Nösphere

You know how nice that computer looks, all buttoned up like it is? What's going on inside, though? You cannot see it, even though you know if you hit the power button it will turn on, yeah? The Nösphere is kind of like that, but replace the plastic cover with the reality that you can touch and see, and the wires with... something else.

Beneath everything that you know, in a place (of sorts) that most will never be able to see or feel unassisted, the rules of the universe, physical laws and the like, are determined and we don't know why.

The Nösphere is that place. A swirling morass of probability, heat, gravity, mass, and all the other little things that make up the building blocks of our reality. It is not a hospitable place, to say the least.

Certain species, sapient and not, seem able to reach into the Nösphere in small ways as part of a natural proclivity, able to do things that don't make sense with our current understanding of physics. Inverting or multiplying gravity, creating heat and flames from nothing, teleportation of matter, myriad forms of radiological expression, and being able to separate matter at the molecular level with nothing but a thought, amongst countless other possibilities. When part of a sapient species, these individuals are known as Espers and they are highly sought after for their skill sets.

The Nösphere is also what makes faster-than-light travel possible, through the use of a Hyperspace Drive; a device that is able to partially submerg a vehicle within the Nösphere, thus allowing it to overcome the limitations of physics on such speeds with relative ease.