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"We are spirits in a material world." (The Police, Ghost In The Machine)

"She was hooked up to one of those machines, you know?" Fran had nodded. "Hardest thing I ever had to do," her best friend had shaken her head.

"Well, they're battle conditions," the jackal had assessed. "You do what you have to, don't you?"

"It's what she wanted." The hardest part of being an anarchist had to be letting people make their own choices when you disagreed with them. "She thought she was going to a better place." It had been difficult for Fran's best friend not to wonder if she'd have wanted the same thing had she not, but it hadn't been her place to speak to that. "She said she didn't want to keep going if there would only be suffering." So many times, both of them had tried to talk other people into keeping going when those people had believed that there would only be suffering ahead all the same.

"Some people say they don't want to take up beds that could be for people who can get better," the jackal had ventured.

"Some people need to make more beds," her best friend had said dryly.

***

"I had a dream last night." Jackie and Fran were unloading cargo from the roach's ship in a hangar bay as they spoke.

"What about?" The jackal had noticed that Jackie's sleep had seemed troubled the night before, as a matter of fact.

"We were on Earth, if you can believe that." Fran wouldn't have asked about it, but she was glad the roach had brought it up.

"What was it like?" The jackal wondered how close to reality the imagination of Jackie's unconscious had proved.

"It was..." The roach struggled for the right words to say. "I don't know. I mean, in most ways, it was just the way you described it," she started. "I think maybe someone from Earth could've glanced at it and not noticed the difference, you know?" Fran nodded. "There were signs, though," Jackie went on, "little things here and there where it's like... If I think about them now, obviously, I can tell they're things that wouldn't have made sense on Earth. I didn't notice at the time though," she explained.

"I get what you mean," the jackal recognized. "A lot of dreams have things in them that do stuff like that sometimes." It had seemed so real.

"It was a good dream," the roach said quietly.

"You sure?" Jackie didn't look so good.

"Yeah," she answered Fran meekly. "It's waking up that's the hard part." The roach had talked in terms of dreams when she'd been talking about rude awakenings before, the jackal remembered. "Now let's unload some more baggage," Jackie gestured at their cargo, tongue-in-cheek.

"Someone's coming."

The roach looked up from her work. "What's up?"

It was Ghost. "Hey, Jackie." Orchid was with her.

"Officer?" Fran was definitely not on a first name basis with Ghost.

"How's that investigation going, you still on that?" Jackie put her cargo down.

"Funny you'd ask," Ghost replied.

"What do you mean?" The jackal didn't like where this was going.

"We've discovered evidence that suggests Kacey was killed using alien technology," Orchid revealed.

"But the Commission denies alien life even exists," the roach furrowed her brow. "Wouldn't saying that get you in trouble?" Jackie wasn't making this easier on Ghost.

"Jackie, we have reason to believe your new partner is an alien." Oh no.

"What?" The phone.

"We're gonna have to ask you some questions."

***

"Everything became about rationing." Fran's roommate had worked as part of a suicide prevention group for a while. "I mean, it all started with me looking for a group like that because I was looking for someone to help me."

"At least it worked." The jackal had been grateful for as much.

"So then, I felt like, it's up to me to do the same for other people now, isn't it? I owe them as much." Fran had nodded. "Since I was out of danger, I had to prioritize their feelings over mine. At first I felt like I was helping, like if what I'd learned from having gotten better was something other people could use to get better, it hadn't been for nothing, right?"

It had had the merit of making sense.

"I started feeling like I was wasting time whenever I was talking to someone who wasn't suicidal. How could I stop thinking about it when someone could die? On some level I was still thinking about suicide all the time. The reasons people kept giving me why life wasn't worth living wore me down, ate away at me. Some people I tried to help tried to kill themselves anyway, I felt cruelly useless. Some people said that I didn't really care about them, that I only wanted to keep them alive, not happy, and that wasn't enough, that I'd stop caring about them the moment they'd choose to live. Soon I wanted to kill myself all over again... and I couldn't help asking myself if it was just so that my feelings would matter as much as theirs did again."

The jackal had understood activist burnout all too well. "People like to say suicide's a way to get attention, but it shouldn't take that to get attention, should it?"

***

"C'mon, Ghost," the roach gestured at Fran, "you don't really think she's an alien, do you?" The sheer absurdity of it.

"I don't know," Ghost said cautiously. "Ordinarily I'd agree with you, but like," the mantis rummaged for the phone in her trenchcoat, "did you or did you not give me this in exchange for taking you and Jackie back to the rock planet earlier?" There wasn't much the jackal could do to deny it at this point.

"I did," she admitted.

"We had quite a time unlocking that," Orchid observed.

"What does that prove, though?" Jackie asked.

"Did you ever actually look at this thing?"

The roach shook her head. "We'd only been partners for a short time when I gave it to you," Fran tried explaining to Ghost.

"Well, you'd be in for a surprise," Orchid told Jackie.

"What about it?"

A shiver went down the roach's spine. "How well do you know your partner, Jackie?" It made sense that Ghost would try to determine whether Jackie knew the jackal was an alien or not. "What was she doing before you two met?" What a sobering realization that still was.

"Okay, first of all, whether I'm an alien or not," Fran blurted out, "I'm not saying I am, but even if I was," she added, "I've never even met Kacey, I don't even know what she looks like," she emphasized. "What am I killing her for?" Some people hired others to kill for them, to cover their tracks.

"Look," Orchid said matter-of-factly, "we've been questioning a lot of people about this since we got you two out of that Renegade ship." Part of her wondered if that had really been a kidnapping or if they'd been working together, but it seemed too early to bring that up then.

"I don't doubt it," the roach acknowledged.

"The point is," Ghost went on, "we talked to a lot of people who probably didn't do it, but we still had to talk to them," the Tracker explained. "That's what an investigation is, one thing leads to another, you try to put different pieces together, right?" Jackie bit back 'don't patronize me, Ghost,' but the mantis could guess it went through the roach's mind from her expression. They'd known each other just a little too long.

"What kind of pieces?" It occurred to the jackal that the sooner the Trackers caught the real culprit, the sooner they'd be off her back about it.

"No one we talked to has ever seen you before, for one thing," Orchid answered. "You didn't know about basic tech everyone in the System knows about." That one stung.

"That doesn't prove anything," the roach resisted.

"Someone saw something show up on the rock planet's surface that they described as some kind of portal right before the pirates showed up," Ghost brought up.

"That could be anyone's portal," Fran waved off.

"Someone heard you use the word 'fuck'." Orchid had heard it from Glory while asking her about Dyson. "What does that mean?" Beaker had started growing some very unusual trees since then, at that.

"Haha, 'fuck'!" Jackie tried to laugh. "Isn't she priceless?"

Ghost lit up. "What's your species?"

The roach cringed. "Ghost, please..." The mantis blew out a smoke cloud.

"Look, we're not assuming you killed anyone," Orchid assured the jackal. "Maybe someone stole tech from you, maybe they developed tech based on something from that phone," she elaborated. "Maybe it is just a coincidence." Ghost inhaled. "Any number of things could've happened."

"I understand," Fran acquiesced.

"The point is," Ghost exhaled, "if you're up front with us, we can work with you to get who did it and get you off the hook as fast as we can, you feel me?" The jackal didn't trust most authority figures by default, not by a long shot, but something about the way the mantis spoke to her inclined her to believe she meant what she said somehow. At this point it seemed they might get in more trouble for lying than for telling the truth.

"Okay then," Fran relented. "I'm a jackal." There had never been any such thing in the System, ever. "I'm from Earth," she admitted. "I'm an alien."

***

"She just looked at me like I was a goddamn alien," Fran's best friend had remembered.

"Everyone always starts treating you differently when you open up about stuff like that," the jackal had acquiesced, "even if it's their job."

"I would say especially if their job sometimes," Fran's best friend had spat. "It's like they think that if they make you ashamed enough to admit that you have a problem, you'll finally use whatever solution you have but haven't been using for some reason to solve the problem just so you won't have to deal with them," she'd summarized. "It doesn't occur to them maybe you're there because you don't have a solution like that. They act like they can shame you into getting better somehow," she'd shrugged.

"If that worked I think a lot more of us would be getting better on our own, wouldn't we?"

The jackal's best friend had concurred. "Then she said 'If you're going to bring up that you feel suicidal about anything, we're going to have to call the police.'"

"Are you shitting me?" Fran had gasped.

"No, they really said that!" her best friend had emphasized. "Apparently it was school policy or some shit." Being sent to the school counselor hadn't exactly been her idea.

"What did you do?"

"I just smiled, stood up, didn't say a word, turned around, and walked right out." The jackal had laughed.

***

"This device," Ghost held up the jackal's phone for all to see, "it's about your world, isn't it?" She gestured at it with her claw.

"Yes," Fran replied. "Everything about it." Part of Jackie wished she'd had access to it from the start herself.

"Your world has animals, money, jail, nukes, gods, and kids," Orchid checked.

"Each more fearsome than the last," the jackal confirmed.

"Did you know they have food on Earth?" Ghost asked. "Legal food, at that?"

"Not really, no," the roach shook her head. "Not before she got here and told me I mean," she clarified.

"We don't have pills or solute yet," Fran shrugged. "We have to have something, don't we?"

"No, we get that," Orchid nodded. "The Commission's jurisdiction technically doesn't extend beyond the System," the mantis noted. "Ghost, where are you going with this?"

"Is there any chance you were trying to get food to the System from Earth, Jackie?" It did seem like the sort of thing she might do.

"No, but I wish I'd thought of it," Jackie stuck her tongue out. "Maybe you should be a Renegade." Ghost gave her a withering look.

"Wait, wait, lemme see if I got this straight," the jackal interjected. "The whole reason food's illegal here is the Commission has to be able to make sure they don't run out of molecules to revive people with, isn't it?"

"That's right," Orchid confirmed. "What about it?"

"So if it's food from outside the System, it wouldn't be part of that amount of molecules in the first place, would it?"

"I guess not," Ghost answered Fran.

"Does that mean food from outside the System would still be illegal in the System or not?" the roach wondered.

"Arbitrators would have to get together to make a decision about that," Orchid figured.

"It's never happened before, has it?" the jackal tilted her head.

"It doesn't take anything away from the System, if that's what you mean," Ghost granted.

"It does mean more molecules for the Commission to keep track of, though," Orchid pondered.

"Why does it matter, though?" Jackie scratched her head. "She didn't bring any food with her, did she?"

"Because the same logic can be extended to apply to me." A chill went down Fran's spine. "They're talking about whether I should get to stay in the System or not."

***

"I have like a completely different view of suicide depending on whether I'm thinking about it for me or someone else, does that make sense?"

"I have no idea," Fran had admitted to her roommate. "What do you mean?"

"If I'm thinking of someone else, it's like, it's the most unacceptable thing imaginable! How could they even think of doing something like this? How could they do this to themselves, to people who care about them?"

"It does hit people hard," the jackal had nodded. "Hard enough to spread sometimes," she'd added grimly. "And when it's about you?"

"When I'm thinking of doing it, it's like, God, it's none of anyone's business what I do! Can't they all just leave me alone? I'm done with this shit," she'd smirked grimly.

"There's always gonna be someone who finds you," Fran had thought out loud. "There's always gonna be someone who'll miss you."

The jackal's roommate had stopped, and thought about it. "Really, you really think that?" Fran had nodded.

"On some level, I totally get what you mean," the jackal had started. "I feel the same way you do, but it's just..." She'd looked for the right words. "The idea of losing you is just as unacceptable to me as the idea of losing me is to you." Yes, that had been the best way of putting that, she'd decided.

"Maybe we can be each other's life support machine, then," her roommate had concluded.

***

"Let me ask you something, Ghost."

The mantis dropped a cigarette butt on the ground. "Shoot."

"How did you and Orchid first become partners all that time ago?"

"You already know that story," Orchid answered the roach. "Why ask now?"

"Humor me," Jackie persisted, "for the benefit of our friend here," she gestured at the jackal. "She's never heard it."

Ghost's eyes narrowed. "I suppose not, no." Fran wondered what the roach was getting at.

"A long, long time ago, people didn't have partners," Orchid began. "It wasn't a thing."

"The Commission already expected a lot of work from people," Jackie chipped in. "More than you can expect from one person, that's for sure." She pretended to look at her nails.

"Did you two know each other back then?"

Ghost knew the jackal didn't mean harm by it. "We did not." It did seem to make her uncomfortable, though.

"Ghost wasn't around back then," Orchid revealed.

"I thought everyone in the System had always been around." The System still found ways to surprise Fran after all this time.

"Not Ghost," the roach specified.

"Orchid worked with machines a lot back then," Ghost adjusted her scarf as she spoke. "She was up there with Byte and Gizmo honestly," the Tracker gestured for emphasis.

"You're exaggerating," Orchid rolled her faceted eyes.

"I don't think so," Jackie opined.

"What kind of machines?" the jackal tilted her head.

"All kinds," Orchid replied. "I was looking for ways to make work more efficient, basically." Most machines were like that, Fran figured.

"Were you already a Tracker back then?"

It was weird having to talk about the System to someone who hadn't always lived in it, she found. "I was." It made her ask herself if she should be thinking anything differently about it than she usually did in ways she wasn't used to.

"What kind of machine helps you with Tracking work?" It had been some time since the roach had first told the jackal that no one in the System was the same species as anybody else.

"Me." So how could they both have been mantises, it begged the question? "I do."

Because Orchid had made Ghost in her own image. "You're a machine?" Fran gasped.

"Robot, if you want to get technical about it," Jackie threw in tongue-in-cheek.

"Most people weren't able to tell at first," Orchid pointed out.

"It was good work," Ghost looked herself over, remembering her conversation with Doornail from earlier.

"I couldn't tell," the jackal agreed.

"Lot of cyborgs around here," Orchid waved off. "Most people figured that's all she was."

"Ah, but she was more than that, wasn't there?" the roach insisted.

"Yes," Ghost acknowledged. "I'm the only fully artificial lifeform in the System," she said. "The only one with a fully artificial intelligence." She'd become integrated into the System's workings for so long that sometimes, even she forgot.

"Why hasn't anyone made more since?" If Fran could just make robots like that, she'd have done it all the time, she couldn't help but think.

"Because you can't get something from nothing," Orchid shook her head. "The Commission had to remind me of that." Orchid had complex emotions around what happened that she didn't like talking about in front of Ghost.

"Are robots illegal?" the jackal wondered.

"They weren't yet," Jackie responded.

"The Commission doesn't make rules for things that don't exist, as a general rule," Ghost explained.

"They don't want to give Renegades ideas," Orchid added.

"How could they expect you to follow a rule that didn't even exist yet, though?" Fran furrowed her brow.

"Now you're asking the right questions," the roach smirked.

"I get what you're doing, Jackie," Ghost grumbled.

"Really? Is it working?" Jackie asked. "I'm getting on your nerves a little bit, aren't I?"

"The situation forced their hand," Orchid sighed.

"Obviously they ended up deciding Ghost would be legal, or she wouldn't be here working for them today, would she?"

"Got yourself a smart one there, Jackie," Ghost opined.

"She's got her moments," the roach said understatedly.

"The Commission did not like the idea of having another mouth to feed," Orchid regretted.

"Robots can't have pills or solute, though, can they?" the jackal frowned.

"No," Ghost shook her head, "they need fuel." She lit up.

"Then what do you...?" The mantis inhaled. "Ohhh...!" The Tracker exhaled. "I guess it wouldn't make sense for these to have been what I thought they were," Fran thought out loud. "You don't have petroleum here." They still had all their dinosaurs, after all.

"Why, do you need some?" Orchid raised an eyebrow.

"That's what I said," Jackie quipped.

"Not really." Some things from Earth, she didn't miss at all. "So they have to rebuild you from scratch every time you're destroyed?" The jackal remembered her conversation back in Beaker's grove about arguments people had had over being brought back with or without cyborg parts well.

"That was where some of their reluctance came from, yes," Ghost acknowledged.

"You don't get killed often, though," Orchid countered.

"She wouldn't," the roach noted. "You programmed her to be the idealTracker, didn't you?"

Had something about Ghost always seemed a little too perfect, Fran asked herself? "Can't hurt." Or was the jackal only thinking this just now because she already knew?

"I don't know if there is such a thing as an ideal Tracker but," Ghost spoke carefully, not wanting to brag while wanting to acknowledge her partner's programming skill, "if there is, I'm as close to Orchid's idea of what that means as she could make me at the time." That was what Fran had been trying to put her finger on. Ghost felt more like a fictional cop character come to life than like a real life Earth cop down the street. She felt like the heroes cops were supposed to be, not the villains they actually were. She'd been imagined into existence.

"There was another major difference, though," Orchid asserted. "The materials I used for Ghost were all from the System."

"It still took Arbitrators a long time to come to a decision about it, didn't it?" Jackie reminded her.

"Grades was against it," Ghost coughed.

"Kacey was your fiercest defender..." Orchid trailed off.

"What ended up tipping the scales?" the jackal tilted her head.

"People already knew Ghost by then," the roach told her. "They'd gotten used to having her around, she'd even helped a couple people by then," she added.

"So if I suddenly wasn't there when people expected me to be there..."

"People would've noticed," Orchid finished her partner's thought. "The Commission wasn't prepared to deal with the consequences of undermining public confidence in Revivals back then."

"And now?" Fran asked.

The Trackers gave each other a look. "They'll never be prepared for that," Ghost admitted. "If they were going to be, they would've been then."

"People have already seen her too, though!" Jackie gestured at the jackal.

"There was more to it than that, though," Orchid believed. "The Commission already had a hard time getting Renegades under control. An ideal Tracker, at least in theory, however ideal or not she may have been in practice..."

"They couldn't afford to pass up an offer like that," Fran understood. "You were saying earlier there weren't partners back then?"

"It was everyone for herself," Ghost nodded.

"There was more to the Commission's reluctance than that too," the roach side-eyed Orchid.

"I was getting to that," Orchid rolled her eyes again.

"What about it?" the jackal wondered.

"They were offended," Jackie spat. "They thought the amount of work they gave people to do and the amount of time they expected it to be done in was perfectly reasonable." Her tone said the rest of what she thought of that.

"So when Orchid was so desperate to cut her workload in half that she created me..."

"It made them look bad," Orchid sighed. "Coming from me, it pointed to a problem that couldn't be explained away by a malcontent's bad mood, something that would get worse before it got better if they didn't do anything."

"So now," the roach picked up, "we don't have robots, we have partners. The Commission ruled that two people can work together, that they can work for each other, that the work of one person can be counted as being worth the same as if that work was being done by her partner for someone else." Their whole society had reshaped itself around this new model.

"It must've been revolutionary," Fran shook her head.

"I'd be careful about throwing around that word around here," Ghost warned her, "but, for what it's worth, it sure was."

"It's not just a matter of whether you should get to stay in the System or not as a thing, though," Orchid reminded her. "The world you're from has perma-death, doesn't it?" The jackal nodded. "Well, the technology that was used to kill Kacey can cause perma-death."

"Holy fucking shit!" None of the other three had any idea what any of those words meant.

"How did you get here?" Everyone turned to Ghost.

"What?" Jackie blinked.

"How did you get to the System from Earth?" Ghost asked Fran. "Was it an accident? Was it on purpose? Did you have anything to do with it, Jackie?" Orchid gave Ghost a look. "I'm just saying, it seems like a relevant question, doesn't it?"

"My partner has a point," Orchid agreed. "Anything to do with why you asked us to take you back to the rock planet, by any chance?"

"What makes you say that?" That wasn't a denial as such, but the jackal was curious.

"It's the last piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit anywhere else," Ghost said matter-of-factly.

"Ghost, I've been trying to get out of the System my whole life," the roach finally said, "you know that."

"Oh, this should be good," Orchid remarked.

"No but wait, this is important, though," Fran interjected. "You can't hold her accountable for anything I or any other alien may or may not have done if she didn't even know an alien would get through," she persisted. "She just wanted out." Another alien? They hadn't thought of that.

"That's still a crime, but..." Ghost thought out loud, "it's not murder."

"I may be a criminal but I'm no murderer," Jackie assured them.

"We still need to know how you did it," Orchid insisted. "Any high technology that's involved in this case, we need to know about it, it could be important, couldn't it?"

The roach looked down. "I don't have it anymore."

"Then we especially need to know what it is," Ghost told her. "If we find someone who does have it..."

"... that becomes another suspect which proves we didn't necessarily kill Kacey, right?" the jackal completed.

"You do have your moments," Orchid assessed.

"I used a quantum translocator." The Trackers' faceted eyes went wide.

"You brought her through a rip in the space-time continuum?" Ghost couldn't believe it.

"Well, she didn't bring me, I just sort of... came through," Fran said sheepishly.

"We don't want this in Renegade hands." Orchid found the thought all too ominous. "Where'd you get it?"

"You can't track down who I got it from," Jackie shook her head. "She tracks you down."

"Solace!" It made sense to Ghost that someone with the ability to shift through space-time across multiple dimensions would've been responsible for something like a quantum translocator.

"Do you know if she made it herself?" Orchid asked. "Who else even knows about it?"

"She didn't say whether she made it or not, but," the roach furrowed her brow, "she did say someone else 'pitched in' to help me pay her for it," she recalled. "I never found out who that was."

"Is there a chance that person's connected to the space pirates who kidnapped us after you used it?" the jackal wondered.

"The timing for that does seem a little convenient, when you put it like that," Ghost noticed.

"They might have 'helped' you get it from Solace because it would've been harder to steal it from her than to steal it from you," Orchid told Jackie. "Once you'd have it, it'd be a simple matter of setting up an ambush after the tradeoff."

"Robber!" Ghost exclaimed.

"You think she did it?" the roach frowned.

"I don't know that yet," Ghost clarified. "She did say she doesn't remember anything from before last time she died, though."

"Why would she do it then erase her own memory of having done it?" Fran asked.

"Maybe someone else used her to get it, then wiped her mind from it to cover her tracks," Orchid theorized.

"That's terrifying," Jackie shook her head. It was a fate so much worse than death.

"We need to find out if Sawtooth knew anything," it suddenly occurred to Ghost. "Someone could've been trying to keep her quiet too, for all we know."

"I don't know if she's thawed yet."

"Find out." Orchid nodded. "Let me ask you something." Ghost turned to the jackal. "How do you like the System so far? Do you like working here, with people who live here? Do you think your world was better than here? What does our world look like from your perspective?" Part of Fran had always wished she could ask an alien a question like that about Earth herself.

"Honestly..." The roach stared at the jackal as she started answering. "I like it here." Jackie stifled a gasp. "I mean, it's not perfect, but all in all, it's not bad."

"Do you feel like you belong here?" Orchid went on.

"I've lived and worked on every planet in the System. I've talked to and made friends with co-workers on them all. Hard work, but doable. I've flown a spaceship from planet to planet, better than I ever drove a car. Gorgeous planets by the way. Now that I've adjusted to it, I find barter more intuitive than money. I can focus and learn new things a lot more easily now without chronic digestive pain from having to eat distracting me all the time. I've died, and been brought back to life. Now that I'm no longer afraid of dying, I feel more free to take risks. I feel more free to let myself care about people knowing that they won't be taken away from me forever. In short, yes," Fran said, "I do feel like I belong here, more than I ever felt like I belonged on Earth."

"Wow," the roach couldn't help uttering. "You make this place sound pretty good." She'd never felt like she belonged in the System herself.

"The grass is always greener on the other side, I'm sure," the jackal figured.

"Would you die for it?" Ghost hadn't planned on asking this, but something about the way that Fran had talked about the System had struck her.

"Yes, absolutely," the jackal answered without thinking, "as many times as it takes." Fran surprised even herself with her reply, but it came to her unbidden.

"What a weird question," Jackie blurted out.

"Why'd you ask her that?" Even Orchid had some questions about that.

"It may come to that," Ghost replied ominously. "If we don't find a way stop the cryonics and mind-wipes and the perma-death they bring along with them, we soon won't have a System to speak of," she shook her head. "It's not designed for stuff like that."

"The System was designed, wasn't it?" the jackal wondered.

"What do you mean?" the roach tilted her head.

"I mean the five planets were all terraformed, weren't they?"

Orchid turned to her. "Why is that important?"

"I'm not sure," Fran admitted, "it just seemed like it could be later. One thing I can tell you is, cryonics couldn't keep people alive forever back on Earth. They could extend life, until a way to solve a health problem for good could be found, but not forever. Most people thought of them as a craze that would ultimately fade. To work the way you're describing, someone would either have to have existed in the System long enough to use the otherwise superior technical knowledge that exists here to improve them, or they'd have to have been plucked from a different time period on Earth than I did, one after the hurdles that stopped cryonics from working in my time would've been overcome somehow," she explained.

"How would you like to help us with this investigation, Citizens?"

Jackie's eyes went wide. "Are you serious, Ghost?"

"Sure, why not," Ghost shrugged. "If I'm right, and Kacey's murder is connected not only to Robber and Sawtooth, but to the attacks on the Revival chambers, to something deeper underneath it all that threatens us all, we need all the help we can get. You each bring something different that we don't have to the process. People don't tell Trackers everything. You, Jackie, you know everyone around here, and you," she turned to the jackal, "well, you don't know anyone around here, do you?"

"Not really," Fran shook her head.

"There are people who won't tell something to a stranger, but they may say it to someone they've known long enough, like Jackie. There are people who wouldn't tell some things to Jackie because she has weird baggage with them, no offense, Jackie -"

"None taken," the roach stuck her tongue out.

"- but who might say those things to someone who can't have weird baggage with them, because she hasn't been here long enough. Ultimately, the Commission chose to allow me to continue to exist because I proved I could be useful to them. Now, I'm not the Commission, but if I were you, and I wanted to convince them to allow me to stay here now..." Ghost trailed off.

"It does have a certain internal logic to it," Orchid conceded.

"What do you think, Jackie? Should we do it?"

Jackie turned the thought around in her mind a few times. "What about you?" The jackal nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"All right," the roach nodded at the mantises more decisively. "We'll do it."

"Then you can stay in the System after all," Ghost gave Fran her phone back, "for now." She dropped and crushed one of her fuel cigarettes on the ground behind her, leaving just a few dissipating wisps of smoke behind as the Trackers made their way out of the two Citizens' lives back into the world of shadows from which they'd emerged.

"Well, partner," Jackie watched them leave with the jackal arm-in-arm, "looks like we'll be taking Dex up on her offer to check out the next Jamboree after all..."

***

"Have you noticed when someone tells you a category of people aren't 'real', it's never a category of people that they belong to?" Fran's best friend had asked her.

"Mighty convenient, isn't it," she'd stuck her tongue out.

"It's always someone else," the jackal's best friend had continued. "I never met an anti-transhumanist who wasn't a transphobe. The idea that other people can own their own bodies and do what they want with them is just unacceptable to people like that," she'd shaken her head.

"So they tell you you're not real."

"They say trans people aren't 'really' trans, prosthetic limbs aren't 'really' limbs, online friends aren't 'real' friends, mental disorders are made up excuses to get away with something. Nothing you do's ever gonna be 'real' enough for them unless it's convenient, unless it confirms they're right and you're wrong. They act like being 'real' matters more than life itself, so they write all these stories where they tell the world it's more virtuous for us to accept death than to fight it, because God said we deserve it or some shit. But fighting for your life with everything you have? That's the most heroic thing anyone can do. If I care about someone, I'd gladly break the laws of Nature, God, and Man just to see them live another minute in a heartbeat."