The main concourse of the Grand Central Junction was no longer a station. It had been transformed into the nerve center of a continental economy.
Where thousands of displaced passengers had once crowded around silent ticker boards, forty massive oak ledger desks now ran in neat, disciplined rows across the polished granite floor. At every desk sat a junior station clerk flanked by a union auditor, their brass pens scratching continuously against thick sheets of mountain-milled paper.
High above the floor, where the Syndicate's electrical ticker had once buzzed with phantom values, five immense wooden chalkboard manifests hung from the iron roof girders.
Every fifteen minutes, two union haulers climbed long wooden ladders to chalk in fresh numbers: verified tons of mountain anthracite, bushels of hard winter wheat, barrels of regional lamp oil, and stacks of rolled steel rail.
