Now, the stories being told won't really be detailing the technical ins and outs of this energy budget. Narrator(s) and characters may or not be aware of this reality underlying that of their day-to-day, but the sorts of technologies, economies, etc. available will be a manifestation of the limits imposed by the energy budget.
Note that declining energy per capita doesn't necessarily mean that everyone on the planet will necessarily adopt a lower-energy lifestyle. There will be winners and losers. There will be hoarders. There will be centers of high tech whizbangery and swaths of no places, rewilding ruins of modernity and industrialization, and everything in between. That is, there's a place in these stories for patches of civilization that continue research in AI, drone warfare, virtual worlds, genetic engineering, whatever technograndiose fantasy you wish. Kurzweil's singularity may exist in a heavily guarded compound in this world. That said, in a world with falling EPC, if these high tech, high energy processes proceed, it can only mean greater stratification between the energy haves and have nots. Further, energy sources will play a part globally. USA's well past its own oil production peak (1970) today, and geopolitics can play out in a number of ways. Wealth and income distribution will follow energy distribution, and that's where you derive your divide between walled, shining cities from the squalid, earthy lands of barbarians. For my part, I want to primarily tell the stories of the barbarians.
I'm not sure I want this to be a class struggle story, a proletarian revolution.
Looping back to "everything in between", I'm interested in exploring what it looks like when you start dismantling what remains of industrial civilization and bring it closer to earth.
Besides the EPC component, I'm using Strauss and Howe's saeculum and generational archetypes as a template for the cycle of stories. As mentioned, they're calling for crisis in 2005-2025ish, and as I turn the wheel forward, I'd like to pick up the narrative roughly 2065, in an unraveling period.
2065-2085, Unraveling
EPC ~ 1945-1965, similar EPC to postwar boom
Artist entering elderhood
Prophet entering middle age
Nomad entering young adulthood
Hero entering childhood
2085-2105, Crisis
EPC ~ 1925-1945, pre-petroleum boom equivalent, post-suburban
Prophet
Nomad
Hero
Artist
2105-2125, High
EPC ~ 1905-1925
Nomad
Hero
Artist
Prophet
2125-2145, Awakening
EPC ~ 1885-1905
Hero
Artist
Prophet
Nomad
Great prophet myths emerge from awakenings with aging heroes. This is a spiritual and cultural awakening, led by the great prophet character.
2145-2165, Unraveling
EPC ~ 1865-1885
Artist
Prophet
Nomad
Hero
The more I play with this layout, the more I want to start the stories in 2125, during the awakening. It may not matter when they start. I'm not sure I want to reveal them in a linear, chronological fashion. Maybe I'd like to write books, but I'd like to incorporate multimedia, alternate reality gaming into the storytelling. The stories may be told as dispatches from the future, scattered in various ways across the landscape and current media.
A band of barbarians reaches the white tower of singularity and broadcasts their message of hope to the faithful in the past. Kurzweil's ilk began building the infrastructure for cross-temporal communication long before they had the means to use it. The techno elite use this to market to the past to plump up current investments. Hackers use this to leave breadcrumbs on another path. Maybe. Regardless, I think I've got my factions. See Atlantis, The Institute.
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