The FuturePast Phone! (COMPLETE)

12 - The Disappearing Things

"I am old enough to remember it," said the general. "Though I was not much older than you were--er are. I was inside playing video games. Then, out of nowhere, there was a click sound. The click sound was important. It seems everyone heard it. It echoed around the world."

"Like a clicky click sound?" Lindy flicked her tongue.

"Yes! It was the beginning of futurepast. It was the great rewinding of everything."

Lindy didn't really like it when she didn't get what people were talking about. It made her think hard. She didn't really feel like thinking hard. So she turned on The Star—a television show where singers competed against each other and were kicked off the show if they couldn't hit really high notes.

The general droned on. "The video game I was playing was new to my phone. I had just downloaded it. After the click, it was gone. Completely off my phone. Other people experienced similar things where they had just bought something from the store and after the click, that item disappeared."

"Humph."

"Everything we had bought or made within the past day was erased. It was as if we'd gone back in time to 24 hours before, only we were still the same people--it was just the objects around us that had changed. Went backwards. Do you get it now?"

"I guess," sighed Lindy.

"Each day this happened again. The stores would have huge amounts of inventory disappear each day. Software would go back to original versions. Broken phone screens would repair themselves. Used up paper towels would become clean and rolled up again. It was like we were living backward, everything disappearing on the exact day we bought it or made it only like a mirror image. So day 7 of future past would reflect seven days before future past."

"Eventually, over decades, everyone got used to this. Only there were terrible issues. People grew old, died and were born as usual. They didn't disappear, they didn't forget what happened the day before. That was the 'future' part of future past. We were living our futures inside our pasts. Get it?"

"Not really."

"Christmas was a dreaded time. That was the day when huge amounts of items we all liked just vanished. Pictures we had taken only existed in our memories. People who had bought new cars were very upset to see their old junky car suddenly in their garage. Birthdays were like this too."

"As decades progressed, technology regressed. People could remember things like Facebook and Google, but they could neither make them, nor reproduce them. In time, computers disappeared completely and we were stuck using telephones and old fashioned mail to communicate. That was the weird thing and why the song on your mother's radio meant a lot to our friend here. She hadn't heard that song in close to forty future past years! That's because it disappeared in the first year of futurepast!"

"Lucky you," slurred Lindy. "That song totally stinks."

"The point is, we are now in the year 2044 in the future but all the objects around us are in the past, of the year 1974. Our lives are a daily torture of memory!" shouted the general.

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That's it for this week! Check out the next installment next Saturday!

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