Backwards World Orientation: Through a {Mirror}, In Reverse

We hope you’ll have visited before! Hello, now! Welcome to backwards world! Everyone walks backwards here to get to where they’re coming from. You might think it’s dangerous, but it’s not any worse than it is in your world — both dimensions are too busy looking at their phones to see where they’re going. Hopefully you’re not too exhausted, but I promise, we’re almost started.

Oh, and technology’s always getting worse, which is great, because we’re all getting outside more. We’re putting all the pollutants back underground, and factories are working around the clock to suck up toxins from the water and the earth. And we’re always coughing up all kinds of delicious species to populate the planet Earth!

War is a beautiful birthing ceremony, and fantastic therapy!

After a period of hermetic retreat, people known as “criminals” return to the world ready to give away all their things to stores, and banks, and even other homes, until they live in complete poverty. Quality guys!

We all start off amazing at our hobbies and wind up terrible at them, but that’s just what happens when you fall into youthful bad habits.

When it starts to get cold, water flows away from the lakes and turns into great, gorgeous fields of ice. Eventually it gets so cold that it all flies back up into the sky, until eventually it’s all gone again. Sometimes the snow will form into the shape of a man, too. It’s pretty creepy. We usually just roll the pieces of the snowman’s body around into the ground until you can’t tell he was ever there.

Most people enter the workforce in powerful high level positions, but gradually try to get demoted so that they don’t have to put up with such a high stress environment anymore. Eventually you’ll work long enough to pay for all the college courses you’re going take, and the interest gets smaller all the time! Even if you don’t go to college, you can be sure you’ll get a free high school, middle school, and elementary school education. Preschool too, if you’re an overachiever! You’ll find your parents are there to support you in your young-age, and who needs cash, anyway? It’s the tree branch of all evil.

Personally, I always get straight Zs in all my academic science fiction classes, but honestly I’d rather be reading some fun schlocky historical textbook instead.

Our summer blockbusters all play backwards, but that’s OK; suspense is kind of unbearable anyway, and the quality of our writing is the same as yours (it’s not exactly hard to follow). Sometimes we’ll watch a trailer afterwards to remember how much we liked the film. TV characters always start in the same place they ended in, with lots of hijinks in the middle. Our songs go outro/chorus/verse/chorus/verse/intro but it’s virtually identical – you just get to the catchy part faster!

Books are great, though sometimes I’ll admit that I skip to the beginning. I know, I know – no fresheners!

Sports champions hate making the other teams feel bad, so they give the trophy back and play games until everyone’s back down to zero points.

I can’t sleep if I’ve got coffee in my system, so I spit it all up into a mug before I go to bed. When I wake up the next night, I make sure to spew out any sugary desserts that might make me sleepy for the evening and afternoon I’ve got ahead of me!

After being married to someone for many years (often an arranged marriage that your kids decided, without you, before you were even dug up from your grave), people often get divorced in lavish ceremonies that celebrate independence. The night after, to celebrate, they go out with their friends and watch strippers put clothes on, because we’re finally wise enough to celebrate the virtue of chastity! Courtship involves a lot of heated arguments, to prove you’re a person with a quick mind and lots of interesting opinions about the other person’s personal flaws. After arguing for a long time, you fall in love, and then gradually you grow bored of them as you both change and just gradually start to drift apart. You almost always stay friends, though. Or you swipe right on Tinder to get rid of them.

We eagerly await the day our children will finally move in and grow young, so we can finally repay them for taking care of us. Every couple outlives their children, but at least we’ll always have our parents. We’re all born old and die young, but the diaper industry makes the exact same amount of money.

I can’t even believe I’m about to do this – there’s so much to tell you all about. I hope you enjoy the orientation! Goodbye, there!