Yes indeed, at the infinitesimal level of order there is a source of power that fuels mass, gravity and what science books call the ability of energy to do work.
The scientific community is working on the details but quantum mechanics is incomplete and string theory makes no testable predictions, so you are right so far about the “impassable limit”. Put simply, the current impasse is seen as the incompatibility between quantum mechanics and general relativity. The incompatibility can be referred to as a difference between Einstein’s dynamic spacetime that could have had a beginning and Newton’s fixed space what had no beginning and was just space where everything exists and happens.
Quantum Wave Cosmology goes to that impasse and suggests some physics that would resolve it. We know that something is operating at the quantum level to provide useful energy in the form of mass. It is generally accepted that mass and energy are equivalent in e = mc² proportions. Three key questions that science is working on are how mass forms, how it contains its energy, and the cause of and the field across which gravity is transmitted between mass (spacetime and curved space of General Relativity describe the effect and not the cause of gravity).
We know how to release the atomic energy but we don’t have a complete particle model that explains all of the relationships at the fundamental particle level. The cause of gravity is not described yet by QM either. The new accelerator, the LHC at
Cern is coming online to help in the research process, but it is likely that though new levels of particles and particle interactions will be discovered, the final answers will remain elusive.
Quantum Wave Cosmology that I am introducing describes a more fundamental level of energy and interaction, a commonality between all of the fundamental particles described in the particle model and so it is speculation. But it is reasonable and responsible speculation if you look at it as it was developed, i.e. one step at a time.
I mentioned the first step was to go “before” the big bang and I speculate that space, time and energy pre-existed the big bang. To help understand the realm of QWC, it was developed as a model where the universe is infinite, is composed of energy and has always existed.