The alarm clock sucked the sound back into its plastic shell, the red numbers retreating from 7:00 AM to 6:59 AM. My eyes snapped open as I exhaled a long, shaky breath that tasted like the coffee I hadn't yet undrunk. This was it: the end of my Reverse World Tour, which was technically the beginning, or perhaps the middle, depending on which way your internal compass was spinning. I stood up from my bed in London, my pajamas flying off my body and folding themselves neatly into a drawer. I was suddenly dressed in a heavy parka, smelling faintly of penguin guano and disappointment. The floor beneath me trembled. The walls of my flat didn't just shake; they dissolved into a flurry of white. Seconds ago—or years from now—I was standing on a shelf of ice that was rapidly growing larger as the ocean vomited frozen chunks back onto the shoreline. A group of Emperor penguins marched backward past me, their tuxedoed chests puffing out in reverse indignation. One penguin, whom I had named Sir Paps-a-Lot in a future that was currently my past, handed me a fish. The fish was delicious because it was slowly becoming alive in my mouth, its scales reassembling and its fins beginning to wiggle against my tongue until I finally spat it, whole and flapping, back into the freezing Southern Ocean. "Safe travels," the penguin didn't say, because penguins don't speak, but he did honk in a way that suggested I owed him money. I stepped backward onto a boat that was pulling away from the ice, the wake of the ship smoothing the water into a glassy mirror as we un-sailed toward South America. The cold was fantastic; it didn't bite, it tickled. The snowflakes didn't fall; they leaped from the ground like tiny, cold paratroopers returning to the clouds. By the time the boat reached the harbor in Rio de Janeiro, the sun was rising in the West. The Christ the Redeemer statue was being slowly covered in scaffolding by workers who were meticulously removing the stone with their fingernails. I found myself in a crowded marketplace where a llama was wearing a fedora. This was the legendary Brazilian Llama. It didn't spit at me; instead, it sucked a glob of green moisture off my cheek, leaving my skin perfectly dry and smelling of mint. "You're early," the llama said in a deep baritone. "Or late," I replied, handing him a postcard I hadn't written yet. The llama ate the postcard, which caused the ink to manifest on his tongue. He then coughed up a plane ticket to Tokyo. The ticket was made of dried seaweed and whispered "Konichiwa" whenever I touched it. I boarded a plane that took off backward, the engines roaring with a sound like a giant vacuum cleaner tidying up the atmosphere. In Tokyo, the neon lights were sucking the color out of the streets, leaving the city in a beautiful, grayscale haze of 1950s nostalgia. I walked through Shibuya Crossing, where thousands of people navigated the chaos without ever bumping into each other, their heels clicking in a rhythmic countdown. I entered a sushi den where the chef was a master of un-slicing. He took a piece of tuna from my stomach—a strange sensation, like a mild tickle followed by extreme hunger—and placed it onto a block of rice. With a swift motion of his fan, the fish and rice merged into a single, perfect grain of rice and a whole fish that flopped off the counter and swam into a bucket. "The flavor of regret is the best seasoning," the chef whispered, his eyes twinkling. I left the shop and watched as the Tokyo Skytree shrank toward the earth, the steel beams un-bolting themselves and flying into the backs of trucks. The city was getting smaller, younger, and louder. I found a vending machine that took my thirst and gave me a cold can of orange soda in return. I drank it, and my throat became parched and dusty—exactly what I needed for the desert. I arrived in Dubai just as the desert was reclaiming the malls. Sand was blowing from the streets up into the sky, forming golden clouds that rained heat. The Burj Khalifa was a mere stump in the ground, its glass panels being un-polished by a team of robotic camels. I met a billionaire who lived in a tent made of woven sunlight. He offered me a seat on a flying carpet that was actually just a very fast piece of linoleum. We flew over the Palm Jumeirah, watching as the sand islands dissolved into the turquoise water. "We are building a masterpiece of nothing!" the billionaire shouted over the roar of the reversing wind. I agreed, mostly because my sunglasses were flying off my face and returning to the duty-free shop at the airport. I felt lighter, probably because the gold watch I was wearing had turned back into a handful of unrefined ore and slipped through my pockets. From the heat of the desert, I was suddenly thrust into the Siberian wilderness. But the physics here had completely surrendered. The snow was glowing orange and felt like warm velvet against my skin. I sat by a campfire that was emitting a steady stream of darkness and ice cubes. A man named Ivan, wearing a fur hat made of live squirrels, handed me a bottle of vodka. As I "drank," the liquid rose from my stomach, filled the bottle, and the cap screwed itself on with a satisfied click. "To the things we will forget!" Ivan toasted. We danced a Kalinka, our feet moving in patterns that erased the footprints we had made earlier. The squirrels on his head chattered in binary code. It was the most logical conversation I'd had all trip. The transition to Paris was instantaneous. One moment I was in the snow; the next, I was walking backward toward the Eiffel Tower. The city smelled like fresh bread that was being turned back into flour and yeast. I saw a mime in a striped shirt. He was trapped in a real glass box that was slowly shrinking. He wasn't pretending; he was actually being compressed by the vacuum of the reverse timeline. I reached out and pulled the "glass" away, which turned into a silk scarf in my hand. "Merci," he yelled at a deafening volume. In this version of Paris, mimes were the loudest people in the city, and politicians were the ones who communicated through interpretive dance. I walked past the Louvre, where the Mona Lisa was being un-painted. Leonardo da Vinci's ghost was hovering there with a sponge, carefully dabbing away the smile until the canvas was nothing but a blank sheet of hemp. It was tragic, but the blank canvas had a much better personality. The heat of Egypt hit me like a physical wall. I stood at Giza and watched the Great Pyramid fly into the air, stone by stone. The Sphinx was growing a nose, the limestone regrowing like a lizard's tail. A mummy approached me, tripping over his own trailing bandages. He was trying to wrap himself up, but the wind kept catching the linen. "Do you have any tape?" he asked. "I'm losing my integrity." I didn't have tape, but I did have a handful of sand that turned into a Tutankhamun souvenir keychain when I squeezed it. He thanked me by giving me a curse that made my hair grow inward for exactly three minutes. It was itchy, but it cleared up my sinuses. My penultimate stop was Iceland. The ground was humming a low B-flat. I stood near a geyser that didn't erupt water; it inhaled the surrounding air, creating a localized vacuum that pulled the clouds down to the grass. I hiked to a volcano where the lava was a bright, bubbling yellow. It didn't smell like sulfur; it smelled like lemon-scented dish soap. I watched as the "lava" flowed uphill, climbing the jagged black rocks and disappearing into the crater with a slurping sound. I met a troll who was disguised as a very large pebble. He told me that the secret to happiness was walking into the wind until you became the wind. I tried it, and for a second, I felt my molecules stretching across the Atlantic. The final leg of the journey was the most spectacular. I didn't board a plane; I walked into the ocean at Reykjavik and didn't sink. The water parted like a beaded curtain. A giant mechanical flying fish, the size of a Boeing 747, surfaced and swallowed me whole. Inside, the seats were made of pressurized bubbles. The pilot was a dolphin wearing an aviator headset. "We are currently cruising at a depth of thirty thousand feet below sea level," the dolphin clicked over the intercom. "Please make sure your seatbelts are unfastened so you can float freely during the descent upward." We soared through coral forests and past the wreckage of the Titanic, which was looking brand new and full of ghosts dancing the Charleston. The fish-plane leaped out of the water at the English Channel and landed backward at Heathrow. Which brings me back to my flat. The suitcase is now on the bed, open and gaping. My memories of the trip are fading, becoming "premonitions" instead of "recollections." I look at the clock. 6:01 AM. In a moment, I will go to sleep. When I wake up, I will have the most incredible idea. I will decide to go on a world tour. I will buy a suitcase. I will pack my clothes. The reverse world tour is finally beginning, and I can't wait to see what I've already done. I lie down, the pillow rising to meet my head, and as my eyes close, the world finally starts moving forward—which, to me, feels like the strangest direction of all. I'm ready to go. I think. Or perhaps, I've already stayed. The sun is setting in the East, pulling its light away from the dusty corners of my room, and the silence is so heavy I can almost hear the neighbors un-waking up. Every item I own is vibrating with the potential of being un-bought. My kettle is whistling because the water is turning into ice, and the tea bag is dryly hopping back into its box. The world is a strange, fantastic place when you look at it from the finish line first. I can see the future, and it looks remarkably like my past, only with more expensive luggage and fewer regrets. I'll meet you there, or rather, I'll see you yesterday.
