It was known that with the correct application of technology, an object or individual could be put into a forced-paradox state in which that object was entirely removed from the timeline as if it had never been there. Yet although this process removed the object’s matter from the universe, an observer in a null-zone state could still remember its existence. Therefore the memetic mass of the object – its meaning, its importance, its ability to be comprehended – remained. The object survived, but as a pure concept of itself, as a shadow of understanding with no physical mass. It was the same principle which would, once the War began, be used to create the conceptual entities