The problem there is that sequence isn't necesssarily causal. Energy exchange/transition is.

Yesterday doesn't cause today. The sun shining on a spinning planet creates this cycle of days and nights. It is just that our perception is the sequence, like frames of a film. Flashes of perception extracted from the deluge of dynamic information we are being constantly bombarded. So, yes, the narrative is little more than rationalization to tie the perceptions together. Which as functional organisms, we need to do to sustain our mental composure/sanity.

Yet your argument is that if we create a sufficiently complex calculation machine, it would be effectively conscious and my argument is that we need to look at what drives this machine and its development.

The skeleton may be the basis of the form, but the process arises from the seed.

Nature is both complex and simple, chicken and egg. It doesn't need a "sufficiently sophisticated pattern matching process" to survive, simply because "energy is conserved." It builds systems up and breaks them down. Positive and negative feedback. It is not so much the system seeks to survive, as it is driven by its impulses. It might see survival as an aspiration, but without the drive, it is hollow.

Now, as I stated, this isn't to explain this sense of awareness, as it is to further define it.

Also it doesn't seem the function of consciousness is to directly make decisions, as they often occur at the subconscious level, as it is to imagine the possibilities, in order to make more informed decisions.

The difference between waking and dream states is that in the awake state, this process of imagination constantly has to reset to new input, but in the dream state, it simply builds one image from the previous, creating these sequences of perceptions out of stored memories.

One aspect of this is that when people are in a position to imagine and have some control over the input, say the wealthy and politically powerful, religious orders, even some academic fields, or even military strategists, the effect is to spiral off into some conceptual construct that is increasingly divorced from the larger environment. Until such times as that larger reality intrudes and their bubble is popped, causing some degree of harm to the larger environment.

Trial and error.