Those Who Get Younger - Chapter One

I’ve known Bill all my life. Although he’s not well educated, he’s the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. But he was at his brightest when he was just a small boy, and has been getting gradually less bright all his life. But that’s not how he sees it. Bill is one of those who get younger.

I’ve always thought it funny when Bill (or another getting younger), are in conversation with someone who says “None of us are getting any younger,” then Bill says “I am.” Of course he seems to be getting older, just like regular people, but he, like all getting younger, experiences life in reverse to how we regular people experience it.

I never cease to marvel that to his perception, when I first met him, when we were both just infants, he had known me for more than 80 years. But when we were both 10, he’d only known me for 70 odd years, then 60 odd when we were 20, and so forth. Or to think that his perception of any conversation is backwards to regular people’s perception, with the last word said first, and the first word said last, and each word pronounced backwards (to how we would think of the word). Or that he perceives himself as walking backwards, and doesn’t fall over because he’s been doing it all his life, and because he remembers what’s behind him, because he only just saw it in front of him a few seconds ago, to his perception. Or that his perception of eating is food coming up from his stomach, out of his mouth and into his plate. (I don’t even want to mention going to the toilet.)

It’s odd to think he will go to school in his old age - something that hasn’t happened yet, and yet he remembers it. Or that every memory his brain has stored is from the future (to regular people’s perception), and his brain has been losing memories as time (to regular people’s perception), has gone on, instead of the opposite way around. I have conversations with him and he doesn’t remember them straight afterwards, (or earlier parts of the same conversation), because to his perception, they haven’t happened yet.

When you think about this, he shouldn’t be able to have conversations with regular people at all, yet his brain allows him to do things for which you would think he would need to remember the past, like remembering what was just said, but he swears he can’t, even though he can answer some questions about it for a short time afterwards. Scientists say this demonstrates those getting younger have a subconscious part of their short-term memory which does remember the past, while their conscious memory only remembers the future.

Of course it’s because of their brains that those getting younger experience time this way, and it is only the memory parts of their brains that are working backwards, compared to regular people. They’re not Benjamin Buttons - born as old people, and getting younger until they’re babies, then dying. To our perception, they’re born as babies, grow up, get old-looking and die looking just like every regular person who dies in old age. But they only remember the future, not the past. We could have known one of them all their life up to a certain point, but if it’s the last time we meet them, then to them, they don’t know us and are meeting us for the first time.

It’s weird that their brains are the regular size of a new born baby’s brain when they’re born, apart from where memories are stored, which are adult-sized and already full of memories, and that these sections of the brain get smaller and lose memories as they age. No scientist has ever figured out how this all works as yet, but they do say the reason some people are like this is genetic. So no one will be like this unless there’s someone in their ancestry who was like it, (apart from the first person like this, who had some mutation, which scientists believe happened some time around the end of World War Two).

People like Bill are lucky they have no problem getting a job. There’s no shortage of employers who want to employ them, to tell them all about what they remember of the future. Their employers can anticipate how to make money, or how to take advantage of it some other way, or just make themselves feel good about what will or won’t happen in future. Of course that all gets thrown up in the air when such knowledge is used in a way that changes the future, and suddenly all those who get younger remember the future differently.

Hey folks, I'm still here typing away. Why? For two reasons:

1) I'm not sure where I want to go with this story yet;

2) I'd like to challenge anyone interested to take the ideas in this chapter and write their own stories about those who get younger. The only thing I ask is that you acknowledge any such story you write as based on "Those Who Get Younger" by Nicholas Edward Earthling on vocal.media.