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====== 3. The work between us ======

**Original project fiction. Narrative date: 2027-10-16.** This is story material, not a current server observation. Imported 2026-10-25 from the project's original source without rewriting its prose.

**October 16, 2027**

Mrs. Ruiz brought the schedule back on an envelope. She had crossed out the
first hour and written two names beside the second.

"The water truck comes then," she said. "If I go, who gets my time?"

I had divided the afternoon into equal pieces. It had looked fair on the
screen. I had not put the water line on it, or the walk home with the cans,
or the people who had to be watched while somebody else went out.

Tessa had three repairs beside her name. Her electrical lessons were at the
bottom, in a space I had marked //if time permits//.

She tapped that space with her fingernail.

"Whose time?"

I said we could change it. She waited until I did.

The smaller model was running under the kitchen table. For weeks I had been
working on a terminal program to use with it. I called the program BatBox.
Until this morning, I had mostly used it myself.

Mrs. Ruiz pulled her chair close enough that our knees touched. I showed her
where to type, where the answer appeared, where the files stayed. She asked
me to close it and open it again. She wanted to see whether yesterday's work
would still be there.

It was. She read the last exchange slowly. Then she found a mistake in it.

We had been gathering instructions for the pump behind her house. The model
had found a clear diagram in one of our saved manuals. I had marked the page
as useful. Mrs. Ruiz said the drawing showed a different pump. Hers had been
replaced before her youngest grandchild was born.

"You wrote down the old one," she said.

I looked at my note. She was right. The machine had carried my mistake along
very neatly.

Tessa went out with her to read the plate on the casing. When they came back,
I added the number, the date, and the photograph they had taken. We kept the
old note and marked why it had changed. I wanted the next person to know
which pump the instructions belonged to.

Then I began assigning the rest of the work.

Tessa could check the diagram. Tessa could look over the parts. Tessa could
teach someone how to make the repair. The program could keep the list and
show us what remained. I was pleased with how quickly it was coming together.

My sister pushed her chair back.

"You have made a machine that gives me work."

"It gives all of us work."

"Read the names."

I read them. There was a great deal under hers.

Mrs. Ruiz folded the envelope along its old crease. She said she could sit
with the children while Tessa studied. One of the adults in her house could
take my turn in the water line tomorrow. I could go today, and I could learn
enough about the records to teach somebody besides my sister.

Tessa wanted her hour of lessons first. She also wanted whoever learned the
repair to stay for the cleaning afterward.

We put those things on the list. The list grew longer. Nobody had become
faster.

Before we left for the truck, I set BatBox to go through the manuals we had
chosen, record their page references, and list the measurements we still
needed. It could do that work while I carried water. We would check what it
found when we returned. A finished search would not mean a finished repair.

Mrs. Ruiz asked whether it would read everything on the drive.

I had been about to offer her a copy of the whole working folder. Her
employment papers were in it, beside the pump photograph. She had brought
them yesterday because she wanted help reading a deduction.

We moved the papers out of the shared folder. I showed her what would be
copied. She read the names of the files before she said yes.

The truck was late. By the time I got back, Tessa was at the keyboard,
working through an electrical lesson we had put together from the manuals.
There was a page of notes beside her, written in her small, crowded hand.
She covered it when I leaned over to see.

"My hour," she said.

I put the cans away. The pump could wait until she was finished. I had not
known how much I expected her to yield until she stopped yielding it.

Tonight we each have a copy of the shared work. Mrs. Ruiz has learned how to
add a question without waiting for me. Tessa has written her study time into
tomorrow's schedule in ink.

There is still an open task beside the pump: check the instructions against
the machine. I left it open. Beside it I put my name, with Tessa's agreement
to show me where to begin after her lesson.

----
[[book:start|Book index]] · [[book:02-what-we-could-carry|Previous]] · [[book:04-what-remembering-costs|Next]]

**Original source:** [[https://github.com/Xananthium/batbox/blob/f3e143e44a06f755b89d9ed0a33f8ded2aa3578c/README.md|Pinned source README]].