VICE VERSA: IS THIS THE FUTURE?

As Earth's power supplies dwindle, Astral Travel, guided by deep meditation on the keyword OM, beams me through time and space to seek energy solutions from more advanced civilisations; or at least borrow a shilling for the meter.

OM: my eyes open. I am seated with a lady uneating her supper; the waiter pays her, she spoons goulash from mouth to bowl, which he removes when full.

"Excuse me madam, is this the future?"

"No, that was yesterday, this is the past."

I point out that the future is supposed to follow the past, but they do things differently here. At night, I see baldies enter barbers and re-emerge as mop tops. Smokers blow fumes between fingers until their cigarettes grow longer; then walk backwards to newsagents who buy them. And there is much to marvel at regarding my mission.

Cars motor backwards, sucking up exhaust gases and filling petrol tanks all the way to the unfilling station for a refund. Trains backtrack too, feeding electricity into the rails, then back to nuclear reactors, whose atoms unsplit. Planes unfly, making jet fuel and mending the ozone level. This world recharges its batteries after dark: a win-win solution!

Until things begin to grow a little darker. Uneating spaghetti becomes harder to watch, as is unspitting, and natives unblowing noses. At a chicken farm at sundown, I stare open mouthed as a thousand golden eggs suddenly leap up a thousand feathery bums.

But the blackest nightmare haunts my bedtime visit to the WC. Private Eye in hand, I turn; but just before sitting I see those golden eggs again, leaping up...and OM, I escape this topsy-turvey planet.

Let Earth's candle flicker a little longer, until I find a remedy with less vice but more versa. There's no future here.