Found a good chunk of the explanation:
The philotic system: the layer of Existence above code that makes things like powers and abilities physically possible. It's like all matter and energy is a bundle of string-like fibers wound tightly to allow matter to stick together. However, these philotes behave differently when exposed to living creatures; whenever a relationship is built between two things (an animal that eats from a certain tree every day, for instance), there becomes a thin connection, built out of strands of philotes between the two. The more they interact, the stronger the connection. This happens to a lesser extent with objects as well, but they'd have to be moved by a living creature to develop connections, as a general rule. However, philotes change when exposed to sentient beings. Now, instead of being connections created only by interacting objects, they are now influenced by will. When two people, for instance, develop a bond, the philotes connection grows stronger and wound tighter, and if you could see philotes, it would look like a thread develops between them, and then later a thick rope that connects the two regardless of where they are. A child will have a better philotic connection to a nostalgic ball he's had all his life than one that was just bought from the store yesterday. However, when dealing with beings with powers, these philotic connections (of which every living creature has massive amounts; even if they only met someone once, they likely have a small number of philotic connections already built) become extremely strong ropes that attach them to whatever they control (if they have a power based on control). Techi, for example, would be connected to every electron around her strongly, and then the further she goes from them, the weaker the philotic thread and the less she can control them, because the information has so far to go and can get lost in the noise. Hence, why she can't manipulate an electron on the other side of Existence. But because philotes are influenced via will, when Techi wills these electrons to do something, it causes the philotic strands to change and move the electrons, almost like tugging on a rope. This is also where the general rule "the more powers you have, the less control you have over each" comes from. The System is self-correcting, so if a being has too many strong philotic connections, it becomes difficult to send signals that are strong to one power in particular and the philotes themselves are a bit "tangled" in a way, so a lot of signal gets lost in noise. Of course, because most beings don't know about this, they aren't aware of the actual process, they just know what "controlling" something is for them, kind of like how nobody thinks about motion vectors and gravitational pull when they walk outside. It "just sort of happens."
