Dear Edwin,
You are right, the issue of localism is central.
I don't think Bell's logic is flawed. Take the simplest case. A Caesium atom sends off two photons in opposite directions with unknown spin. Define "en route" as being from that event until either photon is involved in any physical event. So traveling through space, air or glass is "en route", but any physical interaction, like measuring its spin, is not en route. So if the apparatus has ANY physical effect, the photon is no longer en route. However it could, as you say, affect the photon's "hidden properties" which then become evident later when spin is measured. This is also what Einstein thought, so you are in good company here.
To evaluate this, note that photon spin is a binary outcome, with only two values, "up" or "down", for clockwise or anti-clockwise direction, and always by the same amount, which is Planck's reduced constant. That the spin outcome is probabilistic does not mean it is "changing", except if by that you mean entirely and totally reversing spin direction as it moves. So a photon is not like some cork on a quantum sea that continuously changes position as it bobs up and down. It is like a trap that irreversibly snaps shut the moment anything physically touches it, and does so clockwise or anti-clockwise randomly, i.e. not determined by prior physical events.
In entanglement, two such traps set off in opposite directions, and we find that if one snaps shut one way, the always goes the other way. So if the "apparatus" causes hidden "changes", why does it always change one up and the other down? Also the entangled photons can travel light years in empty space before the measurement, why does the "apparatus" of empty space push one up and the other down, as space is isotropic? It doesn't make sense.
In addition, the quantum collapse of the two-slit experiment implies the same "non-locality" when only one photon hits a screen with no apparatus except space, as follows:
"To Einstein, quantum collapse was absurd, as it implied faster than light travel. In his thought experiment a photon travels through a slit to hit a screen. Before it hits, the wave function says it could exist at points say A or B on the screen with some probability. After it hits, it is suddenly entirely at point A say, and not at point B at all. Now as the screen moves further away, the wave projection increases until eventually the A to B distance could be light years. Yet in quantum theory, the collapse is still immediate. The moment point A "knows" it is the particle, then B "knows" it is not, even if they are in different galaxies. The collapse decision is applied faster than the speed of light, which by special relativity is impossible for any known form of physical transmission." (from my Ch3, p16)
In contrast, the VR conjecture requires this non-locality, as a program acting upon a screen is always non-local to that screen. As you look at the screen to read this posting the program creating takes the same time to change any pixel - it has no screen limits. This of course is assuming that the physical world is an image on a screen, which is just a conjecture.
Your idea of a C field is remarkably similar to the idea of a grid. The main difference is that fields are presumed continuous while a grid is presumed discrete. You say that "superposition of states inherently does away with realism in favor of mysticism, claiming that quantum objects are 'ghostly' until measured".
I argue that it only does away with physical realism, but not realism per se. When you say we still do not know what a quantum field is I add "physically". We know what it is mathematically. If one defines postulating anything "beyond the physical" as "mystical", then both quantum theory and your C field are so already. The VR conjecture is just saying the same thing, but more bluntly, and without a "cover" of mathematics.
To me, logically, physics left the enclave of positivism long ago, when it embraced Faraday's idea of a field, which Feynman defines as follows:
"A real field is a mathematical function we use for avoiding the idea of action at a distance. " (Feynman, Leighton, & Sands, 1977) Vol. II, p15-7
We don't "see" fields, just their effects, and what is action at a distance but non-locality? I like fields, but lets be honest - they are not positivist "things" perceived directly.
So while "The physical fact is that a magnetic field can only measure along one axis at once", the quantum fact is that it can go both ways at once. This is why quantum computing operates quite differently from our physical computing.
This model is the testable theory that the physical world is virtual, i.e. has the properties of a processing output. What processing creates it can be derived by reverse engineering, if it is consistent. Other than that, how to describe it is open. So your C field could be a fine way to do that, and perhaps a better one, as it allows mathematics.
regards
Brian