The Pole Shift

Perez

If you are good they will seek you out. Perez tumbled with the words over and over again. They were one of the oldest platitudes, he had raged against it, thinking the thought puerile, untrue.

Perez was coming out of his torpor. It was a slow process, one complicated by two unexpected awakenings. The boy, then, the boy and the girl. What were their names? He cast the thought aside, feeling blood flood his cotton balled veins. His heart beat once, then again shortly afterwards. As he opened his eyes his heart thudded once more, as if an engine was being started carefully. How much sweeter it was to sleep in the inner ocean. Those cradling waters cared for his body and mind in a exquisite way. It was a deep pleasure to awaken there. Here, his own blood had to warm his hibernation, his own lungs had to suck in still cavern air, and thoughts pushed at him that did not belong.

If you are good they will seek you out. The words came again. Perez did not like the unbidden sentiment. It was chance that the boy and girl found him, surely. Had one of the youths said those silly words? Or was it an old memory? He pushed the idea away with another thought, muttering:

"When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you." Someone from the last age had said that, but it was a sentiment all ages muttered in one way or another, and one Perez felt comfortable with.

Perez's ancient heart began to beat a slow rhythm. The technology he had used to animate his body when awoken unexpectedly, was released from his nervous system. Other system's would be needed and electrical control of his body was not one. Pain management was, the electrical animation always left great hurt. He spoke softly, words that sounded like spells but were really commands to an AI that had been dormant, the AI of a civilization that had nearly made it, ten thousand years ago. He felt the response, all the way from the inner ocean where it had been cared for by his people. Slowly he relaxed as pain faded.

Perez shaped his hands and mumbled. In the middle of the room a holographic replay of two scenes repeated. He had befriended the boy for his own means, yet had given him access to the previous AI, Prophet. Why? He watched his own body language, listened to his own words that bounced off the nearest flat surface.

"I was showing off." He concluded, and shook his head, suspicious that there was more to it. Did it matter that he had given earlier access to technology? It might, it advanced the survivors when they should still be falling. He made a face. It was Ebba who saved them, she had set upon their shores one of the sons of Jimmy. A dim wit no doubt, but one that was not even close to returning to the animal kingdom.

Perez watched the second holographic replay. This time the boy had along with him a girl. Wide eyed with curled hair, hair he admired. He smirked at his display of power and of fear, he barked laughter as he watched the girl fall to the floor in terror. Then he watched as he sucked up to the boy again. Forgiving the two. How so? He could have painted the walls with them. Had he liked them? He gave her a name, Sassafras. He had no recollection of how he had come to that name, a town of the hills above Melbourne. Was it possible another voice spoke through his? Piggy backing electrical animation to deliver a separate message, execute acts he would not wish to do. Ebba? Paranoid, Perez stood. He need to be abroad, he needed to see with his own eyes what the chess pieces were doing. He muttered:

"The animal kingdom, why haven't they returned to Eden?" Then from across the room, an unsure female voice spoke:

"Wizard, I have some questions."