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

try to tell myself that she’s not that stupid, and I don’t really succeed. If I didn’t know that the Mischief Elves was run by the other AI, I’d assume this was all just BS, but the AI might actually know that she’s outside in this. Ugh. I put on my depressingly inadequate mid-weight jacket, add the hat and scarf and mittens that my mother let me bring, drop my wallet and hotel key card in my pocket, and go outside. I don’t see my mother as I pass through the lobby.

Head east, the Mischief Elves tell me. I don’t actually know which way is east, but fortunately, they’re pointing me. A blast of frigid wind hits me in the face, and I really wish I had my warm coat. The Elves hurry me along a series of dark blocks until I find myself on a hill overlooking the river.

“Why am I here?” I ask my phone stupidly.

One of the people turns to me. “You’re here for the venture!” he says.

“I’m not,” I say. “I’m looking for a friend.”

“You probably thought you were looking for a friend, but if you’re here, you’re here for the venture.”

Are they going to rile up the Catacombs people again? I’m getting ready to leave when one of the other people turns to me and says, “Oh, are you looking for Nell? I can help you find Nell.”

“After the venture,” the man says.

It’s hard to tell how many people are here; it’s dark, it’s incredibly cold, and people are milling around. More than ten. Fewer than a hundred. They’re mostly white, mostly male, and mostly not teenagers. The cold is making it hard to think. I trail along as we leave the hill and head in a new direction, away from the river. The football stadium looms up ahead of us, and it’s not until people break into a run that I realize that’s our destination.

“Take a tool!” someone says, pointing to a box filled with hammers, axes, sledgehammers, and crowbars, almost all brand-new, mostly with tags still attached. Around me, people are chanting something about public spaces and public dollars and homeless people, and the man next to me, the one who said he knew where Nell was, grabs the biggest sledgehammer out of the box.

This is not what I came for. I step back and let the rest of the crowd charge forward without me, and I hear glass shattering. My sluggish brain starts running through the advice I’ve gotten from Marvin in the past. If they catch me, I’m going to be in so much trouble. But if I run, they’ll think I’m trying to get away. I close the Mischief Elves app even as it tries to tell me, Your friends are that way, your friends are that way, and pull up a map, trying to remember which hotel I was at.

“CheshireCat,” I say. “Help me?”

“What’s going on?” they ask.

“I think the Mischief Elves just broke into the football stadium for the hell of it? I really don’t want to get arrested. Help me get back to the hotel?”

“Your hotel is on the far side of the football stadium.”

I can hear sirens—lots of sirens. “How cold is it?” I ask.

“It is minus thirty degrees Celsius in Minneapolis right now.”

That’s without the wind chill. “Okay,” I say. “I need to get indoors. It needs to be legal. Help me out here.”

“All right. Turn left. No, that’s not right. You’re going the wrong way. Stop, turn ninety degrees, move forward.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“I’m taking you to a sandwich shop.”

A cop car pulls up next to me as I walk. It says Minneapolis Public Safety—Support Unit on the side. “Hey,” the police officer says.

It would be more suspicious to keep walking than to just stop and talk to him. I stop, even though the wind has truly hit I just want to die levels of miserable cold. “Yes, sir?” I say.

“Are you okay? Where are you going?”

Am I being detained? Am I free to go? is Marvin’s suggested response to basically anything and everything a cop says to you, up to and including “How are you today?” but while my number-one goal is not to be arrested for smashing into the stadium, my number-two goal is to avoid my mother hearing from the cops, so I say, “Sandwich shop.”

“You’re a little underdressed.”

“Yeah, I really am.” My voice cracks.

“Are you in from out of town?”

“I live in Minneapolis, but my mom took me to stay in a hotel tonight.” Why, I need a reason why. “Plumbing’s out in our apartment.” That honestly sounds less suspicious than the true reason, I’m pretty sure. “I was hungry and the sandwich place didn’t look that far, but it is so cold.”

“Do you want a ride the rest of the way?”

“No, thank you.”

He hands me something out the window. “This is a coat voucher,” he says. “You can use this at a store to get yourself something warmer, but right now, just get inside as fast as you can.”

I stuff it in my pocket, and it takes me another second to register that he’s letting me go.

The sandwich shop is only another block away. I order a large coffee and a hot sandwich and pay for it with the change from buying milk yesterday. I’m shaking hard enough that I almost spill the coffee, but I get to a table with my coffee and my meatball sub and sit down. The sub sounded good when I ordered it but now smells kind of gross. So does the coffee. I drink it, anyway.

The door to the sandwich shop bangs open and a half-dozen people come in. My first thought is that they’re Mischief Elves fleeing the scene of the crime. My next thought is that they’re from the Catacombs. Then I’m pretty sure they aren’t either, but that whoever they are, they are looking for trouble. They form an orderly line, giggling to themselves. I hear someone say, “Arabella,”