Getting up off the bench he set off for the cafe, his long strides carrying him there in minutes. Dave sat down at one of the tables on the indoor “patio”, sipping the coffee slowly and watching the TV that was set in one of the corners of the small establishment. Of course the time was all over the news…Dave wished once again that he were at home. The other two inhabitants of the coffee shop looked like they were longing for the exact same thing, and Dave wondered if things would ever be the same again.

“…Thank-you, Alice. We have been studying this phenomena, and it is impossible to tell what exactly has happened to disrupt the time flow to the extent that the rising of the sun itself is reversed. NASA tells us that all signals from their spacecraft have been knocked out, suggesting some sort of spatial occurrence, further evidence of a “hiccup” so to speak in the space-time continuum.”

“Doctor, what can we expect to occur from this “hiccup”, as you put it?”

“As of yet, scientists are unsure. This could affect many, many things, watches and clocks being the least, the normal progression of life being perhaps one of the most.”

“I’m not quite sure what you mean by that…”

“I know what he means.” Bill grunted, turning away from the bar’s TV so as to easily address the others in the room. “He means we’re all gonna grow younger.”

Intense babble broke out at this declaration, with a few yells of “You’ve been in the beer too long, Billy,” but Bill waited for the voices to die down somewhat before continuing on in the same vein.

“Way I sees it, what with the sun goin’ backwards and all, is that everything’s gonna go backwards. Not like if ya press the re-wind button on the vee-see-arr, but just growth-wise. So here’s to y’all,” Billy raised his mug and drained it before standing up. “I’ve got forty-nine years left in my backwards slot. I’ll see you later.” And he walked out, leaving the rest of the bar’s populace to turn back towards the TV with desperate attention.

It has been ten years to the day of the time-reversal occurrence. I sit here, writing this, watching my hands on the keyboard. They used to be knobbly and veiny. Now they are rough, chapped, but middle-aged. Bill was right. The most disturbing thing, I think, is that nobody knows why or how it happened. The scientists waffle back and forth, humming and hawing about wormholes and spatial anomalies until one wants to smash the radio from sheer brain-overloaded boredom. I had never noticed before how much human beings depend on time– or used to; it’s all rather different now as we cope with Counter-Clockwise (as somebody cleverly nicknamed it).

Before, humanity could be described as hustle and bustle: on time, over time, not enough time, too little time, time to go, time to arrive, time, time, time. There was never enough for anyone, it seemed. And now time runs out for us all, as we grow progressively younger. When we reach the stage of dependency, we’re sent to care institutions, and nobody really knows what happens after that. I suppose I’ll find out one day or another….I’ve got forty-five years left, after all.