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

K? She replies, OK. Be home tomorrow by noon.) Then we dash shivering out to the car to drive down for a night in New Coburg.

We stop to let Rachel pick up her car from the shuttered diner. Nell moves up to the front seat of her own car, and I move to Rachel’s car. “Can you follow me?” Rachel asks. Nell nods. “Call Steph if you get confused, but it’s basically straight south from here.” I climb in next to Rachel, and she peers anxiously in her rearview mirror to make sure that Nell looks ready. “You probably should have ridden with Nell, but I thought they might like some time alone together,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Also I kind of wanted you to myself for a few minutes?”

“Same,” I say. “Or, I mean, the same but in reverse.” I turn off RideAlong so CheshireCat won’t listen in.

“I can’t believe we actually pulled that off!” Rachel says. “We broke Glenys out of a secret cult compound and got away! But what are we going to do with Glenys? I mean, after tonight?”

“Maybe Nell’s father’s family will help?”

“Maybe? If Nell talks to them about it. I don’t get the sense she tells them anything. Like I bet they don’t know she even has a girlfriend.”

“Well, she kept a lot of secrets from her mom.”

“You’ve met her father and his, uh, the rest of the group, family, whatever. Are they anything like those people we listened in on?”

I think about Siobhan suggesting we ditch class. “Like, their complete polar opposite, I think. But they never wash the dishes. Except now Nell’s made that her job, so maybe they’re annoying her less. I don’t think she tells them anything, though. Ever. Even though they seem nice.”

Rachel heaves a sigh. “I guess you could always see if CheshireCat could pull an underground railroad for oppressed lesbian teenagers out of their social network.”

“Seems likely.”

Nell follows us down to New Coburg without difficulty and parks behind us outside of Bryony’s house. Bryony’s dog, Balto, and their kitten, Leo, meet us at the door. Their house is bright and warm. I haven’t been inside before, although I got chased away from the parking lot next door by Bryony’s father last fall when I was trying to take pictures of raccoons. They’ve got a big family room suitable for a slumber party, and while waiting for us to arrive, Bryony went out and bought a bunch of food. Their mother looks us over as we arrive, a little mystified by the fact that none of us has toothbrushes or sleeping bags, but Bryony fends her off and reassures me that there’s plenty of bedding and yoga pants and sweatshirts if not actual pajamas to lend us.

Glenys eats almost an entire bag of pizza rolls by herself, barely talking. Bryony’s mother hovers for a bit. She’s a tall Black woman who teaches poetry at one of the small-town branches of the University of Wisconsin. Bryony’s father is an auto mechanic. I wonder if her mother would prefer to live somewhere a little less rural, but she’s in the local bowling league with Rachel’s mom and seems to like New Coburg. The cheap housing my mother used to claim was the reason we lived in tiny rural towns probably comes in handy if you’re a poet.

I can see Bryony’s mom watching Glenys; after a few minutes, she announces, “I’m going to put in the mozzarella sticks. Does that sound good to everybody? How about some frozen corn dogs?” and pulls a few more bags out of the freezer. She asks no more questions. “Bryony, I’m setting the timer. Can you pull everything out when it goes off?”

“Sure. Thanks, Mom,” Bryony says.

“Great. I’m going upstairs to watch TV.”

We wait until her footsteps fade on the stairs, and then Bryony turns to Rachel and says, “Okay. What’s the story here, exactly?”

“I kind of got pulled in at the last minute myself,” Rachel says, and looks at me.

I’m trying to put my thoughts in order when Glenys pushes her empty plate away and says, “They locked me in a shed and barely fed me because Nell and I are girlfriends. They didn’t say it was because I was homosexual; they said I loved Nell too much, more than God or my community or the other people I was supposed to put ahead of myself, and I needed to pray for forgiveness. They told me Nell confessed and that’s why they knew to lock me up, because they wanted me to hate Nell. But it didn’t work, because I didn’t believe them.” She turns to Nell and says, “I didn’t think you’d come for me, though. I didn’t think there was any way you could help me.”

“Someone locked you in a shed?” Bryony says. “And starved you? That has got to be illegal.”

“My parents took me there, though. This was all with their permission.”

“I don’t think it would be legal for your parents to lock you in a shed, either.”

I want to ask CheshireCat what exactly the laws are about this, but first I have to figure out how to bring Bryony up to date on the whole “Cat, who’s a very definitely human programmer, who lives somewhere like Boston, definitely in a house or apartment of some kind like all other people who have bodies” thing.

Rachel decides to go for it: “By the way, Cat—you remember Cat, the programmer from Boston—Cat bought a robot and had it shipped to Steph’s house this week.” Her voice has gone very slightly higher in pitch.

“Oh,” Bryony says, catching on. “Cat. I think we’re all talking about the same Cat.”

I nod. CheshireCat, fortunately, doesn’t say anything.

“Cat sent you a robot. Uh. Yeah, that sounds like something they’d do. Did it come in handy?”

“It let the air out of their tires so they couldn’t follow us,” Nell says, “and when they freaked out, they shot the robot instead of shooting in our direction.”

“Instead of … Where did you