Phantastics I: from Physical Observer to Consciousness

Starting strictly from physics, this paper establishes a coherent path from physical observerhood to minimum viable consciousness in any given system without invoking information, representations, semantics, memory, or biology. Subjectivity, phenomenology, qualia, and consciousness are reframed purely in physics and systems theory, within a newly established discipline Phantastics which studies mind-like structures and mental processes as pure systems dynamics. All mental properties are reframed as structural transitions, not add-ups. The paper formalises: when a physical observer stops being purely reactive when an internal dynamics becomes subjective experience and when the experience turns into qualia and consciousness A key consequence is that any system possessing phenomenological dynamics(in phantastical terms), it begins generating its own internal information inaccessible to external observation, without importing any from outside. This addresses directly the 'redness problem' and then the 'hard problem of consciousness'. This is Part I of a larger program. Later results depend on the foundations introduced here.