[quote=@Etcetera]
<Snipped quote by Balance>

So let's take a 2D slice of it—
*A translucent blue field appears in front of us, mostly level with small random fluctuations in height*
Imagine that the X and Y coordinates are your position in space, and Z is the amount of excitation in the electron field. Right now, that's the quantum vacuum—sometimes you get random noise that lines up well enough to create a virtual particle
*Two of the small crests converge temporarily, creating a local point of high excitation before diverging and returning to noise*
And then it poofs away just like that. More or less, I get to decide what the Z axis is going to look like.
*Several large spikes appear on the field*
[/quote]

Do you need to input energy to make those spikes, or can you gather it together from the field, or both?