Grab a copy of Feersum Endjinn by Iain M Banks , and maybe Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny see also Creatures of Light and Darkness , also by Zelazny . Those books pretty much shaped my ideas of a future postcollapse scenario . A very few people control the wealth and power , and know the secret though they may or may not know how to make new things , they ' ve scavenged their way into their position and can bolster it with shows of force , or miracles . In the wider population , some people are just born with the sense of being connected to something bigger than themselves they ' re not empathic , they ' re just the one in ten thousand whose implanted firmware came online and connected them to the network . They see things others can ' t , can sometimes make other people do stuff they don ' t want to , but because they ' re so open they are most vulnerable to others like them . In the Old Times , most people would have these implants at birth , they ' d come online around age five or six , and then go offline again until puberty when you ' d have access to the wider network . In the postcollapse , network access is restricted and gated , and probably full of really fucking crazy AI on a god kick , so you ' d have to undergo a series of challenges to break parental controls . For system right now I ' d probably go with a version of Sprawl with the playbooks retooled to a more fantasy appropriate feel .