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

supposed to be good. I could put a smile on my face, but I didn’t ever feel the joy inside I was supposed to have. Mostly, I just felt anxious. So the best I could really hope for was to stay out of trouble. And in the end, I hadn’t even managed that. I just got Glenys in trouble with me.

Thing One and Thing Two are both up when I come back in the house. Thing One comes out to the living room as I’m hanging up my coat and looks at me in surprise. “Where’d you go?” she asks.

“Just for a morning walk, ma’am,” I say.

“Do you want some coffee? I just made a pot.”

“Yes, please.”

She pours me a cup and lets me add my own milk and sugar. I put in enough to make it taste like coffee ice cream and sit down at the table. “Do you know why someone might want a whole lot of stump remover?” I ask.

“To remove a whole lot of stumps?” Thing One says.

“In January?”

Thing Two comes in with her own coffee. “Homemade fireworks,” she says. “Stump remover is potassium nitrate. You can use it for homemade fireworks.”

Thing One gives Thing Two a slightly narrow-eyed look. “How’d you know that?”

“Last year, someone wanted an exploding papier-mâché sculpture for a gender-reveal party.”

“You made an exploding gender piñata?”

“They were going to pay so well. I didn’t end up making it because what they wanted was going to be a massive fire hazard and I didn’t trust them to set it off safely. But yeah, I looked into how you’d make something like that explode, and ‘stump remover’ was one of the answers.” Thing Two looks at me and says, “By the way, you’ll want to put on the second coat of paint today. Let me know if you want help.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. I wash my cup out and put it away and then go to my bedroom.

On my phone, there’s a message from the Catacombs praising me for a successful mission and granting me a question to the Elder. I was hoping maybe I’d have a text from Steph with more information from her hacker friend, but nothing.

I think about Steph’s suggestion, that I treat this like a game of Twenty Questions. What do I know at this point? Glenys is locked in a shed, and it’s not one of the sheds at her house. I think about how many other members of the Abiding Remnant have sheds outside, right near Lake Sadie. I start to ask if Glenys is in a shed in Lake Sadie. But if the answer is no, I barely know anything more than I knew before.

I ask instead if Glenys is in Minnesota and then put my phone down to paint while I wait for an answer. Thing Two comes in to check my drop cloths and pour the paint into a tray for me. The tape’s all still where Steph and I put it yesterday.

At least I still got my question, even though I asked the Things about the stump remover. We’re not supposed to ask, with quests. We’re not even really supposed to wonder. But now I’m thinking about my quest on Friday, too, and Steph asking what those pictures were for. I’m wondering about the hammer, about the fact that I was specifically instructed to steal the hammer.

I’m not supposed to be thinking this way. I’m supposed to trust the Elder, Brother Daniel, Brother Malachi, and the Remnant.

But a thought keeps working its way into my mind: that if Glenys is being punished because her parents and my mother realized that we were a couple, how did they find out? We were always so careful. But the Elder might have had someone watching us when we thought we were alone. He probably knew my secret.

And maybe my mother asked.

She didn’t know about Glenys and me, but she knew I was hiding something; she said she could tell. My grandmother told her to leave me alone, it was normal for a growing girl to have a few secrets, but my mother would whisper to me at bedtime that hiding things from her was ungodly and unwise and unhealthy and that sooner or later, she’d find out what it was.

So maybe she asked the Elder what my secret was.

Of course, I had a lot of secrets, and the Elder might have just as easily said, “Nell is hiding the fact that she learned absolutely nothing from that correspondence trigonometry course she received an A in.” Or “Nell is hiding a copy of The Golden Compass behind the chest freezer in the basement.” If he’d wanted.

I’m feeling sick to my stomach, thinking about this. My mother didn’t leave me on purpose, I tell myself again, but I don’t know anymore if I believe it.

I check for an answer when I’m done painting the walls, and there isn’t one. I take the roller and paint tray to the kitchen to clean them (shoving the mountain of dishes out of the way) and turn my paint-spattered shirt inside out and put it down the laundry chute and then I go check again.

No.

No. That’s my answer. Glenys is not in Minnesota. So she’s not in Lake Sadie. I feel a hint of relief that I didn’t ask the first question I thought of, followed by a rush of despair as I think about how many states there are to go.

But a new mission appears, moments later. I’m already thinking about which state I’ll ask about next as I read it.

You live with sinners. Punish them. You are the vengeance of God.

I’m momentarily shocked.

The app adds, Righteous anger is permitted. Be creative.

15•  CheshireCat  •

Nell seems so convinced she’ll find the answer to Glenys’s disappearance through the Catacombs site. And if the Elder is the other AI, maybe she’s right? Maybe it knows and will tell her? Or maybe it’s toying with her. I can’t tell. I decide to dig into the Catacombs site