Chapter One

There is a whoosh as a young boy opens a compartment and slides himself in. He is small and fits easily. His hair is a burning red and his eyes are brown. Muttering, he grasps a lever and pulls it. Moving faster than the speed of light, he travels back in time to the construction of the Transcontinental railroad. And stops.

He has come to relive the past, the outcome of the railroad.

Crash Bang Boom.

The young boy looks around curiously. He is alone, only in the company of the past. He looks at the mountains with the whitening tops and the green valleys. The Sierra Nevada mountains.

They look magical, soaring even higher in the air than some of the birds. They touch the sky. The mountains are so majestic; they seem to stand as if they will never move.  They are things that will be ruined by what is to come. The wind is light, softly blowing, and the sun shines like a fire.

Little Ludo hurriedly walks to an edge where people, workers, are gathered, hammering tracks and lowering themselves in reeds to explode the dark, dangerous mountain. It stands silently as birds soar in the brightening sky. The sun is fully up now, blazing, and the laborers are like robots, constantly and endlessly working. Ludo watches in wonder, like a person first seeing the sunlight after so much darkness.

The workers look miserable in the heat, the fire burning against their bodies. But they are diligent; they work hard. And they’re being taken advantage of. No, they’re not treated fairly, paid significantly less than the Irish workers who constantly complain about their wages. But being immigrants, the Chinese workers have to pay taxes without even having citizenship. They wear ripped, ash covered clothing, and sweat is dripping down their bodies like a shower of rain.

They are speaking a language he doesn’t understand, and the young boy listens, the incomprehensible words washing over him. He’s fascinated, as if he’s witnessing a solar eclipse. He wants to know. He wants to work.

Reeds are lowered, dynamite is lit, and the workers, in their burnt and ripped clothes, flee from the blasting dynamite like they are being chased by an evil monster. Again and again, light fills the air. Bright and burning hot, it sears the workers and everything near them. The rocks from the mountain crack open and shower onto them all like a waterfall. The Chinese workers have the most dangerous job of all, as dangerous as standing on the edge of a black hole.

“RUN! RUN!” They shout in their language, sprinting on the rough mountain ground.

Still, the boy watches, overwhelmed by curiosity. A supervisor watches too. He reclines lazily in a chair and gazes down at the workers with an arrogant look of importance on his face. He sits on the green, vivid, grassy area approximately three meters above the others. There is shade from the rocks above him; they shelter him from the sun. The supervisor is a manatee, eating a plant, with arms like slippery flippers.

“WORK!” He shouts, his voice sending waves through the wet, humid air.

“Sir! Sir!” The boy shouts, running up to the man. He trips on the sharp rocks and lands  on an already laid train track. It feels smooth like a dolphin's skin. His face is covered in a dark mask of dust.

He doesn’t want it for money, but for experience and knowledge. This is all so fascinating to him.  He doesn’t know about the unfairness. He doesn’t know it yet, but soon, he’ll see. The funny thing is, this job, this unfair job, is still better than what the workers had before.

“Mister sir, I’ll work too! I want to work!” Ludo says brightly, his voice echoing in the immense, mountainous area. The Sierra Nevada Mountains.

-Sophia Wang