A few days ago I was choosing a gift for the New year. As I was standing in the gift shop and my sight was caught by the mug with memes.
I thought that it looks like the internet somehow crawled into reality. Every shop I saw during my journey through the mall had something inherited purely from internet culture. One might agree that it looks like the "barrier" between the internet and reality is getting "thinner" in such places. Of course, I am saying it with some irony, because today the "internet rift" is impossible. It is just an example of why I am even considering to treat the internet as a seed for the immaterium.
The question is how the evolution of the internet might go for it to become somewhat similar to warp from the Warhammer universe.
Some logical constraints should help it to stay at least semi-realistic:
No usual type of magic(though it might form it's own "magic") or aliens
It does not physically exist in form of subspace as immaterium in the Warhammer universe does.
Starting evolution point is the present time.
But at the same time, in my opinion, there should be some defining properties:
It should provide the means to use it as some kind of transport.
There should be entities that are "living" there.
It should be very hard/impossible to control it even if everybody(the human race) decides to unite their efforts.
In my opinion for starting, this "immaterium" should be restricted to Earth, to put the space travel out of scope to avoid all paradoxes and decisions related to FTL traveling. But I would like to hear how to port this idea to the universe with reasonable space travel mechanics.
Edit:
As requested by AlexP I am defining what I mean by "immaterium". Firstly, it is effectively a parallel universe(or subspace) with its own logic of existence. Usually, it is associated with superluminal travel, but here it is not the case.
There are limited means to access this universe to use it for some purpose. Here are some examples of such spaces:
StarTrack or Starwars like hyperspace. It is uninhabited and used only as a means of transport.
Blame! like subspace which only exists as virtual reality simulated by hardware in megastructures.
Warp in Warhammer universe as mentioned above.