Working Backwards Novels & Stories

"What's the thing that would hurt most?" Sena looked at Aria. Aria felt it before Sena said it… the answer arriving in her chest before her mind had processed the question. "Echo," Sena said. "Not destroying it. Taking it back. Reversing the implementation. If he can access the original source architecture before the deep-level consent verification is fully propagated across the network, he can overwrite it." She paused. "The propagation takes seventy-two hours to complete. You implemented it last night. Which means you have approximately fifty hours before the new architecture is irreversible."

That night, she told him about how she and her brother Jack would write in upside down and backwards numbers on calculators and pass it to each other as a joke. 38 was upside down and backwards code for BE, 335 was code for SEE, 648 was for BAG and 7748 was BALL. He argued that it was stupid, because a lot of letters didn't have numbers to represent like T, P, W and that 4 upside down didn't look like A, but she said didn't use words with T so it was sufficient. And against his better judgement, he learnt, for the sake of the game. Maxwell looked around in hurried movements for a pen and a paper to rewrite the numbers upright and forward.

Needed to be used. I did not know how dangerous that need would become.

Both things are true and both are forward. He read the entry back. The word forward appeared often in the journal — it was one of the words the journal had developed, a shorthand for the orientation that the arrangement required and had produced. Forward was the opposite of backward-looking. It was the quality of being oriented toward what was coming rather than what had been. It was the quality of building rather than mourning, of intention rather than regret, of the living thing rather than the dead one.

Already understanding. The substrate before the vocabulary. The way it always worked.

Surely it would have left traces somewhere. I stood immediately. Crossed to the cabinet. Unlocked the lower drawer. The older quarterly summaries rested exactly where I'd filed them after borrowing copies from the archives. Carefully... I carried them back to my desk. I didn't begin with fifteen years ago. Instead... I worked backwards. One year. Nothing. Two years. Nothing. Three. Four. Still nothing. Every summary matched the departmental reports exactly as it should. I turned another page. Then another. Until... My hand stopped.

Then, Wilbur began the second phase of the test, focusing on controlling the reversal of dimensional time. Time began to reverse with Wilbur's will. An invisible force of dimensional energy moved the clock hand in the counterclockwise direction. A quarter of a notch, then half a notch. Wilbur felt quite pleased to see that. Reversing time was considerably more challenging than advancing it, but it remained relatively easy for Wilbur.

Sarah wake up next morning feeling sore all over body, flashback of what happened yesternight came into her head and a warmed smile left her mouth. She looked around and her eyes welcome the familiar room she knew since she was young. It hasn't change since she left. She walked lazily out of her to the bathroom and notice some little things change in there, like her toothbrush was replace with another one and all her bath bomb was nowhere to seen. She signed; well, she didn't expect it to be the same as she left it months ago.

I summarized. Carson took a step backwards, before he leaned forward, “Delete the code. I need to know who this fucker is,” he muttered angrily. I nodded and started to work away at the problem. I loved fixing things, and this was a big puzzle to fix. As I clicked away, I was met with more blocks.

𝙸 𝚃𝚁𝙸𝙴𝙳 𝚃𝙾 𝚁𝙴𝚃𝚁𝙰𝙲𝙴 𝙼𝚈 𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙿𝚂 𝙱𝙰𝙲𝙺 𝚃𝙾 𝚆𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴 𝙸 𝙲𝙰𝙼𝙴 𝙵𝚁𝙾𝙼. "𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙻𝙾𝚂𝚃?" 𝙸 𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙽𝙴𝙳 𝙰𝚁𝙾𝚄𝙽𝙳 𝚃𝙾 𝚂𝙴𝙴 𝙰 𝚃𝙰𝙻𝙻 𝙼𝚄𝚂𝙲𝚄𝙻𝙰𝚁 𝙵𝙸�