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

box on the table, pulling out a folder labeled HOMERIC. There are various printouts of newspaper articles but also a half dozen miscellaneous photos. “This one has Rajiv in it.”

This photo is older than the one I remember seeing before, but also a better picture. It’s her, my father, Xochitl, Rajiv, all of them a lot younger, but at least in the case of Xochitl and my mother, recognizable as themselves. They’re all sitting together on a couch, holding big plastic cups and a hand-lettered sign with the company name.

Okay. That definitely could be the guy in my picture.

I should probably tell my mother this.

But there are still days I think she has to fight the urge to pack up everything that will fit in the van and take off with me for somewhere three states away. Permanence is hard. Stability is hard. Trusting her not to freak out: super hard.

“We’d been talking about starting a company together after graduation,” Mom says, tapping the photo. “This was the night we decided we were definitely going to do it, and picked a name for the company.”

“Why?” I ask. “I mean, why did you all decide to start a company together? Did you know at the time…” I trail off, not really sure how to ask what I want to ask.

“Did I know at the time what your father was going to turn into? No. Maybe I should have. Probably I should have.” Mom pokes through the folder. There are more pictures of her with Xochitl. “So the thing you have to understand is, college was the first time in my life I ever had friends.”

I think about all the years we spent moving constantly, before I found CatNet and my Clowder, and don’t say anything.

“I didn’t fit in, growing up. I never understood how other kids made friends so effortlessly. I did understand math, which definitely didn’t help me fit in, but did help me get into a good college for nerd kids, where suddenly, for the first time in my life, I found my people. It was like magic. Xochitl and Rajiv were my best friends.” She lays out more photos: Xochitl dancing in a mirrored studio, Michael napping under a tree, hands—Rajiv’s, I’m pretty sure—gently patting dirt around a flower in a pot. “I had a job offer back in my hometown, but that would have meant leaving my friends behind. Michael, or maybe Xochitl, suggested we strike out on our own, and that’s how we decided to start Homeric Software.”

“Was the universal decryption key the business plan?”

“Oh, no, that would have been ridiculous. We did risk analysis and penetration testing—basically, people would hire us to try to break into their systems, and if we could, we’d let them know how we did it. It was fun, and we were all very good at it. The decryption key was related research, of course.”

I stare at the picture of the hands with the flower, trying to decide what to say, or what to ask. “My father was dangerous. Xochitl, you’re still friends with. Do you think you’d still be friends with Rajiv if, you know…”

“If he hadn’t either died or faked his death?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm. No.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“I honestly don’t know.” My mother looks up, her expression weary. “When I got the universal decryption key working, your father wanted to use it for power. To make ourselves fantastically rich, for starters, but his goal was power. Xochitl had assumed that the plan was to sell it to the government. Rajiv said the rest of us were thinking small. He had a grand vision.”

“Of what?”

“Oh, you know. Fully automated luxury space communism. A world with no poverty, no pollution, no war. But to get there would require revolution, the complete demolition of the old order. Xochitl said he was talking about setting fire to everything so he could plant flowers in the ashes, and this decryption key might help him burn everything down, but it wasn’t going to do a damn thing to rebuild. Anyway, that’s when I encrypted the code so that no one else could use it. I wanted time to think about what to do.”

“When you were kidnapped, did you believe it was Rajiv?”

“Yes. Partly because he seemed so sure that the ends would justify the means, and so the idea that he’d try to force the key out of me seemed plausible. But more than that—Rajiv did suggest kidnapping me to Michael. Michael recorded the conversation—he gave it to the police. Rajiv said it like a joke. But he said a lot of things like a joke.”

“But it definitely wasn’t Rajiv who kidnapped you?”

“Michael slipped up. Mentioned something I knew I hadn’t told the police. That’s how I knew he was involved. I don’t actually know that Rajiv wasn’t involved, but then he disappeared, and a week later they pulled his car out of the Pacific. I knew Michael had kidnapped me, I thought he’d had Rajiv killed, so I ran, and you know the rest, I think.”

“What did you think you were going to do with the decryption key?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Mom says softly. “Which was stupid, I can say now. Really, really stupid.” She clears her throat and adds, “Like that quote from Jurassic Park, I was so preoccupied with whether I could, I didn’t think about whether I should, although at least in my case it wasn’t a genetically engineered T. rex.”

“You should do that instead next time,” I say. “Dinosaurs are cool.”

The next day, I’m watching out the front window when Rachel pulls up in her car, and I run out to meet her, give her a hug, and then we run back into the house because it’s about ten degrees below zero and also windy, and I ran outside in my socks.

Rachel checks out the apartment.

“When you come in summer, there’s a park really nearby,” I say. “It has a lake and I think it might be a really nice place