Lots of stuff doing on, very little work with this project.

Particles might be 'bits' of ZPE in the way tiny droplets of alcohol dance on the surface.
Picture this: a droplet of energy that is stable.  Electron, proton, neutron.
Their existence is not divorced from ZPE, in fact there is an on-going relationship between particle an the vacuum.
Call it entanglement, as the effects are similar.
The particle creates a sort of vacuum deficit, in effect 'robbing' localized ZPE of some vacuum.
This decrease in density in the vacuum is cumulative; consider gravity.  More particles, more masss, more gravity.
It also gives rise to inertia.  Weren't expecting that, eh?
The vacuum deficit is centered on the particle, but when the the particle is accelerated, the communication of that change in direction is not instantaneous.
The limiting factor is the speed of light, or more precisely, the speed of EM fields.
When accelerated, the particle moves off-center from the vacuum deficit, which is the force needed to accelerate the mass. 
The vacuum deficit is what 'carries' kinetic energy, not the difference in particle/vacuum deficit distance.  That distance [and hence resistance to acceleration] normalizes in the absence of acceleration.
As any inertial frame of reference is equally valid, issues like relative velocity become questions of impinging bundles of vacuum deficits dragging along their respective particles.
Is it simple minded to see gravity, mass and acceleration as aspects of the same 'thing', and therefore readily understandable?
Richard Feynman once said that if he could explain inertia, then he could retire and play the bongos on a beach somewhere.
The most basic 'things' in our lives still elude complete understanding.
Magnetism, light, gravity, inertia and radioactivity are all described and predicted in fantastic detail through Science.
When I was 7, my dad gave me an old radio.
I took it apart, of course, but as I did, I made sketches of what I found inside.
Once I had every bit out of the chassis, I tried to figure out what each part was by opening them.
Tubes? Pow!  lots of tiny metal bits.  More drawings.  Capacitors became strips of foil, resistors I used as side-walk pencils.
I was so proud to have reduced an old bit of junk into a dozen of notes that I could use to make my own radio.
If only I could understand what I have drawn so carefully.
A sketch doesn't inform "oh, that has to be an insulator" or "copper conducts too well, use graphite here instead"
Being able to see and record thing is grand, understanding what all the parts do and how they do their job can not come, no matter how long one studies these notes.
Cargo Cults in the Pacific Islands comes to mind. 
The point slithers out:  Science has been doing a grand job of dissecting the Universe.  Take this part out, record the result, put it back, record.
But at some very basic levels, the commonly accepted notion of what this part is, what it does, how it does it, what the part is made of, is unknown.
Science uses magnets for all sorts of stuff, but except for being exceptionally useful and predictable, what IS a magnetic field?  Seriously, after all the metaphors are dropped, there are some essentially untestable theories.  Why untestable?  How do you observe a thing when the observation depends on that thing you are observing?
EM effects [radio, light] use magnetic fields.  How to observe magnetism not using magnetism?
Might as well count how many stars before inventing the idea of numbers.