THE PROTOCOL SERIES

James Zollern found inspiration in many places, but the main source was a recurring nightmare he experienced in his youth. In this nightmare, metal bugs would consume the world and duplicate whenever they consumed enough matter. The world would be ending, people lived in a dystopia, pink lightning was constantly striking, and the bugs would consume the world in under an hour.

Eventually, the nightmare evolved and split into other variations. Sometimes, he'd dream about beings he couldn't see, who were painfully inserting the metal bugs into his ear, though he could never physically see them in the dream. When this happened, he'd always awaken with a splitting headache, nausea and a feeling of guilt, though he could never place why. In other variations, the metal bugs placed into people's ears would spread in their bodies and consume them from the inside out, giving them more energy as they continued to consume.

When the 2008 remake of the film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, was released, he was shocked to see the exact thing from his dream occur in the movie. As he grew up, he learned this was an established concept called ecophagy, or "gray goo," a hypothetical, world-ending scenario in which nanotechnology rapidly reproduces and consumes matter for its energy to produce more. Until this scene in the movie, he'd never heard of it before.

The dreams lasted from when he was eight years old up until he was seventeen in 2007, a year before the film remake premiered. The metal bugs, the dreams, and that scene from the movie inspired him greatly, so in 2015, he began outlining a plot of a computer virus from outer space, and combined it with the things from his dreams. The challenge for him was finding a way for it to spread to people, and he eventually came up with the solution, which is explained throughout the story.

When questioned about what inspired him to write about a computer virus from space, he had this to say:

"I remember studying cybersecurity at my first job, learning all about the different protocols that are used in technology. The lesson moved to malware and at one point, it essentially said that a computer virus could come from anywhere. I thought to myself, except from space. Later that night, my family and I were watching the first Transformers, and it got to the scene with the little guy hacking the government computers, where he was adapting to everything they threw at him. So, I thought, you know, that's an interesting concept, what if we took that further? 

My favorite movie has always been Independence Day, and we all know that near the end, David uses a computer virus to infect the ships. So, it began as this mix of things, and I had tried writing other books about alien invasions before, but I'd always get stuck or bored with it. I had all these characters and ideas just sitting around, so in 2015, I finally started drafting an outline, and I used some of my leftover stuff from my previous attempts.

I had the outline ready in roughly a month, and it was wildly different from the story that it turned into. I needed a name for the virus, and since I was studying cybersecurity, I thought Protocol would make a clever name, because it's challenging accepted protocols, not just in technology, but in society. The book was originally just named Protocol, but as I did some research, I was reading how unique titles tend to stand out. I had been on a fringe, sci-fi reading spike, looking for ideas, and I came across The Philadelphia Experiment. It was a fun read, and that's what I decided on was The Protocol Experiment.

The story itself became an experiment on humanity's ethics in a digital world, and what technology looks like when it isn't regulated. Artificial intelligence in the way we use it now was still considered science fiction at the time, so it was intended as this warning for the future. During the decade of writing [the story], which I'll explain [in a moment], I watched technology grow and evolve into almost the exact thing I was writing about. It got scary fast, and I was about to continue the story, but then COVID happened, and it didn't seem like a good time to be writing about a global outbreak.

I would write this story sort of on and off, but I would lose motivation or get writer's block, so it kept becoming this thing that I'd go back to and ultimately give up on. I was terminally ill with non-alcoholic, end-stage liver disease in 2025, a year after my father passed, and was told I only had up to three weeks to live. I told myself that if I survived this liver transplant surgery, I was finishing the book when I finally recovered, and I made good on that promise. I haven't looked back since.

So, while this did originate as a dream, there were plenty of other contributing factors to the idea. It was this original idea that had never been done before, not the way I did it, and I knew it was worth exploring. I've learned a lot about writing, met some great people, hosted a signing at my local Barnes & Noble, and it's just been this incredibly rewarding journey that I never would've imagined for myself when I was dying. That's the thing about second chances: they make you look at the world, and time itself, differently."

Almost every character deals with something from James' own life, a major part being grief and its impact. Loss is a heavy theme in the story, as he experienced many losses throughout those ten years (October 7, 2015–December 17, 2025). In the original outline, the year was 2025 instead of 2036, as he wanted to move it ahead ten years, but as the year got closer, he added ten more years to allow more time and increased it by a year because 2036 sounded better, and he could still come up with ideas for how that future might look. A lot of ideas that were considered science fiction at the time had become at least somewhat of a reality, so he rewrote it from being a simple virus into something more.

Additionally, he found inspiration and motivation from other sci-fi genres in media, rock songs, and poetry. There are several themes explored throughout the book, including the dangers of trusting technology too much, how rapid and forceful loss can be, and how to move on while holding that loss, along with found family and trusting one's instincts. James has always been a heavy fan of anything fringe or sci-fi, particularly aliens, space adventures, parallel dimensions and time travel.

Media referenced as inspiration are The X-Files, Independence Day, 12 Monkeys (the series), Roswell (2001), Signs, Falling Skies, Marvel Comics and more.