The Plow — March, 1st
“How am I going to write this?”, was thinking Andréi Wales-Tushinski.
His editor-in-chief, Elisabeth Viner, had requested a six thousand words feature article detailing his first-hand experience from the last days, while his colleague Juliet was sent to Budapest to cover its atmosphere, which was said to be eerie.
Eerie. It’s the word that kept appearing in Andréi’s notes, the one that best summed up what the journalist — though quite experienced — had lived since he got off that plane to Bucarest on February 20th. The day the object entered his life.
That day, he was barely out of the capital’s boroughs, driven in an old Renault R19 by his Romanian fixer, when he saw the cylinder for the first time. A simple, geometric mass that appeared between the trees, just over the horizon, faded by the atmosphere. As soon as he saw it, Andréi took his camera, plugged his microphone, and started shooting images. He acted instinctively, moved by years and years in the field, believing he was about to get to his destination. He felt a bit stupid when his guide told him they were still a hundred kilometers away from the phenomenon.
Andréi, like everybody at that point, hadn’t fully grasped the sheer size of the structure that had shocked the planet just a few days before. It’s only during the hours that followed, as the car progressed in the Romanian west regions, as the structure got bigger, filling his field of view and obscuring the sky, that the reporter was struck by the terrible, terrifying reality of its existence.
The reporter, as well as his driver, felt a profound unease. Something, deep within the two men, would not accept the possibility of that thing, would not make sense of it, leaving them unable to express anything about it. So they kept driving, silently, while they approached Arad’s region.
Suddenly, they were jolted back to reality by a military convoy, roaring towards them on the thin country road they shared. The Romanian swerved the car and managed to narrowly avoid the first trucks, but not without sending the old sedan right into the ditch bordering the road. They were stuck there, and the military vehicles hadn’t even slowed down.
After a few unsuccessful attempts at getting the car back on the road, the men decided to split up for now. The driver would get some help at a farm visible over the field while Andréi would move on to the next village and start working the place. They would meet there later.
At sunset, on 23 February 2020, Andréi finally arrived, quite tired, at the village of Chisineu-Cris, some 6 or 7 kilometers south of the cylinder. From this point of view, it presented its flat face, looking like a big, black disk, resting on the horizon.
The exclusion zone started just at the town limits, on the road living North, materialized by just three armored trucks stopped in a criss-cross pattern, blocking the way. A dozen young soldiers were busing preventing the civilians from going further towards the object, while letting through those who were getting away from it.
Andréi used the oldest reporting trick in the book to get someone to talk: offering cigarettes. He always had several packs on him when he was out there. He only needed a few minutes to get what he wanted from them, mainly an insight into the army’s current morale.
It was as he had envisioned it. He could see it right in those young boys' eyes: a mix of confusion, panic, surprise, and behind, probably a hint of fascination.
He talked to a few more people, sat on the back of a truck and quickly wrote an article on his laptop, which he sent to the Guardian’s editors. It was dark now, he needed to find a place to sleep — that would be complicated by the hundreds of locals in the same conundrum.
Just as he was getting back to the town center, he saw his fixer, in the dusty Renault R19. “Good”, Andréi though. “R19s are quite comfortable”.
On February 26, the cylinder had finally crossed the Hungarian border, without the faintest change in direction or speed, to the despair of those who, perhaps naively, thought that humanity’s map lines would affect the blind object.
Fearing an increase in travel restrictions, and determined to follow the phenomenon, Andréi and his guide slipped in Hungarian territory through a remote secondary road, after a long southern detour. They then made their way back up to Békéscsabla, the biggest city in the county. The competent fixer had managed to find, with the help of a local connexion, a minuscule room a bit outside the town proper.
They had been staying there for the last three days.
The building’s anonymity and discretion had proven to be a crucial advantage since.
Contrasting with the frightful, disorganized Romanian soldiers, the Hungarian military force was rigorously deployed, with clear directives on its course of action. One of them was definitely to get rid of all outside observers. They were multiplying the checkpoints in all the region and ID checks in the three hotels of the city. Any journalist spotted was promptly brought back to Budapest, some directly expelled from the country. It was, most surely, by design from the government.
Luckily, Andréi knew how to evolve in what really felt like a war zone. He quickly swapped his “great reporter” green jacket for more common clothes, and stashed his professional gear, using just a regular iPhone to take pictures and video — to hell with the purists, those images did the job. A few words of Hungarian and his Slavic complexion did the rest, and he could manage to move around without too much trouble.
By the 1st of March, Andréi Wales-Tushinski was one of the only 6 international reporters left in the vicinity of the object.
Free to move, and with a long-form to write, Andréi started focusing on what had been nagging him for a few days now: get inside the exclusion zone, as close as possible to the Roller. He had to see it, to touch it maybe.
Unfortunately, a simple cigarette giveaway, that had worked so easily with the young Romanians — and that he would have certainly tried with the Hungarians — would not cut it with the professional NATO forces leading operation Trajan. The zone was, right now, impenetrable.
He would have to work something out.
The plow appeared like that, somewhere in eastern Europe. Since then, it slowly rolls west, crushing everything on its path. What is it? Why is it there?
Have you photographed, filmed, drawn the Plow? Have you witnessed, observed, heard something about it? Send your data and ask your questions at theplowinstitute@gmail.com
If you are just getting there, it might be easier to jump back to the beginning. You will also find all entries here.
The Plow’s trajectory is also being monitored on Twitter and Facebook.
Finally, this work is written by a non-native English speaker. If you see something weird about the grammar or vocabulary, do mention it via email or messaging.
