You know, I wouldn't have thought this day would turn out the way it did.
I got up this morning, scarfed down my meager breakfast and set off to the silver mines, just like every other day. It had been about seven years since I came here in search of riches, only to find that a whole bunch of people had the same idea and had it earlier than I did, but since I blew every last bit of my savings getting here, I was kind of stuck. And so I signed up with a silver mine, doing what I thought I'd be doing, just to enrich someone else instead of myself. The city around me grew, but by this point I'm so deep in a routine that I don't even notice all the hustle and bustle. Surely, to the rest of the country, Virginia City was a boomtown. A city where people can start with nothing but some can-do spirit and elbow grease, and strike it rich. Of course, I knew better after having spent some years there. The pay was measly, the work was immense, and I was basically just waiting for the day something in my body breaks hard enough that even copious amounts of whiskey can't dull the pain. Then I guessed I would've just started begging in the streets or something. But I figured I at least had a few years left.
And so I made it to the mine that morning. Casual greetings were exchanged, I was brought up to speed on the latest developments ("Hey, where's Jim, haven't seen him in a week or so." - "Jim died. Consumption." - "Damn."), and then it was off to work. We did get lucky, we struck a new vein. I'm sure some guy in a suit in San Francisco would be happy to hear that, and hey, it might mean we could have gotten a bonus of a whole dollar or so in a few months, that was something to look forward to.
Of course, we were eager to exploit that new vein as fast as possible, and in doing so, might have skimped out a bit on safety measures we might have done in a regular day. Or rather, the overseer was eager to exploit it and didn't give us the time to set up the way we wanted to. Fucking George. The day after my bones finally give out and I have to quit before I die, I'm driving my pickax in his skull as a farewell present, if he didn't drink himself to death or catch some sort of disease from all the whores he's fucking using company funds first. At least, that was what I had planned.
So there I was, mining away and thinking of my revenge fantasies, just like every other day. But this day, George's incompetence caught up with us. In some other branch of the mine, a blast went off, probably an errant dynamite stick lit by accident, but who knows, really. And at that point, with the walls of the mine shaking and rocks beginning to fall from the ceiling, what exactly had transpired was the least of my concerns. Not that I even had time to consider my concerns. All I notice at that point is Jack yelling at me and pointing at something, looking up, seeing the ceiling above me crumbling, a sharp pain, and then darkness.
When I came to again, I would have probably expected to be buried in rubble or in some sort of hospital bed. But waking up right where I was before, but with no rubble, and with nobody else there for that matter, wouldn't even have been my tenth guess. As I got up and dust myself off, I realized that I wasn't experiencing any pain. Neither from what I presumed was a whole bunch of rocks falling on me, nor from the wear and tear that had accumulated in my years of mining. For the first time in ages, I felt alright. And as I took in my surroundings, I had a thought in the back of my head that would explain why exactly everybody was gone along with all my pain, but I pushed that thought away. Surely, there must be a rational explanation for this, I thought.
As I left the mine to search for anybody else that could tell me what the hell was going on, I found Virginia City to be entirely deserted. Not only that, a strange fog had rolled in, coating the entire town in a haze that made it hard to see. Everything was quiet, to a point where the complete lack of any sound bar my footsteps was downright overwhelming. I had never even considered it possible for this town to be this quiet, like it was a physical impossibility. In my mind, there would always be the sounds of people working, horses moving through town, vendors hawking their goods. But now everything was gone, just complete silence left. Until a yell echoed in my ears.
"Extra, extra, read all about it!"
A newsboy? Sure enough, as I moved towards the sound, eventually, a human shape came into view through the thick fog. Standing there at a street corner, as if nothing had happened, stood a newsboy advertising the latest edition of the Virginia City Gazette.
"Hey, boy! You got any idea what the hell is going on here?" I yelled in his direction. The boy turned and held a newspaper towards me.
"Newspaper, sir? Only ten cents! All the latest stories of what's going on in great Virginia City!" he said, as if this was just another day. Figuring I might as well just go along with it, I reached into my pocket, pulled out a dime, and tossed it to the boy, who then handed me the newspaper.
I took a quick look at it but didn't really read anything, given my situation and all. But just as I lowered the newspaper again to talk to the boy, he was gone, like he disappeared into thin air. I called out to him, wondering if he was still around, but of course, I got no answer.
That earlier niggling thought suddenly came screaming back into my mind. I was dead, wasn't I. The rubble that fell down in the mine killed me, and this is the afterlife. Well, I was never a very religious man, but at least this didn't seem to look like the kind of hell I'd been told about, with the fire and the brimstone and all, so there was room for hope, I figured. All things considered, I accepted the idea of being dead rather quickly, but then again, I didn't exactly have a lot keeping me going in life anyway. And besides, this could've still turned out to be a dream.
So with nothing to go on and nobody around, I figured I might as well read the newspaper. Not like I had to go to work here. I found a nearby bench and sat down, taking the newspaper and beginning to read the front page. The date on the paper once again reaffirmed my idea, as it seemed to be from a future date: It was dated the 8th of August 1872, and when I woke up that day, my calendar still read the 1st of August 1872. And the title read: "Mining accident! Twelve dead, hundreds injured!". Reading through it, it turned out to be about that very incident that caused... whatever it is that happened to me. As I read on, the dead miners are listed, and my name is amongst them.
But as I read the article, suddenly, the cityscape around me seemed to shift. The fog twisted and turned, eventually forming into shapes of people, which then turn into what looks like actual people. I tried to get their attention, but no luck, they were like mirages given human form. As I watched them, I realized that they were showing me the events described on the newspaper. The mirages begin to walk along the street, with some supporting others while walking, some carrying others, and some carrying people using stretchers. It was like a procession of the injured.
Wondering what else the newspaper contained, I looked back at it, only to find that the paper changed while I wasn't looking at it. Now the paper was dated the 28th of October 1875, and the headline read "Great Fire of Virginia City leaves thousands homeless!". Sure enough, the fog morphed into massive flames before my very eyes, smoke filled the air and people running around in panic started forming out of the fog. The flames had no heat to them, and the smoke did not burn in my eyes - it was all just a visage. The scenes were horrifying, with buildings collapsing and people being crushed under them.
At this point, it seemed to me like I was going through some sort of vision of the future... or perhaps seeing large amounts of death happening in the city, as time would no longer have a real effect on me if I were dead. And sure enough, the moment I looked back at the newspaper, it had once again changed. The date now read the