Dr. Dreyer,
Hi. As with many of the more mathematical essays here, I can't say I understood all of your paper because I'm a biochemist and not a physicist or mathematician, but I can say that based on my own thinking, what you're saying makes a lot of sense, and I will give you a high rating with my vote. I would further add that just about everything, including matter and energy and everything else, is an excitation of, or emergent from, a background. My reasoning would be something like:
1. In thinking about the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", I've come to the conclusion that there is a fundamental existent state, and it doesn't matter if this state is called matter, energy, something, nothing, quantum fluctuation, mathematical construct, causal set, etc.
2. Because our universe has more than one existent state in it, this initial state must have had some way of replicating itself to create more states, which would then be able to create yet more states, thus leading to a big bang-like expansion of space and volume that we call the universe. Thus, our universe, our existence, is made of an expanding sea, or set, of existent states.
3. Because we have movement in our universe, there must have been some mechanism for allowing these existent states to change and transfer this change to adjacent states, in the form of energy. Since we're talking about the physical universe, the existent states would have to be three-dimensional states, and the most basic way I can think of for a 3D existent state to change would be a change, or deformation, in its shape which it can somehow transfer to adjacent states.
4. Because our universe is made of these existent states, everything we see around us, must be excitations within, or of, these states.
To postulate that in addition to the fundamental existent state there is something (e.g., matter) totally different that's "sitting on", as you mentioned, this sea of states, doesn't make much sense. If we really want a unified theory of everything, it makes sense to me that there would be excitations within a sea, or set, of replicas of the fundamental existent state. You can't get much more unified than that, I don't think.
If you're interested, my model for how the above might happen based on proposed solutions to the questions of "Why do things exist?" and "Why is there something rather than nothing?" was the subject of my last FQXi essay from the last contest and is at my website at:
https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite/filecabinet/why-things-exist-something-nothing
You could also try the main site at https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite
and click on the third link.
Anyways, from this amateur's viewpoint, good essay, and good luck!
Roger Granet