In seventy years time, you will still be able to recognise the Britain of today. But there will be significant differences, posing the question, If its like that then, what is it now that takes us there?
Pee-Bee and Prudence, both in their late teens, confront some alarming issues when Pee-Bees grandfather, Stevie, disappears under suspicious circumstances. They had thought he was going to end his days, eased towards death in one of the state-of-the-art Sunset Dream Homes.
Determined to discover what has happened to Stevie, their investigations take Pee-Bee and Prudence to south-west France and the Institut de Gétontologie, where cutting-edge medical advances harvest and transplant memories for commercial and political purposes. Following a daring raid on the institute, supported by the enigmatic Melchizedek, they confront not only their own circumstances and motivation but also some of the fundamental principles underpinning society. Stevies involvement in a tragic incident, decades earlier, and revelations about his own father oblige Pee-Bee to face up to the way the forgotten past can haunt the present while still offering hope. He emerges from this emotional ordeal strengthened, challenged and disturbed. Fall-out from these events is picked up in The Net, Soft Apocalypse Book II.
D N Matthews was formerly the head teacher of a comprehensive school in South London. He is now Churchwarden of Ipswich Minster and director of a small company dedicated to improving the urban environment. He has written a novel, That They Might Lovely Be, poetry and a play, which has been professionally performed. This is the first of a planned trilogy of novels. He lives in East Anglia.
