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English
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Published:
2025-02-01
Updated:
2025-03-13
Words:
6,367
Chapters:
9/?
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16
Kudos:
6
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The Pinkerton

Summary:

Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever wake up from that day. If we're stuck like this. Stuck fighting each other. Wages and guns. Rich and poor. Red and blue.
Just a stupid race to the end; a relay of finances and imaginary numbers. I'm tired of it all. We're all tired, but we'll always just blame it on each other. We'll always blame our sleep on the awake.

The Gilded Age

Capitalism has taken over America, the wealth gap has never been wider, and working conditions have never been worse.

(Featuring time travel)

Notes:

So! Hello readers, I want to quick go over what the structure of this whole work is for.
I want to frame this in a way that mirrors the way we might learn about history.

The prologue chapters will be in the style of a personal recount of the Homestead Steel strike.

Chapter 3 will be in the form of the dairy entries and philosophical ramblings of a time-traveler. His perspective represents that of a historian. (Historical hindsight)

Later on there will be others, like interrogations, letters and the like.

I just want you all to understand how this story will be told.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Prologue 1

Chapter Text

First hand account of George Foreman, Detective 

Donated to the archive by Sandra Hendricks, antique book collector

July 7, 1892

Pittsburg Pennsylvania 

I was one of 250 men crammed in that stupid barge.

I was excited. This was my second mission; my first was an undercover mission at a bar. A paranoid landlord hired me because he suspected that the owner of the pub across the street was housing multiple sexual deviants. Nothing came of the investigation in the end, but it was a good experience. After that they said I was ready for a “real” mission, and three weeks later they put me on the barge. 

Initially I thought it would be another boring job with lower stakes and a few coworkers, but only when I got to the boarding dock did I realize how big a job it really was. 

The barge itself was huge. It was well-made too, strong enough for war. It probably cost them a fortune. 

Although the outside gave us the appearance of a regular wooden barge, the walls were lined in Carnegie steel. The boat was built to survive pretty much anything, but that day we were going up against a comically small threat.

It was early in the morning, at about 4, that I saw a man pacing around the barge with a grimace on his face, sweat staining the pits of his shirt. His eyes were wide open and unblinking. He couldn't have been more than twenty years old, and I, despite myself, was amused. He'd worked his ass off to get this far, or at the very least his father did, and now he's gotten cold feet.

What businesses did he have regretting all that effort? It's just another job, for God's sake, you're not supposed to jump ship when it starts to look rocky. People like him were why we were all in that mess to begin with.

In the end it wouldn't matter though; I knew his panicking would eventually simmer down into boredom.

Most of us were already bored by noon. The man next to me tried to entertain himself with whittling, but eventually gave up and left to go eat.

I remember picking up my gun as soon as I was alone. It was a sturdy, brand new, and easy to use Winchester rifle. 

We each were issued a Winchester to deal with the crowds. They told us to use it only if necessary for self defense, but there was really only one kind of “self defense” when it came to strikers. 

It would not be a bloodless day.

The barge jolted.

We had finally landed.