The Pole Shift

Sean The Drunk

Sean lived on a hill above Australia's second chief city, Melbourne. Mt. Dandenong rested at six hundred meters and pushed the boundaries of what was hill and mountain. People didn't really think about the definition, the Mountain Ash slopes and the quaint villages were what people thought about. Cyclists took over the narrow roads on the weekend and got to the top and home before breakfast. Kookaburras laughed, and Lyre birds mimicked them. It was an easy place to go and be.

Sean was in his forties and alone. It suited him, and only occasionally did he miss his estranged wife and female company, any company. He spent his time growing a vegetable garden, eating dishes he copied from cooking shows, drinking too much vodka and wondering what he was going to do. He would often say aloud:

"Whatever it is I am going to do, I'm doing."

The summer had been long and hot, pleasurable. Sean was finally over his divorce. He had taken a year out of work as the tragedy unfolded but the year quickly became two. He had done nothing constructive in that time except entertain easy habits, like establishing himself as a heavy drinker. He would wander around the one acre garden, pad around the house and stare into the fridge as if some answer lay there. Sean's only danger lay in snagging his toes on furniture when he got too drunk.

His money was running out and he knew it was time to get back into the rat race but he just didn't want to. He tried to make money gold detecting, gambling, playing the stock market and making YouTube videos. Eventually he had to face reality - get a job! Then the earth quakes started.

He felt the first quake and was thrilled, it was a murmuring of the earth's crust, nothing to worry about. His green painted corrugated iron roof gonged , the door to his chicken coop rattled and briefly he felt weightless on his lawn. He gulped at his vodka and guffawed. A quake! The power had stayed on and he rushed inside to post something about it. He was confused to see many people were posting about the small earthquake, from all over the world. The thrill he had felt turned into a chill. How could a worldwide earthquake be possible?

Over the following weeks the tremors occurred often, every other day it seemed. They didn't get any more powerful, but as it was the world that was shaking, a deep sense of unease spread throughout civilisation.

Sean had been hiding away, his marriage break up had affected him deeply, and he found that he didn't want to interact with people face to face. He liked it up on the hill, it was private. He could go for a week without leaving his home, he had lots of food in the pantry. He had chickens and a productive garden, and for company he had vodka, the internet. If it wasn't for his dwindling finances, Sean thought he would carry on ad infinitum.

Instead of looking for a job, Sean scoured the internet for what might be happening with the worldwide tremors. The conspiracy websites were hypothesizing everything, from alien attack to 'Pole Shift'. The Pole Shift theory stuck with him, and he researched the supposition. In fact many people wondered if the Earth's crust was loosening itself from the mantle. Had this happened before? Not in written history, but perhaps in mathematical legacy, said the conspiracy websites. Did the great pyramids point to a coming cataclysm? Sean immersed himself in the theories, and with aid of vodka, and his budding marijuana plant, became convinced that the Earth was about to violently wash its face.

Sean Began to stock pile cans of food. He cleared the cellar of junk, and installed shelves. Over a month he got them filled with cans of tuna, of beans. All sorts of fruits, powdered milk, flour and macaroni. He paid in cash, the conspiracy websites said not to use credit cards it would leave a trail - at some point hording food would become illegal. He bought sacks of rice, lentils. Tubs of peanut butter. Beef Jerky. The cellar began to looks like an Aladdin's cave of survival food.

A weekend came, when the main stream news disclosed to the people what was going to happen. A Pole Shift, or 'Earth Crust Displacement' to those who preferred systematic wording. Either way a devastating geological event that would kill off whole populations. Sean sat back in his chair and smirked.

"Told-ja." He said to the empty room. He had been drunk since Thursday, and he watched the news in a state of self satisfied enthusiasm. The rioting and mayhem was surreal. He made marijuana cookies and a YouTube video with clips he filmed directly from the TV. He put Bad Moon Rising to it and watched it over and over again, getting off on the Credence Clearwater classic. Laughing and in awe at how the scenes fit the lyrics as if it was the start to a movie.

There must have been a swathe of humanity witnessing the upheaval of society in front of a computer as his YouTube video clicked up thousands of views. So absent from reality did he become that when he woke up on Monday he had to question his account of events - but it had happened.

With the relief that he had not gone mad, he blew air through loose lips then felt a thrill, then alarm. Death, end? No chance to survive? He suddenly felt alive. His efforts stocking a cellar with survival food created in him a sense of fore knowledge, of the 'one step ahead ' and a sense of pride that he could not put his finger on. Over the weeks that followed, he paced his hilly acre with an eye for improvement. He was certain it was going to happen, because in his mind he had predicted it and that made it his. He was six hundred meters above sea level, on the lea of a hill that had once been a volcano. There was no prediction as to how high the seas would wash but scientists were modeling possibilities. He felt smug and sure that he was going to make it, with no thought to anyone else. He did not pause to think of the death and suffering that would happen, instead he went into his now locked cellar, and catalogued his cans by candlelight.

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