The War to Start All Wars

The first recorded case happened on April the 22nd 2016. Residents of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea got a shock when Margaret Thatcher climbed out of her grave, grubby and somewhat confused but otherwise well for someone who had been dead for three years. 

This was the first in a spate of resurrections, frequently of high-profile people. Interviews with The Revived as they were known yielded little. The subjects did know what had happened to them. First they were, then they weren't, then they were again. Closer physical examination did shed some light. Not only were the subjects revived, their bodies were getting progressively younger.

There were other cases, rare perhaps, but they happened all over the world, in Canada, South Africa, Egypt, Russia, Belize, Guam, Iran and Argentina. Responses varied and public knowledge of these events was patchy and mixed. Governments hastily coordinated their efforts, using cover stories, monitoring and media suppression and occasionally amnestics to stem the flow of information. There were millenarian panics that had to be suppressed, not to mention the conspiracy theories, but there was no denying the facts. Too many people knew. 

Just as authorities were getting a handle the situation changed. June the 8th, 9:30am EST, a team of contractors removing rubble from the former site of a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, were killed when the building suddenly reassembled itself. At almost exactly the same time a large chunk of silt coalesced in the Ganges delta, floated upstream for half an hour, gathering size until it attached itself to Bangladesh, meanwhile several dozen icebergs were heard reattaching themselves to the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica and the Great Wall of China grew in length by 40 metres. 

For the next few months, across the globe there were reemergences, revivals and reassemblies. This was a global crisis, impossible to ignore. The most famous occasion was on September the 11th 2016 when the World Trade Centre began to rise up, slowly at first, then gathering speed. Tower two then tower one stood again. Flames and smoke seemed to lick backwards and poor, unfortunate folk fell up, landing in high windows. The noise was tremendous and heard miles away, at UN Headquarters, where an emergency meeting was already underway. 

While this happened the assembly stopped its deliberations. It was a relief. The atmosphere had been fraught. No one knew what was going on but accusations were flying everywhere. The Americans and Russians denounced each other with exquisite, coded terms. North and South Korea did likewise, though in a more direct manner. A coalition of EU governments gave a statement implicating ISIS. Saudi Arabia resented such accusations and the price of oil immediately rose on Wall Street. The Turkish Prime Minister blamed the internet and the Leader of the Chinese Communist Party immediately supported his assertion but added that everyone knew the internet was invented in Japan in 2001,which was a clear threat. The Americans backed up the Japanese but then backed down when the Chinese government threatened to call in their loans. The Icelandic government offered to host a peace conference. The British objected, however, insisting something had to be done and they offered the RAF to bomb something... but what?

As the horror at Ground Zero became clear the assembly was evacuated, the session postponed for an unknown future date. The building was almost empty when a letter arrived, unstamped and delivered by an unknown hand, but addressed to "The Dirgent..." When it became clear what the letter was it was taken straight to the UN Secretary General, who was still at HQ, dealing with some paperwork and tidying up.

Later that evening the Secretary General gathered the various world leaders and ambassadors still in the city for a second, secret session. He or She read the letter to the assembly.

"A the Global Dirigent of the Stelliferous,
"Speakwrite as of trillions of anno separate interlocutor from receiptor, our messuage will be approx but our meaning will be perspex. We are speakwrite unto the former dirigent, our ancientors, on a subjunct of urge. Vous connaitre our intent when you having seen the updraw of the building nearin, the two towers. The depressed state of entropy is dire. We will not become the last civilisation as of the lack of energ. Iffing you do not reflow the passing of energ into angelegenheit we will on do it ourselves. You have eine diurnal to begin the reflow."

Sudden pandemonium:

“Are we under attack...?” said the Deputy Taoiseach of Ireland.

“But what does this mean?” asked the President of the United States of no one in particular.

“Вы империалистическая дурак” the Russian President shrugged, “какого рода вопрос?”

“C'est un urgence!” said the French Ambassador, flailing wildlly, “un etat de urgence!” he added. “ceux-ci sont des terroristes de temps.“

“Souhlasím s francouzskou Zkurvysyn. Musíme uzavřít hranice času chránit moderní hodnoty” said the Leader of the Czech Senate, thumping his desk.

“Why are they doing this?” asked the British Prime Minister with an air of desperation

“Tranquila estúpido hijo de puta de cerdo! said the Guatemalan Foreign Minister with a dismissive wave, “cómo están haciendo esto?”

Sudden pandemonium, everyone was about to punch everyone else. Fortunately the was fluent in multiple languages and also a scientist. He or she stepped forward and said:

“Please, please, none of this matters... not yet at least. What is important is what we know. We know that random people and things are seeming to head backward in time while still travelling forward. Pockets of entropy are turning into anti-entropy. The implications are clear. As the Revived are getting younger nothing can stop them. They will regress until they become children, newborns, zygotes and then gametes. The process will expand, evolution will unwind and, unchecked, we will grow hairy palms, climb back up the trees, slouch across the beach, shed our lungs and feet and step back into ocean. Before long we will be reduced to protoplasmic slime. The planet itself may speed up, then sun become younger and bluer. Stars will shake off dust, supernovas collapse, galaxies regress into plasma and then... the singularity... if we do not act.”

The American President repeated, “What...? What do you mean? What should we do?”

“For millennia humanity has fought against entropy, to wrench order from chaos. Now we must switch. We must defect, chaos will be our ally, violence our means, levelling our aim... Ladies, gentlemen, esteemed leaders of the world... you know what to do...” and in that moment, for the first time in human history humanity was one, united in a single purpose. The battle for entropy, the right of things to fall apart and expire, was begun. It was war with our descendants. Cities were levelled and forests ripped up, mountains were pummelled with dynamite and the rubble ground into sand, valleys were raised, oceans were drained off, hundreds of rockets were launched to nowhere in particular, oceans were drained and the water dumped into outer space. Though it was not anyone's stated aim many, many people died in the process of saving civilisation from those set to inherit it.