We all have a story inside us and this is mine. It is up to the reader to decide whether it is science fiction, fantasy or a natural progression of the planet we call home. I have drawn on local and national events as well as international news stories.
I have become aware through the years of the increasing number of natural disasters that have been occurring worldwide. Not only are they getting more common but they have increased in ferocity. I, personally, think that us mere mortals believe we are superior and will do anything to increase our wealth, whether it be financial, land or power. We destroy the very ecosystem that keeps our planet balanced and also with our fanatical drive for so-called improvement we release poisonous gases into the atmosphere.
I look from my window and see the river glistening below, the Cumbrian Fells above the river turning to gold by the setting sun. I hear the birds sing their evening song and the pheasants coming to the back door for food. Is it any wonder that when I listen to the media telling us of the atrocities that are happening everywhere, whether it is through a natural unbalance or sheer human brutality, I just want to scream ‘Stop.’
Our planet is no different to any other in the solar system, it had a beginning and it will have an end. Why would we want to hasten the deterioration by clearing forests, burying nuclear waste, drilling deep into the Earth’s crust, exploding bombs under ground and fighting among ourselves. Would it not be better for the world to unite and give our planet the opportunity to have many more years of showing us how wonderful it is.
I was drawn to my subject by the great James Herbert, who like many authors wrote fiction with an element of truth. His book ‘The Fog’ impressed me as I always got the impression that it was buried nuclear weapons that had unleashed the poisonous fog onto Britain after being set free by an earthquake. How do we know what damage we are doing for future generations?
I came by the title ‘Protected Mode: Off’ quite simply from looking at the bottom of my computer screen. It correctly describes the core of the story.
The time travellers from the future are dismayed by our obsession for money, power and domination. They know that none of these things have any significance when natural forces are randomly destroying the place we call home.
I have used fact and fiction to portray my thoughts on paper. Fiction had to be included because no-one knows how and when our planet will die, but death is a certainty, as it is with us mere mortals.
Because I am not a scientist my only way of explaining how I think we should deal with climate change has to go in the realms of science fiction and to let the main characters in my novel lead us through their answer to our problems. They are only young adults when they arrive in our time but they have superior knowledge, however they are also extremely naïve to the way we think and act. They have come from a burning planet where everyone pulls together for the same aim, preservation. They can not understand why we take such beauty around us for granted and the fact that we are more interested in money, domination and power.
The time travellers’ mission is to give our planet a bit more normal time before the rot sets in. This means educating the whole world on their misuse of natural resources.
It is up to the reader to decide whether their mission is possible or are we all too set in our ways to listen.
Denise J Grey
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Book Blurb- A group of time travellers from the year 2999 go back to the 21st century with an ambitious mission – to reveal the devastation that awaits if the signs of global warming are continually ignored. Their intense training to survive allows them to blend in with everyone else and absorb maximal knowledge, discreetly, without arousing suspicion of who they really are and where they came from. Knowing that a bleak future lies ahead – confinement in glass domes and nature destroyed – their biggest problem is how they will get people to listen and change their destructive behaviour. With Rose, the youngest time traveller in the group, struggling with her new environment she becomes progressively weak but the others must embrace their task for the sake of humanity.
Author bio- Born in Essex in 1947, Denise has lived in north Yorkshire and Leicestershire. She is a mother to two daughters, but unfortunately her third child, James, died at the tender age of seven in 1988. Denise remarried and is now living happily in Cumbria with her husband Alistair.
