Read "The Man Who Awoke" by Laurence Manning online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The spring storm lashed the hillside with a bite and fury it had not felt for fifty thousand years. It was May, but the wind struck chill on the ground and the palm trees were in brown ruins-the whole tropical verdure of the Great Lakes region was doomed. The cycle of climate had swung around, and it had been growing steadily colder for a thousand years, perhaps foretelling another ice age. Under a clump of dead palms some stone ruins showed gray-white and under the fierce wind the water rippled across them like wrinkled silk.
As far as the eye could see, the landscape stretched open and deserted. Nothing alive was out in such a storm. Presently one of the white stones moved slightly. Had the ground sunk beneath it a little? But why now, why not some other time during the thousands of years the ruins had lain there? Then the stone moved once more-slowly and definitely. There could be no mistake. It was a slab of rock three feet across that must have weighed two hundred pounds; suddenly one end sank deep in the earth.