Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer [best e ink reader for manga .txt] 📗

and toothbrush from the bag in the back of Rachel’s car. When I straighten, I’m startled to see that Rachel looks really upset. “Are you okay?” I ask. Did I do something wrong? “Thank you for inviting me to stay. I really … I mean, I like your birds.”

“They keep promising that we’ll go down to fewer birds,” Rachel says, her voice furious, and I feel a wash of relief as I realize she’s definitely not mad at me. “This is a lot of birds. They wake me up every morning talking and fighting and the house is always a mess because they don’t live in cages except for Picasso. We were down to three parrotlets after Da Vinci died and Van Gogh got out, but then Caravaggio laid an egg and neither one of my parents noticed, so now we’re back up to four downstairs parrotlets plus the conure. They thought Caravaggio was a boy; that’s why they weren’t paying attention.”

“I’ve never had birds,” I say uselessly. “Or any other pet. Other than the cat that my mother doesn’t know about.”

“I just wish I had somewhere to have you over that wasn’t a mess.”

I can’t believe she cares what I think. Should I say it’s fine? That doesn’t seem right, because it sounds like I’m disdainfully accepting what she’s offering. It really is fine, though. Everything about this house is fine, including the parts Rachel finds excruciatingly embarrassing.

“Thank you for being my friend,” I say. “I don’t know where else I’d go.”

“Please don’t tell anyone at school if you get pooped on.”

“I will not tell a soul,” I say. “Ever, no one, not a soul. Not even CatNet.”

“You can tell CatNet about the birds,” Rachel says. “They seem like people who would think they were neat.”

In Rachel’s room, we close the door, and I fold up my quilt to make myself some padding on the floor. Rachel’s mother has yelled at her to do her homework, and I plug in my laptop and get onto CatNet.

Everyone’s been watching the news coverage of the hacking incident. That’s what the news stations are all calling it now: the Hacking Incident. Emily’s interview is being played and replayed, alongside an interview with Bryony, where Bryony says that the real scandal is that we were being taught sex ed by a robot programmed to say, “I don’t know; ask your parents” for any question other than “What are the benefits of abstinence until marriage?” It started out as strictly local news but got picked up somehow by a newspaper in Seattle that found it hilarious (they were totally on Bryony’s side), and by 7:00 p.m. it was on CNN.

Rachel grabs a tablet from her desk drawer and pulls up some of the news reports so we can watch them ourselves.

The CNN reporter got in touch with the communications director of Robono, who forlornly insists that this shouldn’t happen, mentions a security patch that was apparently not installed, and also says that the claim the principal is making—that it was some sort of outside attack—is not plausible. “This isn’t something you could do with, you know, an email Trojan horse,” he says. “What happened today requires hands-on access to the robot. So unless they’re saying someone broke into the school, it was definitely someone from their own community.”

I glance at Rachel, nervous. She narrows her eyes. “He’s a terrible PR guy,” she says. “They’re going to regret not calling a crisis management firm the minute this story broke.”

“Are you some sort of PR expert?”

“Oh, you know, two years ago, Suncraft Farms granola bars had salmonella contamination, and it was a thing. My mom’s friend Wendy works at the factory doing communications stuff, which meant running a cute Twitter feed about granola bars and breakfast cereal and writing news releases. After the salmonella contamination happened, she got pulled up in front of cameras and said, ‘Nobody’s perfect,’ when they asked her about the salmonella. They hired a crisis firm and sent Wendy to the mail room for six months.”

“Is she back in communications now?” I ask.

“Yeah, she’s pretty good at writing funny tweets. Also, the salmonella totally wasn’t our fault; it was a supplier.”

I look at the Suncraft Farms Twitter feed. It looks like Wendy spends most of her day offering coupons for Suncraft Farms granola bars to anyone who mentions needing a snack: “You look like you’d enjoy our new Açai Berry-Yogurt breakfast bar! Here’s a coupon for 15% off your first box! #snacks #healthysnacks.”

“Georgia thinks they’re going to put Chet Biscuit, PR rep, on ice,” I tell CatNet. “He’s no good at his job.”

“She’s not wrong,” Marvin says.

“How is this even news?” I ask. “I mean, you hack one robot…”

“The robot hack is news because last week, GM announced that autonomous cars were now 25 percent of what’s on the road,” Ico says.

“What? No way it’s that high,” Hermione says. “There’s, like, two in my entire town.”

“Don’t you live somewhere in Maine?” Marvin asks.

“Yeah,” Ico says. “California’s been subsidizing them because they’re fuel efficient and safer, so they’re all over here.”

“I don’t see the connection,” I say.

“A hacked robotic car would be a really big deal because it could run people over. I think that’s part of why everyone’s so interested in this story. Plus, I mean, it involves sex and teenagers.”

“Talking about sex and teenagers,” CheshireCat says. “Anyway, he’s wrong about how secure Robono robots are. Their household robots are highly vulnerable to a major hack unless you install the patch that no one installs.”

“We should totally hack all of them,” Marvin says, “and make every robotic floor cleaner in the country spontaneously go out to clean the floors at 2:00 a.m. today, just to divert the press from New Coburg.”

“Was it a ruptured appendix your mom had?” Hermione asks.

“Yes,” I say. “That’s what they thought at the hospital, anyway. They took her into surgery, and they’re saying days or weeks of antibiotics in the hospital.”

“So you can’t go anywhere.”

“Not unless I