[sethrin]

It's perhaps not altogether useful to regard c as a speed. Or rather you should redefine your idea of speed. It's a universal constant relating matter to spacetime. Time is a length measurement, and you're already moving at c in that dimension. If you start accelerating then you are trading time velocity for spacial velocity, so as you approach c your movement through time approaches zero.

> does that really mean that space is really so constantly twisting and turning that SOL can't be exceeded?

The speed of light stays the same and both time and space twist and turn around it. It's weird, but having a preferred reference frame would be just as weird. c is a dimensionless constant, and light happens to travel at that speed because it has no rest mass.