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 remake film, "The Day 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.

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 (July 28, 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 sci-fi, particularly aliens, other dimensions and time travel.