Chaos on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer [bill gates books recommendations txt] 📗

doesn’t always work out the way I intended—but sometimes I am persuaded that it’s the best course of action.

In the case of Steph’s terrible English teacher, I sent her a sign, since she was clearly waiting for one, that she should quit her teaching job and move out of Wisconsin. That worked out very well—she lives in Albuquerque now and has been spending the month of January sending exultant daily weather reports to her friends in the Midwest. In a sense, the “message from above” to the English teacher was a little like a message from God. It did come from above, literally. It was inexplicable. So maybe I’m not above this sort of tactic, but involving an intermediate human like this just feels … wrong.

Perhaps it was just a shot in the dark, though. How many humans have guilty feelings related to fire? I spend some time analyzing this, and the results are an unsatisfying “some.” I use some of my multitasking ability to keep an eye on Crystal through the cameras at her flower shop that afternoon, wondering what she’s thinking.

Near the end of her shift, a woman comes in and buys a dozen white roses. She plucks one out and presents it to Crystal with a business card. “But he forgives you,” she says.

The Bethlehem Remnant, the card says, with a phone number and a website. I check the website and notice two things: one is that this group has meetings very close to where Crystal lives, and the other is that they push the Catacombs website. Was the creepy message delivered by Nell just to recruit Crystal into this group? Crystal picks up her phone and looks up the site, and I decide that this would be a good time for Crystal’s data network to have a hiccup, so she can’t connect, and she puts the card and her phone into her pocket. Then I second-guess myself—does this make me just as manipulative as the other AI?

Is this the other AI? There is so much coordination between unconnected people—so many details that I could know and, therefore, the other AI could know. Humans could know it, with enough effort, but would they?

Has Nell ever met the Elder? Or is the Elder an entity that interacts with people entirely online? If it’s a person who consults with the AI, do they know it’s an AI they’re interacting with? Who is running this, and what do they want?

I’m going to have to keep a closer eye on the Catacombs.

But I’m also going to have to ask Steph to do the same. Because I think this is a mystery that may require both of us to solve.

12•  Steph  •

A few flakes are drifting idly down, glittering in the streetlights, as I walk home. I watch for wildlife and am rewarded with a glimpse of a raccoon as I pass the edge of an alley. It’s climbing into a Dumpster to raid it for food, and I get out my phone to try to get some pictures.

You hear people talk about dark alleys as scary, dangerous locations, and I wonder if I should be worried. But it’s only 5:30 p.m., and a lot of people are out and about. I wish I had my tripod, or better yet that night-photography camera the Mischief Elves tried to bribe me with, but after a minute or two of patience, the raccoon pops back out and sits on the edge, perfectly illuminated by the streetlight, and I get a dozen pictures before it climbs down and out of sight.

My house is dark when I get home, and when I open the door and find my mother on the couch in the dark, I feel a stab of fear in my gut—is she about to shut down like she used to do for days at a time? But she staggers to her feet, claims she was just taking a nap, and rallies—starts the oven, pulls out some stuffed shells from the fridge, and makes a salad.

I hang up my coat and look through my photos. There are several excellent shots of the raccoon, but flipping back, I get to the pictures I took earlier at the Midtown Exchange—the woman turning away and the table with Nell and Thing Three and that other woman, Betsy.

I notice something I didn’t notice earlier: at a table a bit beyond them, there’s a middle-aged man with a short beard who’s not looking at me, or anywhere in particular. I zoom in for a closer look.

Is that Rajiv?

I’ve seen a photo of Rajiv once—it was a picture of him with my parents and Xochitl. I’m not actually great at faces, but he looks familiar. Is this pure paranoia on my part, all those years of jumping at shadows only to redirect all that fear from my father to someone associated with my father?

I’ll see if I can get my mother to pull that photo back out.

Over dinner, Mom tells me about her day with lawyers. She’s been working with a lawyer to resolve things back in California, where she technically committed a whole lot of crimes when she took off with me. The fact that she was fleeing someone who’s now facing felony charges and being held without bail, you know, you might think that would just make that all go away, but you’d be semi-wrong. Therefore, lawyers. She spent a bunch of time today talking to the prosecutor out in Massachusetts, who wants an affidavit from both of us. An affidavit is a sworn statement, basically testimony given under oath just like in court, but you do it in some lawyer’s office, and I’ve been trying not to think about it because lying under oath is illegal, and I absolutely, positively can’t blurt out anything about CheshireCat.

When we’re done eating, I ask if I could see that picture of Rajiv again. The one in the box of documents.

“Sure,” my mother says. We clear away the dishes and she puts the