The airship was about to land. It was laden with goods from Houston, way across the rocky mountains. I had yet to leave the city of San Francisco, but it was my job to land these birds from faraway cities that I could only dream of. I was standing on top of a four-story building, my feet locked in place while the wind howled around us, hauling on a rope to try and control the airship as it landed.

"C’mon, heave! You call yourself a man!?" That was the forewoman, Vera, screaming at me. She was a very large and strong woman, with flaming orange hair and a personality to match, but since I was the only male on the crew she still expected me to do the brunt of the physical labor. Or maybe she was just bullying me—it was hard to tell sometimes.

I pulled as hard as I could, while the rest of the crew (all girls) pulled around me. The forewoman did nothing, she just yelled at us to pull harder. With all the rest of our efforts, we managed to just barely get the airship under control, and I could feel it slowly descend. A shadow fell across us as the massive blimp blotted out the sun.

Our goal was to bring it in to the mooring mast—the trunk of a redwood, roughly 100 feet high and 10 feet across, built into the structure of the roof—where it could be tied up and docked. Then we'd lower the ship and start unloading its cargo. But this was a difficult process—it required careful coordination from the ground crew (us) and the airship crew to keep it steady in the high winds, while we tied up all of its ropes to the mast as tightly as we could.

"Oy, you! Get up there and tie it off!" That was Vera again. She meant that it was my job to go first: the hardest and most dangerous job of all. But I'd done this many times before, and I was confident in my abilities.

I released my footing on the main platform, and stepped up to the mooring mast. But... right as I did so, a sudden gust of wind blew from the side. The airship lurched, pulling the ropes with it... and the one in my hand pulled me along, too. With my footing gone, I had nothing to hold me in place. I went flying off over the side of the building!

I held on to the rope for dear life. It would have been an amazing overhead view of downtown San Francisco and the bay, if I had been able to appreciate it—the rope was flailing all around, showing me every angle of the colorful wooden buildings and shimmering blue water full of sailing ships. But I could only concentrate on gripping the rope tightly and praying for survival.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

My luck saved me today. After a few minutes, the wind died down. The rest of the crew brought the ship in, and I found my footing on the landing platform again.

"Well! Go on then! Get to work unloading!" Vera didn't care at all that I had almost died. She didn't even give me a chance to rest—we had to immediately start the arduous task of unloading all the heavy cargo from the ship.

"Don't forget to write down the cargo!" She belted. Yeah, yeah, as if I didn't know that. I pulled out my trusty black notebook and jotted down every item I unloaded. This cargo was mostly luxury food for the rich: sacks of oranges, crates of peanuts, boxes of raisins, etc. Common snack foods in my world of mass industrial production, but very expensive here. I earned pretty good wages as a dockhand here—at least I had that to compensate me for the extreme danger and heavy labor—but it was still hard for me to afford this stuff. So I hardly ever ate food like this, and only when I really missed one of the foods from my old life.

I was even more tired than usual today. I had been working hard all week, and my fight for survival on the rope had taken away all my strength. So I messed up. I dropped a box I was carrying, and the contents shattered all over the landing platform. A bunch of peanuts spilled out everywhere, making a huge mess. Even worse, I had ruined this piece of the cargo.

"You idiot! What the hell are you doing!"

"Sorry, boss," I begged. "I'm just so tired... I can't even hold my arms up anymore."

"You're tired, huh? OK then go home, and take a break, cuz you're suspended from duty for the next week! And that box of peanuts is coming out of your wages, get it?"

"NO! C'mon, don’t suspend me!" I pleaded. "I’ll pay for the peanuts, but I cant afford them if I’m suspended. And I’m the best ropeman you’ve got!"

"You ain't nothin'. Go home, and take those peanuts with you. Maybe you can sell them for a few peanuts, har har!" She laughed mercilessly.

That was my job. That was the crazy job I ended up with, in this strange, amazing, terrifying world. But despite its dangers, I still loved being here. Let me backtrack a bit and tell you about how I ended up here, and what the rest of my life was like.