The Road Trip
Part 5
“What’s that structure across the water?” Arachne asked.
“All those little boxes? That’s a train. It’s a device for transporting large amounts of heavy goods long distances. I think we’ll get closer to it further up, if it’s long enough.”
“Long enough?”
“Yeah. There can be like one hundred cars or more on something like this.”
“I think I see mounds of black stuff in them. What is it transporting?”
“Black stuff? Probably coal, then.”
“What!? How do your dwarves mine up so much raw resource!? Your slave drivers must be very efficient!”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“No no, there are no dwarves in this realm. Humans do it all. We have machinery, some of it not unlike what we saw in that construction site. Once we pull it from the ground we can transport it on these trains wherever we need it. Some of it is probably getting exported. Some is probably used to produce power for lights and things. You saw how large Calgary was. That’s a lot of humans who need a lot of power!”
Several miles later we saw another train.
“Look. Those are grain cars. They’re full of grains like wheat.They’re probably headed out to the coast to be shipped overseas. It’ll be harvest from all those fields we saw earlier.”
Arachne shook her head slowly in disbelief. That amount of grain could supply her whole city for a very, very long time.
“You humans are efficient. That is part of what makes you good at serving.”
I chuckled awkwardly.