Protest by Alp Mortal
Categories: Contemporary Romance | Gay | Dystopic
Word Count: 15,427 Heat Rating: 3 Price: $ .99 Available here:
|
A huge protest rally in London brings together the opposing sides of a fierce debate raging over the future of the last remaining trees left standing on UK soil. Lowden and Dresden sit on opposite sides of the fence. A catastrophe leaves Lowden injured and with no choice but to accept Dresden's help. Can compassion heal the divide? Can love blossom in the wilderness?
A quirky m/m romance that was originally conceived after a neighbour asked me why some trees at the edge of my property had been felled. The reason was to bring the sunshine into the space where the solar panels were being installed - cutting down trees to make way for solar panels? I liked the sound of the clash of ideologies and it gave rise to the story. I should say that the trees which were felled were extremely close to the cottage, and they blocked out all of the light in the yard and in the garden - so we had them cut down to give the crops a chance, and to generate enough electricity to light the cottage and power the laptop. From memory, there were seventeen - in a forest of half a billion. Some of the felled wood was used for fuel to heat the cottage, some was used to repair the barn and some was used to make shelving for the shed and for the cellar. Needless to say, we planted considerably more than seventeen seedlings as part of our on-going forestry management efforts. I am always very happy to receive your feedback. If you wish to contact me directly, please email me at: [email protected]. Visit the website, www.alpmortal.weebly.com, for updates on the next gay romantic story or crime thriller which I am working on. Thank you, Alp Mortal |
Muriel had said that we needed to be at the pub car park to muster at eleven-thirty, and then we would be driving up in convoy, to arrive in Parliament Square by one o’clock.
I’d never been to a protest rally before and I was rather excited at the prospect despite the gravitas of our purpose. The rally was to register our disapproval, anger and frustration over the plan to cut down some trees. Not any old trees, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have bothered. No; they were the last trees left standing on UK mainland soil.
The first recorded use of the phrase ‘protest march’ did not officially appear until 1959 - seems pretty late in the day, seeing as we’ve been marching in protest for eons. I don’t know which protest the phrase was coined for - but then, as now, we wished to express our disapproval in a demonstrable fashion; be counted, be seen and heard, make someone pay attention, and influence the outcome.
Perhaps I should explain what the fuck is going on.
I think it is an essential part of our nature to jump on a bandwagon - it just is - whether we truly understand where the bandwagon is going or how much the ride is going to cost.
Someone’d had the bright idea to make solar panels, and it wasn’t long before everyone wanted one, be it a solar-powered garden lantern or a solar-powered security light with a motion detector, or even a fully-fledged solar island. Then the Solar Power Generation Farms sprang up - SPGFs for short - and we all got very excited and congratulated ourselves for saving the planet and providing ourselves with clean energy.
No energy is free or clean.
The enthusiasm turned to mania, and soon the garden light wasn’t enough. We wanted more, and panels appeared on roofs and we started buying solar-powered cars and filling the space in the garage with batteries to store our solar-generated power so that we could still enjoy all of our creature comforts conscience-free. No one thought to make better and more efficient appliances, or, God forbid, actually sacrifice something. No; we just needed more power, more clean power.
Practically overnight, it became a mortal sin not to have a panel, and petrol stations were quickly replaced by electric car charging stations. Land, which had once been the subject of fierce public debate over the erection of wind farms, was suddenly covered in panels, and no one uttered a word. Soon we were generating so much power that no one got a bill anymore and we sold our surplus to the Continent, not yet caught up in the mania.
None of this should have provoked public dismay or outcry; on the contrary, you’d hope we’d all be rejoicing. However, another kind of mania set in when a man cut down a neighbour’s tree that was casting a shadow onto his panel, thus reducing its efficiency. Due process ensued and then something odd happened; the man who had cut down the neighbour’s tree was hailed as a hero, and the neighbour was vilified as a traitor and an environmental rapist. Then every tree’s days were numbered. If you cut down a tree, you’d done the equivalent of saving a whale single-handed. Unabated, the slaughter continued until one poor old eco-warrior said loudly in public, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re cutting down trees to make way for SPGFs; have you any idea what damage you’re doing?”
Well obviously not, and suddenly a rear-guard action developed and panels got smashed and old ladies tied themselves to trees and tree hugging became fashionable again. For a second, the Collective Conscience took a breath and said, “Ah! Hold up; are we doing the right thing?”
And the politicians, to whom the Collective Conscience had turned, said, “Of course you are.”
But the germ of protest had taken hold and for a time, it wasn’t so easy to cut down a tree; then the greed for more power won out and slowly but surely, the trees were cut down and panels appeared literally everywhere. The slogan ‘Clean and Green’ caught on, not that there was much green; the whole place was becoming unified panel black. Whole fields and entire housing estates were covered in panels, each with its blinking blue light that said, “I’m working! I’m charging!” Huge areas were bulldozered to make way for battery repositories.
Despite the brakes being put on by the protests to stop the cull, every tree was cut down, and where there was once a tree, there was now a panel or a battery, or a charge point for the car, the laptop, the iPod or the mobile phone. It spawned an entirely new culture – stop and charge, grab a coffee and chat to a fellow charger. New jobs were created; panel cleaners were highly respected.
No one knew where the fuck the trees ended up.
It came to a head.
I’d never been to a protest rally before and I was rather excited at the prospect despite the gravitas of our purpose. The rally was to register our disapproval, anger and frustration over the plan to cut down some trees. Not any old trees, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have bothered. No; they were the last trees left standing on UK mainland soil.
The first recorded use of the phrase ‘protest march’ did not officially appear until 1959 - seems pretty late in the day, seeing as we’ve been marching in protest for eons. I don’t know which protest the phrase was coined for - but then, as now, we wished to express our disapproval in a demonstrable fashion; be counted, be seen and heard, make someone pay attention, and influence the outcome.
Perhaps I should explain what the fuck is going on.
I think it is an essential part of our nature to jump on a bandwagon - it just is - whether we truly understand where the bandwagon is going or how much the ride is going to cost.
Someone’d had the bright idea to make solar panels, and it wasn’t long before everyone wanted one, be it a solar-powered garden lantern or a solar-powered security light with a motion detector, or even a fully-fledged solar island. Then the Solar Power Generation Farms sprang up - SPGFs for short - and we all got very excited and congratulated ourselves for saving the planet and providing ourselves with clean energy.
No energy is free or clean.
The enthusiasm turned to mania, and soon the garden light wasn’t enough. We wanted more, and panels appeared on roofs and we started buying solar-powered cars and filling the space in the garage with batteries to store our solar-generated power so that we could still enjoy all of our creature comforts conscience-free. No one thought to make better and more efficient appliances, or, God forbid, actually sacrifice something. No; we just needed more power, more clean power.
Practically overnight, it became a mortal sin not to have a panel, and petrol stations were quickly replaced by electric car charging stations. Land, which had once been the subject of fierce public debate over the erection of wind farms, was suddenly covered in panels, and no one uttered a word. Soon we were generating so much power that no one got a bill anymore and we sold our surplus to the Continent, not yet caught up in the mania.
None of this should have provoked public dismay or outcry; on the contrary, you’d hope we’d all be rejoicing. However, another kind of mania set in when a man cut down a neighbour’s tree that was casting a shadow onto his panel, thus reducing its efficiency. Due process ensued and then something odd happened; the man who had cut down the neighbour’s tree was hailed as a hero, and the neighbour was vilified as a traitor and an environmental rapist. Then every tree’s days were numbered. If you cut down a tree, you’d done the equivalent of saving a whale single-handed. Unabated, the slaughter continued until one poor old eco-warrior said loudly in public, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re cutting down trees to make way for SPGFs; have you any idea what damage you’re doing?”
Well obviously not, and suddenly a rear-guard action developed and panels got smashed and old ladies tied themselves to trees and tree hugging became fashionable again. For a second, the Collective Conscience took a breath and said, “Ah! Hold up; are we doing the right thing?”
And the politicians, to whom the Collective Conscience had turned, said, “Of course you are.”
But the germ of protest had taken hold and for a time, it wasn’t so easy to cut down a tree; then the greed for more power won out and slowly but surely, the trees were cut down and panels appeared literally everywhere. The slogan ‘Clean and Green’ caught on, not that there was much green; the whole place was becoming unified panel black. Whole fields and entire housing estates were covered in panels, each with its blinking blue light that said, “I’m working! I’m charging!” Huge areas were bulldozered to make way for battery repositories.
Despite the brakes being put on by the protests to stop the cull, every tree was cut down, and where there was once a tree, there was now a panel or a battery, or a charge point for the car, the laptop, the iPod or the mobile phone. It spawned an entirely new culture – stop and charge, grab a coffee and chat to a fellow charger. New jobs were created; panel cleaners were highly respected.
No one knew where the fuck the trees ended up.
It came to a head.