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

I unzip the backpack once we’re out of sight so that CheshireCat can move the robot freely if they think they need to. “Hey, uh, Nell,” I say. “Just so you know, I brought a robot.”

Nell slams on the brakes. “You brought a what?”

CheshireCat chooses that moment to climb the robot out of the bag and lift up its head, and it’s a good thing Nell had already stopped, because I think if she’d been moving, she’d have run into a tree. “What the Sam Hill is that?”

“This is a robot,” CheshireCat says. “I’m Steph’s hacker friend, Cat. I’m controlling the robot.”

What happened to the plan of you not talking? I think but can’t really ask out loud (or text, because I’m not that fast). My phone buzzes and I look down to see a text from CheshireCat saying, Sorry, she seemed really freaked out.

Your funeral, I text back. Nell is too busy staring at the robot to notice.

“Did you buy this?” Nell asks me.

“Cat bought it,” I say. “They were worried and thought we might need a little extra help. It got here yesterday.”

“Wow,” Nell says. “Okay. Thank you, Cat.” She addresses the robot, and CheshireCat has it dip its head slightly and then crawls it into the back seat. Behind us, someone honks, because we’re sitting on a residential street, blocking it. Nell looks in the rearview mirror at the robot and then turns her attention at least somewhat to the road.

Hoping to discourage conversation, I connect my phone to the car stereo and text CheshireCat, Give us some music. I didn’t make a playlist, YOU need to make a playlist. Because if we’re listening to music, she won’t start asking you questions.

Good thought, CheshireCat says.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” starts pouring out of the speakers. Nell doesn’t sing along, and I realize partway through that this is because she’s somehow never heard it, and so I text CheshireCat to set up a running playlist of all the songs Nell should have heard, and that keeps us occupied for a while with things that are not “oh, look, a robot.” Nell turns down the music as we get on the highway and asks, “So, is Rachel meeting us?”

“Yeah. We’re going to meet up at a roadside diner that’s on our way. I have the address.”

Nell gives me another quick sideways look. “I still don’t understand why you’re helping me.”

“Because your girlfriend’s in trouble,” I say.

“I don’t like people who think they can cure gay people,” CheshireCat says. “It doesn’t work, and there’s nothing wrong with being gay.”

I’m going to drive myself crazy if I try to assess everything that comes out of the robot with does that sound human enough, what is Nell thinking and I try to just stop thinking about it, which works about as well as you might expect.

“Do you have a bolt cutter?” I ask. “In case the Elder is right that she’s locked in a shed.”

“It’s in the trunk,” Nell says.

“It might be a good idea to have me scout,” CheshireCat suggests. “If someone shoots the robot, no one actually gets hurt.”

“What about you?” Nell says, genuinely puzzled.

“I am not the robot. I am a person, a real human person, controlling the robot like you’re driving your car.”

Urgently wanting to change the subject, I tell Nell the thing that’s been on my mind since yesterday: “It turns out I have a grandmother. Actually, a bunch of relatives, but my grandmother is coming next week.”

Nell’s eyebrows go up. “You didn’t know you had relatives?”

“We were on the run for years, and Mom never mentioned them. I sort of assumed they were dead, but no. Mom didn’t exactly get along with them, though. So, I have a grandma, but she might be a jerk. What’s your grandmother like?”

Nell sighs. “Well, my grandparents let Mom and me move in with them after Dad left so that Mom could keep homeschooling me instead of having to go out and get a job. Even though they hate the Abiding Remnant.” She falls silent for a minute, staring out at the sunny highway. “When I got my period for the first time, Mom went off about the Curse of Eve and wanted me to fast for a day. Grandma said there’d be no fasting for fourteen-year-old girls as long as we were living in her house, and she took me out to buy me sanitary pads and told me this was the way God made my body and I had no reason to be ashamed.”

“Wait, I don’t understand. Did your mom think if you were, I don’t know, less sinful, that you wouldn’t have a period?”

“No. She just thinks that all women are extra sinful and having my period made me a woman instead of a girl. So she wanted me to fast and think about how extra sinful women are. Grandma thought that was nuts.”

“What about your grandpa?”

“He excused himself from the conversation as soon as the word tampon got said. He has this room he calls his den with a TV and a recliner, and that’s where he goes whenever Mom and Grandma get into it.”

“What’s the connection between the Remnant and the Catacombs?” CheshireCat asks.

“It’s not a Remnant website, exactly. But it’s a website to prepare for the Tribulation, so of course it’s very popular with Remnant members.”

“What is the Tribulation?” I ask.

Nell launches into an explanation of how Jesus is going to come back, but before that happens, the world is going to degenerate into an enormous mess. There are churches that believe that all the Christians will be taken to heaven before things turn terrible; other churches believe that the Christians will have to suffer with everyone else; her church believes that Christians have to fight to make earth worthy of Jesus’s return.

“Do you think this is really going to happen?” I ask.

There’s a long pause. A really long pause. CheshireCat, able to read the room for once, doesn’t start any new music.

Finally,