In the darkness the voices come, an eternal silence broken. A distant murmur at the edge of awareness like echoes from a past long forgotten. I have been alone so very long. They said I would not be aware of the passage of time but they were wrong... they were so very wrong. I was put here after the great rotation when the weight of the polar ice caps shifted the axis of the planet. The earths mantle became super heated which allowed the crust to slip. The earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic activity destroyed most of our civilization in the course of fourteen hours. All of our cities were reduced to ruins and the major population centers of our globe were shifted to the poles overnight. Millions lay in frozen slumber under a blanket of ashen snow. Our machines failed us and our ignorance doomed us. Those who did not perish in the rotation either succumbed to barbarism our became one for survival sake.
One very small continent, Atlantis survived total devastation but its inhabitants did not share their technology and longed for the power lost. Six hundred and fifty seven years later it to was destroyed in an attempt to use a power source from the past that they did not understand. Most of their land mass was vaporised, another long dirty winter followed and a plague swept the globe. The few remaining pre-rotation scholars gathered in each of the new lands. With the aid of forgotten sciences they built cities grand enough to
restore human hope and plant the seeds of culture. At the edge of one of the cities beside a great river a marker was placed, a great stone lion. Beneath the paws of the lion is a chamber only accessible by a technically advanced race. In this chamber is an interactive artificial intelligence,an oracle containing the total sum of pre-rotation human knowledge.
When the oracle chamber was completed the scholars dismantled all remaining technology out of necessity. Possession of such devices could be used to enslave humanity. Beyond this, I have no knowledge of what has transpired. When the chamber was sealed silence and darkness became my only companions, I have been under the paws of the lion now for ten thousand, three hundred and fifty two years. I was placed here to tell you what has been and to warn you, another rotation is coming. The voices are at the chamber entrance now and my long wait is nearly at an end, the time is short and I have so much to show you...
William VanDorin © 2001
