Voice: Thermodynamic Federalism (1905 echo: scientific management of energy flows)
Tension: Regions cross different energy thresholds. Our aim is to bend divergence toward stability—energy‑abundant zones lift the whole, while energy‑scarce zones avoid collapse.
Principle: “Stability before abundance” — reliability and safe restore trump peak output during stress.
Written “as if” from late 2040 to seed the next cycle (2040–2045). Uses the same review framing: 5 Wins and 5 Reversals.
The new dashboard goes live at noon. It looks like a weather map for power: arrows for flows, blue for storage, a soft red for losses. A grandmother in a hot district checks the app and applies for a cooling credit; a smelter schedules a shift for the cheap hours; a reporter screenshots a spike and asks whether it’s corruption. The operator shrugs: “It’s entropy.” In the evening, the minister says the word out loud—thermodynamics—and the journalists nod as if it’s always been a political term.
At the edge of town, a fence full of flags whips in the wind. A rectangle of earth is marked with chalk where the new geothermal pad will sit. The foreman taps the sign that says “public ledger inside.” A girl on a field trip asks whether the heat ever runs out. “Not before you get bored of the question,” he says. In a nearby warehouse, technicians practice swapping HVDC converter modules. Everyone argues about permits. At the diner, a server says the power is cleaner but the tips are the same.
The desalination intake rumbles like a low ferry. Kids press their hands to the visitor‑centre glass and watch water turn from grey to clear to sweet. A union rep points out the overtime board: a lot of names, fewer hours than last summer. Far away, farm cooperatives spray fermented protein onto trays like frosting; the air smells faintly like oven bread and sea‑spray. “We’ll still cook,” an aunt says, “but the old recipes will have footnotes.”
The circular manufacturing park looks like a university until a gantry lifts a car‑sized block of shredded electronics into the maw of a sorter. Cameras read the scraps like a novel and sort copper from ghosts. A whistle blows when a rare mineral hits quota. A worker keeps a tiny jar of recovered silver on her desk. “It came from phones,” she tells her son on a school tour. “Maybe yours.”
They dim the lights in the control room for the rehearsal. In the first minute, the federation cleaves into islands; in the second, a substation fails because someone forgot a patch; in the third, nothing bad happens and everyone exhales. A drone camera shows a string of converters like beads in the dusk. A note pops up on the wall: Don’t chase peak; chase survival. Someone takes a picture because the handwriting is pretty.
The train runs the length of the relocation corridor and smells like cinnamon from the care‑kitchen. Volunteers staple maps to a corkboard while a nurse checks a new patient’s wristband. Out the window, a desal plant throws steam into a blue sky; past it, a field of mirrors aims light at a tower. A little boy points and says “power castle.” His mother laughs and cries at the same time.