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

I walk back across the park to the convenience store. I had really thought I was just building a snow sculpture, but if I hadn’t come back, I’d never have seen the threatening phrase. Also, to be fair, if someone had ever put a giant snow sculpture in our yard, back when Mom and I were on the run, she’d have had the van packed before I could have turned around. If you’re paranoid, it’s not hard to be pushed into drastic action. And the fireworks. Which were probably made by Mischief Elves with materials provided by the Catacombs.

I look at the card and wonder what else I’d learn if I went to that meeting.

My mother’s van has only two seats, so my grandmother calls a “real taxi” to get us to the restaurant, which turns out to mean a taxi with a human driver, which means we all have to squeeze into the back.

I text CheshireCat: I think the Mischief Elves are targeting the people from the Catacombs to freak them out. They used fireworks to do it. Didn’t you say the Catacombs had people providing material for making fireworks to Mischief Elves?

Yes, I did, CheshireCat says.

If this Brother Daniel guy is running the Catacombs, is he also running the Mischief Elves? Is he trying to make the cult feel super persecuted by arranging for them to get persecuted?

The two sites are definitely connected. But the connection point might be the AI rather than the humans.

Do you think the AI is an evil mastermind, turning groups of humans against one another? Why?

I don’t know what I think, CheshireCat says.

Do you think I should go to that meeting?

No, CheshireCat says. It might be dangerous. And that might be exactly what they want.

I’ll have you in my pocket. You can send help if I need it.

What if you’re somewhere with a signal damper or jammer? I won’t even be able to hear you. And you might not know until it’s too late.

My grandmother makes a passive-aggressive joke about teenagers and their phones, something about how maybe I should just have it implanted into my arm, and I sigh and put my phone away.

The restaurant is shockingly expensive, and my grandmother overrides my attempt to order the cheapest steak and tells the waiter I’ll have the porterhouse. It’s huge, way too much for one person to possibly eat. It is delicious, though. I mean, since someone else is paying for it.

My grandmother and mother are making stilted conversation about how my grandmother has been staying busy since retiring from her job, which had something to do with the onboard computers in cars. It’s a dull conversation, and I start eavesdropping on the table next to us. They’re talking about something that happened last week in a park in one of the western suburbs—two groups of teenagers gathered and faced off with improvised weapons. Mischief Elves? I wonder. Catacombs? The information I can catch is tantalizing but insufficient. Then one of them mentions games—the other one asks, “Wait, so we’re talking Pokémon Go, basically? If Valor and Mystic actually fought each other with, like, fists?”

The other guy laughs and they get sidetracked into nostalgia for a while, and then he finally mentions the name of one of the games, Snakeriders, which sounds like it has absolutely nothing to do with either the Mischief Elves or the Catacombs. They’re paying their bill to leave, and as they’re gathering up their coats, I hear one of them say the words future reenactment, and I remember Marvin, and I feel a chill wash over me.

Back at home, my grandmother unzips her suitcase to bring out a photo album. It’s the print kind, not the digital kind, a book with photos of the family members I haven’t met. Finally, we’ve found a topic that doesn’t make all of us tense. I study the faces of my cousins in Florida, trying to remember the names my grandmother is telling me. Among my mother’s cousins, there’s a woman in her twenties who looks like an older version of me. It’s a little unnerving.

When I go to the bathroom, I discover about a hundred messages on my phone, mostly from CheshireCat.

“Hi,” I say, rather than trying to scroll all of them. “Can you sum up?”

“I’ve been trying to decide whether I think you should go to that meeting,” CheshireCat says, and it takes me a minute to remember what they’re talking about. The Catacombs meeting I heard about in the park earlier. “I want to know just how bad things are. But I’m worried it won’t be safe.”

“Can you listen in some other way?”

“Maybe, but the woman who approached you has extra security on her phone.”

“By the way,” I ask. “What is Marvin’s ‘future reenactment’ group called?”

“Getty’s Borough 2242.”

“Not Snakeriders.”

“No. Why?”

I narrate what I overheard during dinner, since apparently CheshireCat didn’t pick it up from my pocket over the rest of the ambient noise. “Here’s what I’m wondering,” I say. “What if it’s not just the Catacombs and the Mischief Elves that are being run by the other AI? What if there are hundreds of games and social networks, all of them working together toward some goal?”

My mother knocks on the bathroom door. “Steph?” she says. “Your grandmother’s heading back to her hotel.”

I wash my hands and come out. Mimi has called another taxi and is putting her coat back on. She and my mother apparently started fighting while I was in the bathroom, and this isn’t just “heading back to the hotel,” this is a highly dramatic exit.

“I am sorry,” my grandmother is saying, not sounding sorry at all. “I had no idea this would still be a sensitive topic—it’s been twenty years? Almost twenty years?”

“You could have let me make my own choices. You could have trusted that I knew what was right for me.”

“Clearly, you need someone else to blame,” my grandmother sniffs. “And that’s fine. It was lovely to