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"There's two kinds of work in the world."

Fran's roommate was a communist.

"First, there's work-that-stays." She was also a writer. "Then, there's work-that-goes-away." The jackal didn't write, herself, but she'd asked about what made her roommate write. "Writing is work-that-stays." Fran may as well have called her roommate her best friend. They were close enough for it to be true. "Cleaning is work-that-goes-away." But their names were on the lease and her best friend's name wasn't. It was just easier that way. "Of course, if I didn't make myself finish cleaning before I start writing, I'd just never stop writing and we'd live in a pigsty," her roommate had chuckled. "The upper classes always make the lower classes do their work-that-goes-away so they get more time to do their work-that-stays, though."

"So in the long run, that makes it look like only the upper classes ever did anything, doesn't it?"

***

It was gone.

It hit her like a ton of bricks when they reached the rock planet, and she'd been hit with a ton of bricks. All that work, all that hope, all for nothing after all. Jackie had been through a lot. It took a lot to faze her by this point.

The quantum translocator was gone.

This was a lot.

"Okay... Okay." This time it was Fran's turn to watch the roach start hyperventilating right in front of her without knowing how to help. "I'll... I'll..." But she couldn't even breathe, let alone form sentences.

"No one took your ship," Ghost observed. "Doesn't look like it was like it got shot at or got scavenged from, either, at that," she assessed. "That's good, right?" The jackal could tell that the mantis had no idea of what Jackie had lost or of what it had meant to her. Ghost may have 'liked' her, but the roach still couldn't trust the mantis with what she'd told Fran after they'd just met. What was she to make of that?

"Long, deep breaths, okay?" The jackal whispered to Jackie, mindful of her privacy. "Not fast, shallow ones." Fran put her hand on the roach's back and held her hand, the way she imagined a partner would do. "In through your nose, out through your mouth." The jackal remembered these instructions easily from having heard them often herself when she'd have panic attacks while she'd been growing up.

"You're right, Ghost." Jackie spoke louder, so that the mantis would hear this time. "Losing the ship on top of this would've been a real kick in the shin." The roach wasn't lying - it just wasn't the foremost thing on her mind, not by a long shot. Another ship may have been hard to get, but another quantum translocator? There was no reason to think that another one existed at all. This one wasn't even supposed to, not as such.

"So we're not stranded here, at least," Fran added.

"You were looking for something else, I think?" Ghost tilted her head. Just put off the breakdown until she's gone, you're almost there, Jackie told herself.

"Don't worry about it."

"If you say so." The mantis pulled out another cigarette and lit up, ritual gestures since time immemorial. "If we should look out for anything, lemme know."

"Sure thing." The cloud of smoke that Ghost blew at them as the roach spoke made the jackal cough.

***

"There's two kinds of work in the world."

Fran's best friend was an anarchist.

"First, there's work anyone could do." She was also a writer. "Then, there's work only you can do." The jackal was an anarcho-socialist, herself. "Grunt work is work anyone could do." Fran may as well have called her best friend her roommate, considering how much more time she spent in the jackal's apartment than in her own. "Writing is work that only you can do." But her name wasn't on the lease and theirs were. It was easier that way. "A story is like... a little bird you nurse from an egg, something that comes to you to beg you to give it life. If you don't use your time to do it, it can't turn to anybody else. When you die, there'll never be another person like you again. So if you take care of it long enough, you get to go like, fly, little story!"

"Fly like the wind," Fran had smiled.

***

"They're towing both ships now?"

When the mantis had left them to themselves, Fran had held Jackie while the roach had cried, and cried, and cried, sobbing until she just ran out of tears. The jackal felt completely overwhelmed even trying to imagine what terrible weight must have been crushing Jackie's spirit for her to have needed to let all that out, let alone figuring out what to do about it, but she'd held on regardless. Fran hadn't known the right words to say, but the roach hadn't had it in her to say anything anyway. Maybe what had mattered the most had simply been that the jackal had been there at all, then and there, Jackie's only buffer against the uncaring void of space.

"Of course."

Fran still hadn't seen the roach knitting and wood carving at the same time until then, and found it a sight to behold. It looked more dangerous to the jackal than either of them had looked paired with the communicator, for one thing. She did have more experience using a similar device than she did doing either of those things, she had to admit, which may have skewed her perception a bit, but still. Jackie hadn't shown much emotion since she'd started. Fran figured that, in context, if it was giving the roach something else to focus her attention on, it was just as well to assume that she knew what she was doing, and to leave her be.

"I'd have thought you'd have followed them back in your ship, now that we have it back."

"I still owe them power, remember?" Jackie's plugged antennae crackled again for emphasis.

"Oh, right!"

"Since I'm powering their tractor beam, it's cheaper for them, you know?" She was using her knitting needles to drill holes through two small wooden spheres that she'd carved before.

"Makes sense," Fran nodded.

She should probably figure out how to fly one of these things at some point, she thought. If the roach were ever put out of commission, she'd be relying on the jackal to take over the helm, wouldn't she?

"... There's a chance it wasn't destroyed, isn't it?" Jackie's eyes whipped from her work to Fran in a flash. "A chance that someone still has it in working order somewhere, right?" The roach thought that the jackal was clinging to the possibility of it because she wanted to go back to Earth herself. "Whether who stole it keeps it or trades it..." She didn't realize that Fran was already more preoccupied with reassuring Jackie than herself. "... If we can track it down, we could always trade for it again or steal it back, couldn't we?" The roach could tell that the jackal was saying that because of how well she meant and, knowing this, the thought of having to shoot it down pained her.

"We're going to be at the Commission's Revival chambers soon." Fran watched as Jackie pulled a thread of yarn through the holes and tied some knots in it to keep it in place. "This is taking me longer than I thought," she clucked her tongue.

"You can get through this." The roach lifted her eyes back up to her. "I know it seems like you can't right now, but..." It wasn't the first time the jackal had to try to talk to someone like that. "I know you can." She'd had varying levels of success.

"Based on what?" They hadn't known each other for all that long, after all.

"Do you know what they say about roaches on my world?"

The roach raised an eyebrow at her. "What do you mean by 'roaches'?

Fran suddenly worried that she'd accidentally insulted Jackie. "There are other people on Earth who look like you." What if she were called something else altogether? "That's what they're called." How would she know?

"People who look like me?" The roach furrowed her brow.

"I mean people who are the same species as you," the jackal tried to clarify. "I'm a jackal, like my mother before me. No jackals here, I take it?"

Jackie hadn't known what a jackal was. "How can there be more than one of the same person?" She didn't even know what a mother was.

"There's only one of every species here?"

The roach shook her head in disbelief. "There are more than one where you're from?" Fran nodded, agape. "What do they say about roaches where you're from, since you brought it up?" Jackie wasn't sure how much stock she put in it, but she may as well know, she figured.

"They say roaches could survive a nuclear meltdown."

The roach blinked. "What does 'nuclear' mean?"

Jackie couldn't possibly have been serious. "You're telling me you have spaceships, cyborgs, Revival chambers, and teleportation, but you can't split the atom?" That seemed hard for the jackal to swallow.

"You can't split the atom." Yet there it was. "It can't be done." The roach's tone implied this was something everyone knew about, and that there'd be no point in discussing it further. Fran decided it'd be best to drop it for now. "Do you... not have those things, where you're from?" While nothing would change Jackie's determination to move to Earth, she did like the idea of knowing what she'd be getting into.

"We have some spaceships, but nothing like what you have here," the jackal replied. "You could argue we have some cyborgs, but also rudimentary at best, at least for now." The roach would have to get used to being a bit of a novelty on Earth, it seemed. So be it. "We can't teleport at all." So that was why Fran had been so surprised by Ghost's sneak attack, Jackie understood. Other than the normal reasons why someone would be surprised by this, that is.

"Trust me, most of us can't, either," the roach stuck her tongue out. "That junk's expensive."

"Is Ghost rich?" Then the jackal remembered where she was. "Does she have more people owe her work time than she owes them, I mean? Does she have a lot of resources at her disposal?"

"The Commission gives Trackers that kind of stuff for free," Jackie waved off. "It's one of their big draws. They don't part with them easily, either."

"I guess Trackers need all the help they can get to take out Renegades like those motherfuckers we're taking to the Revival chambers, don't they," Fran observed. The roach didn't know what a fucker was, either, but whatever either of those words meant, based on the jackal's tone and context, Jackie could tell this much: you didn't want to be a motherfucker.

"Do you really not have Revival chambers where you're from?" Fran shook her head. "But how do you come back when you die, then?"

"We don't."

***

"What about you, Fran?" they'd asked her. "What kinds of work do you think there are, if you had to say?"

"First, there's work you have to do right now," she'd said. "Then, there's work you get to do later."

They'd laughed.