The Field of Thorns
There was a large empty field, probably several miles wide, on the edge of the Urbzone: no highways, no high-rises, no malls, no food bars. No one even lived there.
It seemed to have been forgotten by the world.
Ilsa Berg wondered why. It's a crowded world, that was what they always said. You could hardly go anywhere without seeing at least one massive residence block, one tangle of roads, transmission wires, power towesr. But here... nothing.
No one went there. Except Ilsa: once she got a bad hit of Dose-X and went nuts. Her friends told her she had gone running down the center of the condoplex naked. She remembered finding herself in the middle of an empty field, filled with tough brown grasses and thorny bushes. The grass stalks made a strange, sorrowful sound as they waved in the breeze. The place seemed to belong to its own universe... a dark, separate world.
But maybe it was all just a dope dream. Nothing like that had ever happened to anyone else. Because no one else ever went there. Why should they, when they had all the virtual parks and Simu-Natur zones anyone could want?
So Ilsa had forgotten about it too... until that day when News Supervisor Oswald gave her her most surprising assignment.
"You're to cover the opening ceremony. Worldcor has acquired Parcel 37--the land they call the Forgotten Field. You know, Dornigveld--the Field of Thorns."
"What! you're joking."
He handed her the packet, containing the news script. "Sure. Why does that surprise you? Everything will get developed sooner or later."
"I don't know. It's just... a wasteland. No one has ever built anything there. There must be a good reason why."
"Nonsense." Oswald sucked on his Euphor smoke. "It's right in the middle of the EEC Urbzone. The land is probably worth millions. Why nobody ever got around to developing it, I never will understand. It's just sitting there going to waste. And what's the use of that? It's a hungry, crowded world."
***
"The Euro branch of WorldCor is happy to greet you all on this great occasion," the sound system boomed out.
Flags rippled, music blared. A great big holographic WorldCor emblem shimmered in the air. WorldCor, said the banner. Leading the world into the 22nd Century.
Ilsa adjusted the lens of the Zoom Cam until she could see the manicured face of Andreas Hoch, Chief Executive of WorldCor's European branch.
"WorldCor is happy to announce the construction of its new Euro Headquarters at Parcel 37," said Andreas Hoch. "This will mark a great new day of harmony and economic strength and..."
While Hoch was listing what kind of a great new day it would be, Ilsa heard signs of a scuffle. She glanced over at the far end of the square, where a couple of Anarki protesters were yelling and waving signs while the police tried to clear them off. She aimed the viewer in their direction to get a better look.
One of them bore a sign saying "Hands off Parcel 37." The other said "WorldCor = World Tyranny."
Ilsa quickly moved the viewer away, before anyone could see that she had seen. But she still caught a glimpse of the police squad closing in with riot stunners. No sense in trying to record that. The film would be instantly confiscated and she would probably end up in the detention cell next to the protesters. What is a newscaster's first lesson? “News must be kept under control at all times!”
The Chief Executive and his entourage climbed into his limo-copter. The news team, Ilsa Berg and her roommate/colleague Nadia and a few assistants, followed close behind. They passed the Workers Arcology No. #419 and the World Bank Supermall and stopped at the edge of the InterEuro Highway at a temporary parade ground that had been built at the edge of what they were calling Parcel 37: the Field of Thorns.
The officials had built a gateway with a colorful ribbon. Someone handed Hoch a golden scissors. “In the name of Global Unity and World Commerce,” he intoned, as if praying, “let us move boldly into the 22nd century!”
The scissors sliced through the ribbon.
Hoch's junior officer Chen Lee handed him a golden shovel. “And now, sir, make the first cut into the earth.” Ilsa zoomed in on the shovel as it changed hands.
Everyone cheered, the music played, and Hoch and his entourage strode through the gateway onto the soil of “Parcel 37”.
Ilsa found herself holding her breath as she turned her glance in the direction of the desolate-looking waste field. She watched the WorldCor bigwigs step onto the dark, blasted-looking brown vegetation that she remembered from her own excursion to the place.
Nothing green bloomed there, though it was spring. Not one new leaf, not one fresh blade of grass.
The entourage hung back. As Hoch proceeded slowly into the Forgotten Field, his steps faltered and he came to a stop. He stared down at the shovel as if he couldn't remember what to do with it. The brittle thornbushes waved about his knees. Behind him, the observers fell silent.
Now that he actually stood in the lonely expanse where no one ever walked, Chief Executive Hoch looked positively frightened. He stood there for the longest time, doing nothing, saying nothing, his head to one side, as if listening. His eyes widened, his mouth trembled. He looked upward.
The sun had disappeared behind a dark bank of clouds...clouds which hovered directly above the wasteland.
Hoch finally figured out what to do with the ridiculous golden shovel. He awkwardly brought it down into the soil and attempted to dig. Ilsa's view lens zoomed in on the shining implement as it cleaved the black, ashy soil.
Hoch suddenly gave a yell and jumped backward. The shovel sailed high in the air. Hoch was left standing, holding his arm and grimacing in pain.
His aides hurried out to his assistance, black crow-like shapes in their black uniforms.
"What's the matter," Nadia muttered, "too much manual labor for the old geezer?" But she didn't say it too loudly.
Ilsa's answer was cut off as the Chief Executive let out a piercing scream and collapsed.
"What the hell was that all about?" Nadia wondered. "Did the protesters plant a bomb?"
"We'd better get out of here," Ilsa decided, "I'm sure that wasn't on the news script." It was dangerous to see unacceptable news. "Anyway, it's looking awfully dark and threatening."
Indeed, the weather started out bright and sunny, but now a cloud as dark as twilight hovered over Parcel 37.
***
"I don't know what it was," the Chief Executive was telling the group of reporters. Nadia and Ilsa jockeyed for position, trying to get a view. There must have been 50 newspeople there. At the end of the session they would all hand in their film and the News Supervision team would edit it until they have the parts they wanted... the parts the public was permitted to see. "As soon as I set foot on that land, I knew I shouldn't have," Hoch said. "I felt a great pain go up my arm..." he touched the arm as he spoke, a blankness coming over his face.
"What sort of pain," a senior reporter wanted to know. "Was there an explosion?"
A chorus of voices picked up on that and shouted at once. "Was there a bomb? Was it an Anarki Brigade plot? Did someone try to kill you?"
The Security Head stood up. "That possibility will be investigated," he announced in a voice like crushed ice.
Ilsa shuddered. She knew what that voice meant: within an hour, Security squads would be breaking in doors, hauling out anyone suspected of anti-WorldCor sympathies.
"Sir, have you been in poor health?" Nadia called out.
"It... it wasn't like that. Not really a physical kind of pain," said the Chief Executive. "More like a...mental anguish. But I'm not crazy, if that's what you're thinking." He scowled at them all.
Junior Executive Officer Chen Lee spoke up. "Uh, sir, will you be well enough to accompany the work crews tomorrow? Just as a propaganda move, to show the public you're still in control?"
Hoch's mouth opened, but no sound came out for several minutes. "I..." beads of sweat ran down his face. "Please... I can't go back there. Don't make me go back!"
***
"What do you suppose made him flip like that?" Nadia twirled her finger around her temple.
"Watch what you say about the WorldCor Executive," her friend Alex cautioned, as the friends sat around in their communal space sharing cups of vitajuice. And they all glanced over their shoulders, out of long habit.
"It was like he saw a ghost," Nadia continued.
"Maybe he did," Ilsa said. "Has anyone been able to find out the history of the site? Maybe someone's buried there."
"Sure." Alex mocked. "Newscaster Ilsa Berg discovers ancient Egyptian mummies buried in Eastern Europe."
"Ooh," Nadia added. "There's a ghost story here, I smell it."
"Oh, hush up " Ilsa threw a tofu-chip at her frield. "I'm serious. I tried to do a search on the local history. I couldn't find a thing. There's big sections of history missing from the Archives."
"Of course there are. There's some things we aren't allowed to know." Nadia moved closer to her. "And Ilsa, if you don't want to be missing yourself, I think you'd better drop the whole thing." Nadia pressed her lips to Ilsa's cheek. "Come to bed, liebschein."
***
The next week Ilsa found herself drifting to the edge of the Urbzone, to where the work crews were setting up to begin the construction on the Forgotten Field.
It was her day off. She wasn't on assignment. She didn't have her cam equipment. She had come here on her own, and she couldn't figure out why.
One of the senior News supervisors had seen a blueprint and the rumor had slipped out: WorldCor planned a luxury complex, the likes of which few could imagine. Most people were crammed into urban arcologies that swarmed like anthills. Not the WorldCor execs. They aimed to convert the bleak Dornigveld into golf courses, swimming pools, safari parks. After all, these were the movers and shakers of the planet.
So today the invasion began. As Ilsa watched, machines as big as buildings rolled in, driven by operators in computerized cabs. There was no golden shovel today. They came on as inexorable as mountains: mountains of power and metal and mighty 22nd century technology. Their treads flattened the brittle vegetation and churned up the dark vulnerable earth, leaving gaping wounds in their wake.
But they didn't get far. One machine rolled to a stop, then another. The engine roar cut off and a thick silence enveloped them. An operator stumbled out from behind his controls. “I've stalled,” he shouted to another.
The door of the largest cab opened and the operator stepped out, took one step and fell on the ground.
"What the hell...?" Ilsa muttered, wishing for a closer look. She wished that she had the station magni-cam. Personal cameras or viewing equipment, of course, was forbidden.
Others emerged from their machines and ran, as if pursued. Ilsa could no longer contain her curiosity. She ran out into the field herself. If someone was hurt, perhaps she could help.
She didn't get far either. Something held her paralyzed.
"Go back," a voice spoke to her. She couldn't tell what kind of a voice. Male? Female? Something grim, terrible, squeezed out from out of the earth and rocks. "Never disturb this land."
Ilsa felt faint. Her legs wobbled and she fell on her face. A cloud engulfed here: something huge, choking and dark. Out of the midst, she saws the outlines of something white and bony.
"Go away and come no closer, or you will die. All of you!"
**
"Ilsa, look at this!" Nadia motioned to Ilsa. "The news says that the workers at the Worldcon site have fallen ill".
She pointed to the news screen, where a man was speaking. "I started losing weight... my hair fell out. Scars all over my body..."
The man was as gaunt as a skeleton.
"Th-they said to go away or we would all die," he began to babble. "We'd die just like they did."
“I knew it,” Ilsa muttered. “Someone died there.” She shivered. She couldn't get warm, though she had a heavy blanket wrapped around her. She couldn't get the voice out of her head. You will all die...
The screen cut to the WorldCor Boardroom. "Should construction be halted?" said the voice-over, whom Ilsa recognized as Oswald. "That is the question being put to Junior Exec Officer Chen Lee.”
"Absolutely not," said Chen Lee, immobile as rock in front of the polished table. The equally massive Board of Directors sat with frozen faces, listening to their leader. "This site is the last open expanse of any size in the entire region," said Chen. "It's a crowded, hungry world. We can't let archaic superstitions direct our actions in the 22nd Century. WorldCor executives need a new headquarters so that they can properly direct all aspects of the world economy. We've got stockholders to account to..."
Ilsa remembered one time when her mom had told her that the people in power used to be 'accountable' to everyone, not just stockholders. There used to be something called a 'vote', by which even people like herself could speak their opinions.
And wait a second, she wondered, why did they keep talking about what a crowded hungry world it was? This new complex of theirs was for their own benefit, not to help the crowded hungry masses. The sudden realization struck her like a fist.
She must be getting sick. She couldn't think straight. She had never dared to think something like this before. They lie! she realized, terrified by the truth. These thoughts of hers could signal the onset of a dangerous malady: thinking for herself. This malady was inevitably fatal.
"We believe that these disease symptoms and 'supernatural hallucinations' are a plot by the Anarki Brigade," Chen continued. "The Security Forces are investigating that possibility right now."
The screen cut to a scene of police vans; prisoners with their hands on their heads; an enclosure of barbed wire. Those evil anarchists: scapegoats for everything that went wrong. If there was a toxic spill, tainted food, an epidemic... it was all due to Anarki sabotage.
Nadia swore. "You'd better watch out Ilsa, you'll be next."
"Why me?" Ilsa tried to keep her voice steady. "I don't know any anarchists."
"You were seen walking near the ... the construction site. You probably saw something you shouldn't have. Anyway, what were you doing there without being on official business? That looks like eccentricity to me. "
Ilsa put a hand over her mouth. Eccentricity. A verdict of doom. Nadia was right. Ilsa could be in a lot of trouble already.
Nadia came over and felt Ilsa's forehead. "You'd better lie down. You have a fever."
***
Ilsa found it hard to sleep that night, and the next, and the night after that. Her sleep was troubled by horrific nightmares, the details of which she could never quite remember when she awoke. It became hard to eat, hard to keep food down.
"What's the matter with you, Ilsa," Nadia fussed over her. "You need some relaxation. We're going out to the gym, want to come?"
Ilsa shook her head. There was only one place she wanted to go.
She had to go back there: as strongly as it pushed her away, it pulled her with equal force. She knew that she would never be able to relax or forget.
She crossed the sector, walking and hopping Metro trains, until she reached the edge. She was feeling a bit sick as she approached the sea of thorns that stretched to the horizon. She had been feeling sick ever since her last walk out here.
A cold wind blew out of the emptiness. Her hands started to tremble. Her teeth chattered. Chills racked her body.
Storm clouds were blowing up again. As she walked out to the site, twilight fell--though it was early afternoon. A pall of smoke, or fog, enveloped the landscape.
A lone earth-scraper came barrelling out of the murk. As Ilsa watched, it screeched to a stop. The operator scrambled out.
"Run!" he cried. "It's them!"
"Who?" Then, amid the murk, she caught outlines of... them: A great crowd of wraithlike people, or maybe skeletons... she could not tell which.
Ilsa was too terrified to run. She could barely speak for the stinking smoke which filled her lungs. She struggled to get the words out. "Who...who are you?"
"We are the Millions," a multitude whispered in reply. Their voices were like the desolate rustle of a million thorn bushes...the whispers of smoke, rocks, ashes. "You chose not to remember our fate. Woe unto you!"
Ilsa couldn't move. She stood there while they flowed around her. A bony-faced ghost pointed at her in accusation.
"Shame on you all! You chose ignorance. We told you to never forget."
A woman ghost confronted her, holding a dead baby. "And now you desecrate our burial place."
One by one they drifted by her field of vision: a man with a bullethole through his head. A shattered girl. The curtain of smoke opened up to reveal a nightmare landscape beyond comprehension: A mountain of mangled dead. Piles of clothing, shaven hair, shoes. A multitude of naked people forced to enter a chamber... the door opened to reveal a pile of twisted corpses.
"Look at this. How could you forget? How dared you forget?" The lamentation assailed her from every side. "This earth is made of our blood and ashes." One of them picked up a handful of the dark soil. "This earth has absorbed more pain and suffering than any place in the universe. Nothing green can ever grow here. Nothing can ever live here." Particles of black soil trickled from skeletal fingers. "Your forgetfulness has cursed you forever."
“And now you'll do it again. You've closed your minds to truth...filled the world with hatred,” the accusation came from a wizened, bearded elder.
“A world of the blind,” an equally emaciated woman raised her hands to the sky. "Blind to justice, reason, compassion. Trampled history and laid your souls on the altar of greed, control, power and death!"
"You shall be cursed forever more!" the ghosts cried out, and the panorama of hell rolled open from horizon to horizon. Ilsa saw what this place had been: Barbed wire, black smokestacks that belched flame. A great, giant factory, created for the manufacture of mass death.
She put her hands over her ears and ran until blackness overtook her.
***
"Ilsa?"
A voice kept calling her until at last she had to open her eyes. There stood Nadia at the foot of the bed. Institutional gray walls surrounded her.
"Where...where am I?" Ilsa's voice was hoarse and it hurt to speak.
"The emergency medics found you wandering the streets. They say you kept muttering, 'it wasn't me, I didn't do it.' Didn't do what, Ilsa?"
Ilsa rubbed her eyes, groaning as the memories returned.
"Nadia," she croaked. Her throat was raw, probably from screaming. "N-Nadia, tell them... get the city officials... the Worldcon people... news crews..."
"Tell them what?"
"I have to tell them about... about the Field. What happened there. They have to get away from it!"
Nadia brushed her aside, but Ilsa wouldn't be stopped. She refused to eat, and kept insisting, until they finally sent in News Supervisor Oswald and one of the minor regional Coordinators.
"The Worldcor site,” Ilsa said. “Parcel 37... it's haunted."
“Nonsense,” said the Coordinator. “That's filthy anarchist lies, all of it.”
Oswald gestured dismissively. "Did you bring us here to tell ghost stories?"
Ilsa stood up, clutching her sheet around her, careless of appearances. "Yes sir, I sure as hell did. Let me tell you a ghost story about what happened at the Field of Thorns and why Worldcor should get as far away as possible and leave it alone forever. Okay?” She took a deep breath. She knew she was about to go over the edge... she had already committed the unthinkable by questioning Worldcor, by saying that the masters of the globe were wrong.
“Once upon a time,” said Ilsa, “a huge number of people were slaughtered at that place...the place they call the Field of Thorns. I mean a huge number. I think they called themselves the Millions. I saw them crammed into death chambers and made into mountains of corpses. The earth couldn't contain all the dead. The air and streams couldn't handle the ashes. The sky was dark as twilight from the ashes of their burning..."
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she described what she had seen. She noticed that her voice had risen to a shout. Oswald was holding his hands over his ears.
When she stopped screaming, the two men were silent for awhile. At last the News Supervisor wiped his face. "Uh... well. This is certainly quite a story, young lady. Perhaps... perhaps we had better reference it."
He took out his cyber access panel and began typing in passcodes. History was highly classified, of course, same as news. He read something, and conferred with the Coordinator in whispers for a few moments.
"Uh... the history archives say that the events you refer to never happened." He did not meet Ilsa's eyes.
"Uh... yes. That's correct," the coordinator confirmed. "The accusations of such deeds were shown to be a hoax. It was just, um, a plot... by an unscrupulous group wishing to claim compensation, sympathy, that sort of thing. It's theorized that--"
Whatever it was theorized was cut off, as Ilsa began to scream obscenities at the top of her lungs. She started to throw things: her shoes, her lunch tray, whatever came to hand. The med-aides finally arrived to restrain her and shoot her up with tranks.
***
“What can be done?” Ilsa wept, while Nadia held her shoulders. “What can be done to stop them?”
“Who? WorldCor or the ghosts?”
They had let Nadia visit Ilsa at the hospital psych ward. She had been sitting there all day while Ilsa whispered the secret to her...over, and over.
“Either one.”
“I don't know,” Nadia said. “I watched a couple of old fashioned ghost story holos. Usually the ghosts have to be laid to rest, don't they? I mean, they want a proper burial.”
Ilsa suspected Nadia was humoring her.
“Or else they want revenge,” Nadia continued.
Ilsa shivered. “Th-there's millions of them. What could possibly balance out...the things that were done to them?”
Nadia looked away. “In this one story I watched, they required a sacrifice to appease them.”
"A...sacrifice?" Ilsa stared at her friend, going rigid.
"What's wrong?" Nadia stared back. "Ilsa? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"People... people used to believe..." Ilsa struggled to remember something her mother had once told her. A superstition people had once believed.
"What, Ilsa?" Nadia laid a hand on Ilsa's arm. "Liebschein, please snap out of it. You're scaring me."
Ilsa didn't reply. As soon as her friend had said the words, Ilsa understood. She knew what had to be done.
For now, it was best to pretend she was crazy. So she made her expression go childlike and vacant. “I miss you, Nadia. Those are pretty earrings. Can I have them, to remind me of you?”
***
The construction crew sent in a fully mechanized unit to cleave the soil of Parcel 37. Ilsa hid in the grass, watching them roll in: the newest, most sophisitcated remote-controlled earth-moving diggers and steel-beam movers. WorldCor wasn't about to be stopped by a bunch of ghosts, no sir! Even a million ghosts are no match for modern technology and soon the vast pall of darkness would be whisked away, the foul death-stench sterilized, the miasma of pain blanched out, the memories scoured away. Where the cursed zone stood, there would be a sparkling, shining new monument to the masters of global technocracy.
Ilsa waited for the right moment. She had managed to escape from the psych ward by cutting through the restraints with the sharp edge of one of Nadia's earrings. Now as the machines advanced, she began to run. She was headed for the biggest giant... she meant to throw herself under the wheels. A sacrifice. Would the Ghosts understand that? If just one person remembered and cared enough to give her life... would that help? It didn't make sense... but back when people had followed something called religion, they had believed that one man's sacrifice had somehow cancelled out the wrongs of all humanity. Or something like that.
She heard a shout. Other vehicles came rushing toward her. She caught the flash of rotating police blinkers. A beam of light stabbed out at her.
"Halt! Security! Saboteur! You are under arrest!"
Ilsa kept running, with the deafening roar of bulldozers in her ears and the stink of machine smoke and the stench of death in her nose. A beam of red light stabbed out at her and caught her in the leg. A laser stunner! She stumbled and landed on the earth: the black granulated earth that was made of ashes and suffering. She looked up at the unstoppable forces before her.
The WorldCor army, security forces and construction machines, smooth and unstoppable. Anarchist protestors and earth-lovers had gone down like sticks before them; crushed beneath the treads.
But not the Ghosts.
They stood, a pale army stretching to the horizon. Their bones glowed out from the miasma and a great howl arose from them, drowning out the roar of the machines.
"Shame! A curse! What have you done? You have swallowed up the entire earth! Then let the earth now swallow you!"
Ilsa looked on, wide-eyed, as a dark line appeared on the ground. It spread in both directions and widened into a trench.
"Humanity has sinned beyond hope--now your sin has caused the earth to turn on you!"
The trench gaped wider and deeper every moment. It became a canyon. Ilsa could see the bleached bones in its interior.
“Now let the earth swallow you!" The edges of the chasm collapsed and sank into the void, taking with them the first of the giant machines. With a great rumbling, it tipped over on its side and was sucked down, and the second one came after it. The roar of the engines echoed from the chasm walls, as if the machines were falling forever.
But still the chasm grew larger. Ilsa watched, digging her fingers into the ashen ground...the only ground that stayed solid, as all around her the earth collapsed in on itself. She watched as the Eurobahn split in two and was sucked under. The buildings began to go: WorldCor's regional headquarters melted like candle wax. MegaMalls and highways, IndustriaPlexes and Corpoplexes, they heaved and buckled and subsided as the earth devoured them.
Only one place remained stable: the land where Ilsa lay watching in stupefied horror. When would it stop? Perhaps at the empty places, where the greed had not yet reached... if any such place could be found.
As the land sank, the ocean waters rushed in to fill up the gaping wound that had been Central Europe. White foam licked the tips of the sinking high-rises. Waves leaped with joy as they reclaimed what had once been theirs. Dolphins arched high in the air and frisked among the floating debris of civilization. Brilliant sunlight gleamed on the waters of the new earth. The dark pall of smoke had cleared. The sky was a shimmering blue, as blue as the day of Creation.
And all alone on her island, Ilsa began to compose a news story that no censor would see. A story that told the truth.
***
There was a large empty field, probably several miles wide, on the edge of the Urbzone: no highways, no high-rises, no malls, no food bars. No one even lived there.
It seemed to have been forgotten by the world.
Ilsa Berg wondered why. It's a crowded world, that was what they always said. You could hardly go anywhere without seeing at least one massive residence block, one tangle of roads, transmission wires, power towesr. But here... nothing.
No one went there. Except Ilsa: once she got a bad hit of Dose-X and went nuts. Her friends told her she had gone running down the center of the condoplex naked. She remembered finding herself in the middle of an empty field, filled with tough brown grasses and thorny bushes. The grass stalks made a strange, sorrowful sound as they waved in the breeze. The place seemed to belong to its own universe... a dark, separate world.
But maybe it was all just a dope dream. Nothing like that had ever happened to anyone else. Because no one else ever went there. Why should they, when they had all the virtual parks and Simu-Natur zones anyone could want?
So Ilsa had forgotten about it too... until that day when News Supervisor Oswald gave her her most surprising assignment.
"You're to cover the opening ceremony. Worldcor has acquired Parcel 37--the land they call the Forgotten Field. You know, Dornigveld--the Field of Thorns."
"What! you're joking."
He handed her the packet, containing the news script. "Sure. Why does that surprise you? Everything will get developed sooner or later."
"I don't know. It's just... a wasteland. No one has ever built anything there. There must be a good reason why."
"Nonsense." Oswald sucked on his Euphor smoke. "It's right in the middle of the EEC Urbzone. The land is probably worth millions. Why nobody ever got around to developing it, I never will understand. It's just sitting there going to waste. And what's the use of that? It's a hungry, crowded world."
***
"The Euro branch of WorldCor is happy to greet you all on this great occasion," the sound system boomed out.
Flags rippled, music blared. A great big holographic WorldCor emblem shimmered in the air. WorldCor, said the banner. Leading the world into the 22nd Century.
Ilsa adjusted the lens of the Zoom Cam until she could see the manicured face of Andreas Hoch, Chief Executive of WorldCor's European branch.
"WorldCor is happy to announce the construction of its new Euro Headquarters at Parcel 37," said Andreas Hoch. "This will mark a great new day of harmony and economic strength and..."
While Hoch was listing what kind of a great new day it would be, Ilsa heard signs of a scuffle. She glanced over at the far end of the square, where a couple of Anarki protesters were yelling and waving signs while the police tried to clear them off. She aimed the viewer in their direction to get a better look.
One of them bore a sign saying "Hands off Parcel 37." The other said "WorldCor = World Tyranny."
Ilsa quickly moved the viewer away, before anyone could see that she had seen. But she still caught a glimpse of the police squad closing in with riot stunners. No sense in trying to record that. The film would be instantly confiscated and she would probably end up in the detention cell next to the protesters. What is a newscaster's first lesson? “News must be kept under control at all times!”
The Chief Executive and his entourage climbed into his limo-copter. The news team, Ilsa Berg and her roommate/colleague Nadia and a few assistants, followed close behind. They passed the Workers Arcology No. #419 and the World Bank Supermall and stopped at the edge of the InterEuro Highway at a temporary parade ground that had been built at the edge of what they were calling Parcel 37: the Field of Thorns.
The officials had built a gateway with a colorful ribbon. Someone handed Hoch a golden scissors. “In the name of Global Unity and World Commerce,” he intoned, as if praying, “let us move boldly into the 22nd century!”
The scissors sliced through the ribbon.
Hoch's junior officer Chen Lee handed him a golden shovel. “And now, sir, make the first cut into the earth.” Ilsa zoomed in on the shovel as it changed hands.
Everyone cheered, the music played, and Hoch and his entourage strode through the gateway onto the soil of “Parcel 37”.
Ilsa found herself holding her breath as she turned her glance in the direction of the desolate-looking waste field. She watched the WorldCor bigwigs step onto the dark, blasted-looking brown vegetation that she remembered from her own excursion to the place.
Nothing green bloomed there, though it was spring. Not one new leaf, not one fresh blade of grass.
The entourage hung back. As Hoch proceeded slowly into the Forgotten Field, his steps faltered and he came to a stop. He stared down at the shovel as if he couldn't remember what to do with it. The brittle thornbushes waved about his knees. Behind him, the observers fell silent.
Now that he actually stood in the lonely expanse where no one ever walked, Chief Executive Hoch looked positively frightened. He stood there for the longest time, doing nothing, saying nothing, his head to one side, as if listening. His eyes widened, his mouth trembled. He looked upward.
The sun had disappeared behind a dark bank of clouds...clouds which hovered directly above the wasteland.
Hoch finally figured out what to do with the ridiculous golden shovel. He awkwardly brought it down into the soil and attempted to dig. Ilsa's view lens zoomed in on the shining implement as it cleaved the black, ashy soil.
Hoch suddenly gave a yell and jumped backward. The shovel sailed high in the air. Hoch was left standing, holding his arm and grimacing in pain.
His aides hurried out to his assistance, black crow-like shapes in their black uniforms.
"What's the matter," Nadia muttered, "too much manual labor for the old geezer?" But she didn't say it too loudly.
Ilsa's answer was cut off as the Chief Executive let out a piercing scream and collapsed.
"What the hell was that all about?" Nadia wondered. "Did the protesters plant a bomb?"
"We'd better get out of here," Ilsa decided, "I'm sure that wasn't on the news script." It was dangerous to see unacceptable news. "Anyway, it's looking awfully dark and threatening."
Indeed, the weather started out bright and sunny, but now a cloud as dark as twilight hovered over Parcel 37.
***
"I don't know what it was," the Chief Executive was telling the group of reporters. Nadia and Ilsa jockeyed for position, trying to get a view. There must have been 50 newspeople there. At the end of the session they would all hand in their film and the News Supervision team would edit it until they have the parts they wanted... the parts the public was permitted to see. "As soon as I set foot on that land, I knew I shouldn't have," Hoch said. "I felt a great pain go up my arm..." he touched the arm as he spoke, a blankness coming over his face.
"What sort of pain," a senior reporter wanted to know. "Was there an explosion?"
A chorus of voices picked up on that and shouted at once. "Was there a bomb? Was it an Anarki Brigade plot? Did someone try to kill you?"
The Security Head stood up. "That possibility will be investigated," he announced in a voice like crushed ice.
Ilsa shuddered. She knew what that voice meant: within an hour, Security squads would be breaking in doors, hauling out anyone suspected of anti-WorldCor sympathies.
"Sir, have you been in poor health?" Nadia called out.
"It... it wasn't like that. Not really a physical kind of pain," said the Chief Executive. "More like a...mental anguish. But I'm not crazy, if that's what you're thinking." He scowled at them all.
Junior Executive Officer Chen Lee spoke up. "Uh, sir, will you be well enough to accompany the work crews tomorrow? Just as a propaganda move, to show the public you're still in control?"
Hoch's mouth opened, but no sound came out for several minutes. "I..." beads of sweat ran down his face. "Please... I can't go back there. Don't make me go back!"
***
"What do you suppose made him flip like that?" Nadia twirled her finger around her temple.
"Watch what you say about the WorldCor Executive," her friend Alex cautioned, as the friends sat around in their communal space sharing cups of vitajuice. And they all glanced over their shoulders, out of long habit.
"It was like he saw a ghost," Nadia continued.
"Maybe he did," Ilsa said. "Has anyone been able to find out the history of the site? Maybe someone's buried there."
"Sure." Alex mocked. "Newscaster Ilsa Berg discovers ancient Egyptian mummies buried in Eastern Europe."
"Ooh," Nadia added. "There's a ghost story here, I smell it."
"Oh, hush up " Ilsa threw a tofu-chip at her frield. "I'm serious. I tried to do a search on the local history. I couldn't find a thing. There's big sections of history missing from the Archives."
"Of course there are. There's some things we aren't allowed to know." Nadia moved closer to her. "And Ilsa, if you don't want to be missing yourself, I think you'd better drop the whole thing." Nadia pressed her lips to Ilsa's cheek. "Come to bed, liebschein."
***
The next week Ilsa found herself drifting to the edge of the Urbzone, to where the work crews were setting up to begin the construction on the Forgotten Field.
It was her day off. She wasn't on assignment. She didn't have her cam equipment. She had come here on her own, and she couldn't figure out why.
One of the senior News supervisors had seen a blueprint and the rumor had slipped out: WorldCor planned a luxury complex, the likes of which few could imagine. Most people were crammed into urban arcologies that swarmed like anthills. Not the WorldCor execs. They aimed to convert the bleak Dornigveld into golf courses, swimming pools, safari parks. After all, these were the movers and shakers of the planet.
So today the invasion began. As Ilsa watched, machines as big as buildings rolled in, driven by operators in computerized cabs. There was no golden shovel today. They came on as inexorable as mountains: mountains of power and metal and mighty 22nd century technology. Their treads flattened the brittle vegetation and churned up the dark vulnerable earth, leaving gaping wounds in their wake.
But they didn't get far. One machine rolled to a stop, then another. The engine roar cut off and a thick silence enveloped them. An operator stumbled out from behind his controls. “I've stalled,” he shouted to another.
The door of the largest cab opened and the operator stepped out, took one step and fell on the ground.
"What the hell...?" Ilsa muttered, wishing for a closer look. She wished that she had the station magni-cam. Personal cameras or viewing equipment, of course, was forbidden.
Others emerged from their machines and ran, as if pursued. Ilsa could no longer contain her curiosity. She ran out into the field herself. If someone was hurt, perhaps she could help.
She didn't get far either. Something held her paralyzed.
"Go back," a voice spoke to her. She couldn't tell what kind of a voice. Male? Female? Something grim, terrible, squeezed out from out of the earth and rocks. "Never disturb this land."
Ilsa felt faint. Her legs wobbled and she fell on her face. A cloud engulfed here: something huge, choking and dark. Out of the midst, she saws the outlines of something white and bony.
"Go away and come no closer, or you will die. All of you!"
**
"Ilsa, look at this!" Nadia motioned to Ilsa. "The news says that the workers at the Worldcon site have fallen ill".
She pointed to the news screen, where a man was speaking. "I started losing weight... my hair fell out. Scars all over my body..."
The man was as gaunt as a skeleton.
"Th-they said to go away or we would all die," he began to babble. "We'd die just like they did."
“I knew it,” Ilsa muttered. “Someone died there.” She shivered. She couldn't get warm, though she had a heavy blanket wrapped around her. She couldn't get the voice out of her head. You will all die...
The screen cut to the WorldCor Boardroom. "Should construction be halted?" said the voice-over, whom Ilsa recognized as Oswald. "That is the question being put to Junior Exec Officer Chen Lee.”
"Absolutely not," said Chen Lee, immobile as rock in front of the polished table. The equally massive Board of Directors sat with frozen faces, listening to their leader. "This site is the last open expanse of any size in the entire region," said Chen. "It's a crowded, hungry world. We can't let archaic superstitions direct our actions in the 22nd Century. WorldCor executives need a new headquarters so that they can properly direct all aspects of the world economy. We've got stockholders to account to..."
Ilsa remembered one time when her mom had told her that the people in power used to be 'accountable' to everyone, not just stockholders. There used to be something called a 'vote', by which even people like herself could speak their opinions.
And wait a second, she wondered, why did they keep talking about what a crowded hungry world it was? This new complex of theirs was for their own benefit, not to help the crowded hungry masses. The sudden realization struck her like a fist.
She must be getting sick. She couldn't think straight. She had never dared to think something like this before. They lie! she realized, terrified by the truth. These thoughts of hers could signal the onset of a dangerous malady: thinking for herself. This malady was inevitably fatal.
"We believe that these disease symptoms and 'supernatural hallucinations' are a plot by the Anarki Brigade," Chen continued. "The Security Forces are investigating that possibility right now."
The screen cut to a scene of police vans; prisoners with their hands on their heads; an enclosure of barbed wire. Those evil anarchists: scapegoats for everything that went wrong. If there was a toxic spill, tainted food, an epidemic... it was all due to Anarki sabotage.
Nadia swore. "You'd better watch out Ilsa, you'll be next."
"Why me?" Ilsa tried to keep her voice steady. "I don't know any anarchists."
"You were seen walking near the ... the construction site. You probably saw something you shouldn't have. Anyway, what were you doing there without being on official business? That looks like eccentricity to me. "
Ilsa put a hand over her mouth. Eccentricity. A verdict of doom. Nadia was right. Ilsa could be in a lot of trouble already.
Nadia came over and felt Ilsa's forehead. "You'd better lie down. You have a fever."
***
Ilsa found it hard to sleep that night, and the next, and the night after that. Her sleep was troubled by horrific nightmares, the details of which she could never quite remember when she awoke. It became hard to eat, hard to keep food down.
"What's the matter with you, Ilsa," Nadia fussed over her. "You need some relaxation. We're going out to the gym, want to come?"
Ilsa shook her head. There was only one place she wanted to go.
She had to go back there: as strongly as it pushed her away, it pulled her with equal force. She knew that she would never be able to relax or forget.
She crossed the sector, walking and hopping Metro trains, until she reached the edge. She was feeling a bit sick as she approached the sea of thorns that stretched to the horizon. She had been feeling sick ever since her last walk out here.
A cold wind blew out of the emptiness. Her hands started to tremble. Her teeth chattered. Chills racked her body.
Storm clouds were blowing up again. As she walked out to the site, twilight fell--though it was early afternoon. A pall of smoke, or fog, enveloped the landscape.
A lone earth-scraper came barrelling out of the murk. As Ilsa watched, it screeched to a stop. The operator scrambled out.
"Run!" he cried. "It's them!"
"Who?" Then, amid the murk, she caught outlines of... them: A great crowd of wraithlike people, or maybe skeletons... she could not tell which.
Ilsa was too terrified to run. She could barely speak for the stinking smoke which filled her lungs. She struggled to get the words out. "Who...who are you?"
"We are the Millions," a multitude whispered in reply. Their voices were like the desolate rustle of a million thorn bushes...the whispers of smoke, rocks, ashes. "You chose not to remember our fate. Woe unto you!"
Ilsa couldn't move. She stood there while they flowed around her. A bony-faced ghost pointed at her in accusation.
"Shame on you all! You chose ignorance. We told you to never forget."
A woman ghost confronted her, holding a dead baby. "And now you desecrate our burial place."
One by one they drifted by her field of vision: a man with a bullethole through his head. A shattered girl. The curtain of smoke opened up to reveal a nightmare landscape beyond comprehension: A mountain of mangled dead. Piles of clothing, shaven hair, shoes. A multitude of naked people forced to enter a chamber... the door opened to reveal a pile of twisted corpses.
"Look at this. How could you forget? How dared you forget?" The lamentation assailed her from every side. "This earth is made of our blood and ashes." One of them picked up a handful of the dark soil. "This earth has absorbed more pain and suffering than any place in the universe. Nothing green can ever grow here. Nothing can ever live here." Particles of black soil trickled from skeletal fingers. "Your forgetfulness has cursed you forever."
“And now you'll do it again. You've closed your minds to truth...filled the world with hatred,” the accusation came from a wizened, bearded elder.
“A world of the blind,” an equally emaciated woman raised her hands to the sky. "Blind to justice, reason, compassion. Trampled history and laid your souls on the altar of greed, control, power and death!"
"You shall be cursed forever more!" the ghosts cried out, and the panorama of hell rolled open from horizon to horizon. Ilsa saw what this place had been: Barbed wire, black smokestacks that belched flame. A great, giant factory, created for the manufacture of mass death.
She put her hands over her ears and ran until blackness overtook her.
***
"Ilsa?"
A voice kept calling her until at last she had to open her eyes. There stood Nadia at the foot of the bed. Institutional gray walls surrounded her.
"Where...where am I?" Ilsa's voice was hoarse and it hurt to speak.
"The emergency medics found you wandering the streets. They say you kept muttering, 'it wasn't me, I didn't do it.' Didn't do what, Ilsa?"
Ilsa rubbed her eyes, groaning as the memories returned.
"Nadia," she croaked. Her throat was raw, probably from screaming. "N-Nadia, tell them... get the city officials... the Worldcon people... news crews..."
"Tell them what?"
"I have to tell them about... about the Field. What happened there. They have to get away from it!"
Nadia brushed her aside, but Ilsa wouldn't be stopped. She refused to eat, and kept insisting, until they finally sent in News Supervisor Oswald and one of the minor regional Coordinators.
"The Worldcor site,” Ilsa said. “Parcel 37... it's haunted."
“Nonsense,” said the Coordinator. “That's filthy anarchist lies, all of it.”
Oswald gestured dismissively. "Did you bring us here to tell ghost stories?"
Ilsa stood up, clutching her sheet around her, careless of appearances. "Yes sir, I sure as hell did. Let me tell you a ghost story about what happened at the Field of Thorns and why Worldcor should get as far away as possible and leave it alone forever. Okay?” She took a deep breath. She knew she was about to go over the edge... she had already committed the unthinkable by questioning Worldcor, by saying that the masters of the globe were wrong.
“Once upon a time,” said Ilsa, “a huge number of people were slaughtered at that place...the place they call the Field of Thorns. I mean a huge number. I think they called themselves the Millions. I saw them crammed into death chambers and made into mountains of corpses. The earth couldn't contain all the dead. The air and streams couldn't handle the ashes. The sky was dark as twilight from the ashes of their burning..."
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she described what she had seen. She noticed that her voice had risen to a shout. Oswald was holding his hands over his ears.
When she stopped screaming, the two men were silent for awhile. At last the News Supervisor wiped his face. "Uh... well. This is certainly quite a story, young lady. Perhaps... perhaps we had better reference it."
He took out his cyber access panel and began typing in passcodes. History was highly classified, of course, same as news. He read something, and conferred with the Coordinator in whispers for a few moments.
"Uh... the history archives say that the events you refer to never happened." He did not meet Ilsa's eyes.
"Uh... yes. That's correct," the coordinator confirmed. "The accusations of such deeds were shown to be a hoax. It was just, um, a plot... by an unscrupulous group wishing to claim compensation, sympathy, that sort of thing. It's theorized that--"
Whatever it was theorized was cut off, as Ilsa began to scream obscenities at the top of her lungs. She started to throw things: her shoes, her lunch tray, whatever came to hand. The med-aides finally arrived to restrain her and shoot her up with tranks.
***
“What can be done?” Ilsa wept, while Nadia held her shoulders. “What can be done to stop them?”
“Who? WorldCor or the ghosts?”
They had let Nadia visit Ilsa at the hospital psych ward. She had been sitting there all day while Ilsa whispered the secret to her...over, and over.
“Either one.”
“I don't know,” Nadia said. “I watched a couple of old fashioned ghost story holos. Usually the ghosts have to be laid to rest, don't they? I mean, they want a proper burial.”
Ilsa suspected Nadia was humoring her.
“Or else they want revenge,” Nadia continued.
Ilsa shivered. “Th-there's millions of them. What could possibly balance out...the things that were done to them?”
Nadia looked away. “In this one story I watched, they required a sacrifice to appease them.”
"A...sacrifice?" Ilsa stared at her friend, going rigid.
"What's wrong?" Nadia stared back. "Ilsa? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"People... people used to believe..." Ilsa struggled to remember something her mother had once told her. A superstition people had once believed.
"What, Ilsa?" Nadia laid a hand on Ilsa's arm. "Liebschein, please snap out of it. You're scaring me."
Ilsa didn't reply. As soon as her friend had said the words, Ilsa understood. She knew what had to be done.
For now, it was best to pretend she was crazy. So she made her expression go childlike and vacant. “I miss you, Nadia. Those are pretty earrings. Can I have them, to remind me of you?”
***
The construction crew sent in a fully mechanized unit to cleave the soil of Parcel 37. Ilsa hid in the grass, watching them roll in: the newest, most sophisitcated remote-controlled earth-moving diggers and steel-beam movers. WorldCor wasn't about to be stopped by a bunch of ghosts, no sir! Even a million ghosts are no match for modern technology and soon the vast pall of darkness would be whisked away, the foul death-stench sterilized, the miasma of pain blanched out, the memories scoured away. Where the cursed zone stood, there would be a sparkling, shining new monument to the masters of global technocracy.
Ilsa waited for the right moment. She had managed to escape from the psych ward by cutting through the restraints with the sharp edge of one of Nadia's earrings. Now as the machines advanced, she began to run. She was headed for the biggest giant... she meant to throw herself under the wheels. A sacrifice. Would the Ghosts understand that? If just one person remembered and cared enough to give her life... would that help? It didn't make sense... but back when people had followed something called religion, they had believed that one man's sacrifice had somehow cancelled out the wrongs of all humanity. Or something like that.
She heard a shout. Other vehicles came rushing toward her. She caught the flash of rotating police blinkers. A beam of light stabbed out at her.
"Halt! Security! Saboteur! You are under arrest!"
Ilsa kept running, with the deafening roar of bulldozers in her ears and the stink of machine smoke and the stench of death in her nose. A beam of red light stabbed out at her and caught her in the leg. A laser stunner! She stumbled and landed on the earth: the black granulated earth that was made of ashes and suffering. She looked up at the unstoppable forces before her.
The WorldCor army, security forces and construction machines, smooth and unstoppable. Anarchist protestors and earth-lovers had gone down like sticks before them; crushed beneath the treads.
But not the Ghosts.
They stood, a pale army stretching to the horizon. Their bones glowed out from the miasma and a great howl arose from them, drowning out the roar of the machines.
"Shame! A curse! What have you done? You have swallowed up the entire earth! Then let the earth now swallow you!"
Ilsa looked on, wide-eyed, as a dark line appeared on the ground. It spread in both directions and widened into a trench.
"Humanity has sinned beyond hope--now your sin has caused the earth to turn on you!"
The trench gaped wider and deeper every moment. It became a canyon. Ilsa could see the bleached bones in its interior.
“Now let the earth swallow you!" The edges of the chasm collapsed and sank into the void, taking with them the first of the giant machines. With a great rumbling, it tipped over on its side and was sucked down, and the second one came after it. The roar of the engines echoed from the chasm walls, as if the machines were falling forever.
But still the chasm grew larger. Ilsa watched, digging her fingers into the ashen ground...the only ground that stayed solid, as all around her the earth collapsed in on itself. She watched as the Eurobahn split in two and was sucked under. The buildings began to go: WorldCor's regional headquarters melted like candle wax. MegaMalls and highways, IndustriaPlexes and Corpoplexes, they heaved and buckled and subsided as the earth devoured them.
Only one place remained stable: the land where Ilsa lay watching in stupefied horror. When would it stop? Perhaps at the empty places, where the greed had not yet reached... if any such place could be found.
As the land sank, the ocean waters rushed in to fill up the gaping wound that had been Central Europe. White foam licked the tips of the sinking high-rises. Waves leaped with joy as they reclaimed what had once been theirs. Dolphins arched high in the air and frisked among the floating debris of civilization. Brilliant sunlight gleamed on the waters of the new earth. The dark pall of smoke had cleared. The sky was a shimmering blue, as blue as the day of Creation.
And all alone on her island, Ilsa began to compose a news story that no censor would see. A story that told the truth.
***