Back to my senses a few hours later, we got off the boat in the great harbor of Unionsville, as Gao had correctly pronounced it. The heavily industrialized city was built on and around a hill. Brick factories seemed to be the norm. Hundreds of chimneys spewed out soot, making it difficult to breathe the thick, humid air.

“Can you show me how to get to Banana Island from here?” I asked.

“Captin Wu stei waching bot,” Lǐ told me, completely ignoring the question, “wi go faktory wit Gao.”

Gao, who no longer had crumbs in his beard, helped Lǐ dump all the fish onto a rail car that had pulled up to the side of the ship.

“Tie your hair,” Gao suggested, “look like boy, queen says no girls allowed.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Queen doesn’t want competition.”

I did as he said, trying to make my hair as short as possible. We then got into the locomotive, Gao and I watched Lǐ ignite the steam engine. Not the fastest mode of transportation, it took half an hour to get from the harbor to a building a third of the way up the hill.

“Dis is ‘ShaDing C-o,’ wi meik kan sadins,” Lǐ pointed at the painted sardine can in front of a red background with three yellow characters on the side of the brown factory. Ten men dressed in the same uniforms as Lǐ and Gao lined up by our fish car. They all carried buckets which they one by one filled with our sardines. The buckets were then carried into the factory. The entire city reminded me of an ant colony.

Bones tightly hugged by a thin layer of skin tapped against the ground like sticks; a worker had collapsed. The bucket of sardines sounded like it weighed more than the worker himself. None of the other worker ants seemed to even have noticed the incident.

“Are you okay?” I asked the worker with no muscles. His dry lips trembled, but no words came out. Four men in grey uniforms rather than blue carrying bolt action rifles appeared, they wore the same red star as everyone else. They quickly picked the worker up, and marched away, maintaining eye contact with me the whole time.

I looked at Gao: “What just happened?”

“No problem. He can’t keep up. They take him to better job. You take his place.”

Strange way they had of dealing with things here, but I did as Gao said. If I did a good enough job, I thought, maybe Gao and his friends would help me find my sister. Banana Island had to wait until then.

The factory floor was no less hectic, I jogged along with the other sardine carrying ants. It reeked worse than the fishing boat and made my stomach turn. We all poured our buckets into a large funnel made of the same black steel as the locomotive. Sardines came out one by one on the other end of the funnel. I locked my eyes onto one of the sardines, the ant closest to the funnel exit sliced off its fins, then passed it to the next ant in line. That one chopped its head off, and passed it to the ant whose job was to place them in a tin can. Six in each can. The cans were filled with a liquid by the next ant, then sealed shut.

A bell rang. I spotted it next to a central clock situated just above the factory entrance. The clock had struck six, and all the ants stopped what they were doing. New ants in green came into the factory, swapping places with everyone. One held his hand out for my bucket, I handed it to him, then left with the others.

The tracks outside stood empty, no sight of Gao or Lǐ. The ants marched upwards, reason told me to return to captain Wu, but curiosity took over. I followed the ants. Saw no signs of entertainment; no restaurants, no pharmacies, nothing but factories during my trek up the hill. They did get smaller the further up we moved, though, and soon clay huts with straw roofs no bigger than a small shed replaced them. I noticed the clear blue sky above and looked back down. We were out of the smog that laid like a dark blanket over the lower parts of the city. The ants entered the huts, four in each. Living quarters, I thought.

I moved further up the hill in search of a vacant spot. I got to a large metal fence with barbed wire that separated me from the red oriental palace above. A checkpoint with grey ants prevented me from continuing up the road, so I followed the fence counter clockwise. One of the ants in grey looked at me and whispered something to his comrade, who then nodded. The comrade jogged off towards the palace.

Almost all worker ants had disappeared into the huts, so I picked a random door and knocked. A blue ant with bags under his eyes opened.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m new here, could you point me to Banana Island?” I replied.

“Not right now, it’s resting time. Where is your uniform?”

“I didn’t receive it yet.”

“Okay, we are already four people, but you are small, maybe you can fit, come in.”

He let me in. The shed had four bunks, and a trap door that reeked of feces. Two of the ants were already fast asleep, the fourth one sat on the edge of his top bunk, wearing only his blue pants. He made a slight waving gesture with his hand, I waved back.

“Ri does not speak English,” the ant shut the door behind me, “I am Mao.”

“I’m L-” I remembered what Gao had told me, “Liam.”

“Nice to meet you, we can talk more during our next shift. Sleep now.” Mao said. He tossed his shirt off and got under the blanket. I slipped my boots off, then laid top and tail resting my head on the blanket by his feet.