matter, too: it has the kind of mass that baryons and leptons have, it’s diamagnetic, that sort of thing. It also attracts other Imagination to itself in a way that’s a little like gravity but notably stronger - like gravity, the strength of the attraction is dependent on how much Imagination there is, what Imagination scientists call ‘Imaginational mass’. It has two states that basically come down to differences in density: the first one’s Orb Imagination, which isn’t dense at all, and the second one’s Pure Imagination, which is a bit of a misnomer because it’s just Orb Imagination that’s been put under immense pressure and turned into a crystal.”

“Now, the next bit nobody understands yet. Nobody. Essentially, a nervous system can use Orb Imagination as a power source to manipulate reality. It’s sometimes called a ‘psionic catalyst’ because of that. I haven’t drunk any today and I don’t have any with me, so… Anyone care to demonstrate?”

After a brief pause, a notepad, glowing bright blue, floats into the air from somewhere in the audience.

“There. Like that. Basically, any Imagination-based manipulation happens because a mind is involved or something like a mind is involved. That second one is Imagitech: machines that emulate a process that would, in a brain, conceptualise something. The Imagikinetic convertors in our cars, for instance, are copying neuron firing patterns that add up to the idea of the car moving forwards.”

“Now, the important thing to remember is that this follows the Law of Conservation of Energy. You can get things to move pretty easily but creating new matter is pretty much a no-go. What this also means is that Imagination orbs lose their mass when they’re used. That means, of course, that they don’t interact with other types of matter any more. It also means that any kind of force on them causes them to accelerate instantly, probably to the speed of light. Remember how I said that Imagination has general mass and Imaginational mass? As soon as Orb Imagination is used, it loses its general mass - but its Imaginational mass, and thus its attraction to other Imagination, is still there. Orb Imagination in this state is called ‘Shadow Imagination’ - don’t ask me why - and it effectively teleports to the nearest and most Imaginationally massive source of Imagination, which is almost always Pure Imagination because it’s so dense.”

“Now, here’s the other thing about Imagination that no-one understands: Pure Imagination can give Shadow Imagination its mass back. There are dozens of theories that Imagination scientists have about where the energy needed to do that’s coming from but I’ll spare you the details because, frankly, I don’t remember or understand most of them. Anyway, that’s why Imagination doesn’t just run out after being used for a while; any that does just comes back re-energised. Most of that’s at the Imagination Nexus, which is the massive Pure Imagination crystal underneath New Nexus Tower, but some of it goes to smaller crystals if they’re close enough. It’s why we put one in both of the Chase Cutters this year.”

“I think that’s all of the important stuff. I’d be happy to talk to you afterwards if anything’s unclear.”