The below extract is part of a paper recently submitted to the United Nations Committee on Climate Change

When you peel back the layers of the multiverse, you uncover a myriad of types of existence. From super intelligent biroid life forms, capable of self refilling ink reservoirs using a combination of sunlit and spittle and community retractions that put apologising politicians to shame to agrarian gas clouds that spend their lives in a state of animated frustration as they try and fail to herd ruminant miasmas that often lead to an attack of the vapours.

One layer, deeply embedded in the small and tasteless section of the multiverse is home to an industrious people, formed from the hydrocaboniferous detritus of our layer. These plastics gellify on arrival into embryonic bipeds, known for their love of clashing primary colours, pointed hats and a default inclination to fish. We know them as gnomes.

On Gnomicoid, the embryos develop much like humans, spending their early years at school learning how to stand still and stare myopically into space, while pretending to be policemen or gardeners, or some such and practicing how to wear a beard and a pointy hat in all weathers. On graduation they slip through a loophole in the space time continuum to our layer where they lie dormant – sleeper gnomes – in stores and garden centres until deployed to gardens and parks where they gather up as much redundant plastic as they can and push it back through the same loophole.

It’s a dangerous and fraught existence often ending in an ignominious end at the hands (or teeth) of a psychopathic child or mangy dog. But still they let themselves willingly be deployed to ensure the contained existence of their species. That is until recently.

At one such educational establishment – the Gnomic Institute for Technology, or GIT school as it’s locally known – has recently had difficulties with some of its students. Gnorman Gnome and Gnorris Gnome are two bright, some might say gaudy, students who belong to a pressure group dedicated to the end of conscription of gnomes in pursuit of plastic waste. They believe it is the right of every gnome, indeed every plastic humanoid ornament to decide if it wants it join the legions of static collectors pushed across the vacuums of space or to stay and fish. Some see them as freedom fighters, some as rabble rousers. They see themselves as anglers.

Their opinions and those of similarly minded plastic pucks have gained traction and more gnomes, like those seen in the picture picketing the community school are turning their backs on a life of static statuary. So much so that we here in our own layer are realising how much we need these dedicated gnomic forces to keep our planet clear of unwanted plastics. We have abused, ridiculed and under-appreciated these small but essential components of our bio diverse world. The dreadful pictures of oceans full of plastic gyring to the planet’s endless rhythms while grinding this indestructible waste into micro particles that form part of the food chain and eventually us are a chilling warning. We must help and support these visitors to our shores. The days when we ranted at these dedicated professional refuse removers has to stop if we don’t want to end up like them: made of plastic and only good for fishing.

This forms part of this week’s #writephoto prompt here