The reporter found himself feeling his lungs and cavities being emptied of the goo, then being able to open his eyes and finally being able to breathe. He witnessed the goo returning into some kind of transparent shell, then the door opening, and himself slowly flying, backwards, out of it.

After experiencing several hours of what apparently was his life in this new world, all backwards, he puzzled together the events that brought him from the holding cell where he was then, all the way into the hut-like pod from which he came backwards out of.

The right way through time, although not the way he experienced it, he was taken from the holding cell to a spacecraft, where he was shipped into space along with the parts of the hut-like pod. He quickly re-assembled the hut from the parts, as easily as if he just unscrewed something and it fell apart, only in reverse. This was so quick that the cargo bay doors of the spacecraft, where the pod was kept, and where he was brought once the spacecraft was in orbit; didn't have time to open before he pulled himself in, flying in zero gravity; saw the door close, an orb breaking and the familiar goo pouring out of it, filling every cavity he had until it had filled the whole pod.

The bay doors had opened by then, and the pod was pushed out. The thrusters fired, and the pod started glowing. It glew brighter and brighter until it just ceased to be.

The only time missing from his memory was how he had gotten into the cell. In his perception of time, he was pulled, backwards, out of the cell by two policewomen, going backwards, through a world in reverse play, until he was struck unconscious as a strange man, escaping from the panel.

His life continued, in reverse, in the sewers, where he found himself trying to escape a partial cave-in of a tunnel; with him having an incredible headache from adjusting to the memories. He lived with the unusual name Origin the rest of his life with three trusted friends, Venn, Taall, and Gubak, under the supervision of their boss, Jagit Bekot. Having come from when the sewer pipes had already failed, he could tell when they were about to, but soon learned that it was no point of telling them a split second, nor days, in advance.

When his age regressed to his early teens, he was brought to a foster home. At age 3, he was taken to Ellita Taechtenian, a scientist, who raised him as her own, and despite his strange behavior, despite him being a man, loved him.

As his life regressed past when he would normally have been born, he was brought to a lab where he withered away. In reverse, this was where he spontaneously appeared.