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

hotel’s notepad lying on the floor, like maybe it had been left on my pillow and then blown off.

I pick it up and find a note in my mother’s handwriting.

PHONES COMPROMISED

GO TO GROUND

CALL XOCHITL ONCE YOU HAVE A SECURE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION

Go to ground? I mean … what does that even mean? When it’s this cold outside? I at least know exactly where I can find a secure means of communication: my burner phone, which is in my desk back in the apartment. And if phones are compromised … that means my mother’s phone is almost certainly not with my mother. If it’s out by the van, that’s more likely to be bait than a clue. I swallow hard. Right.

Back in my apartment, I have a phone with no data connection, my laptop—which will let me communicate with the Clowder while not using my thumbs—and a robot. It occurs to me that if my mother’s phone does have any useful information on it, I could potentially have CheshireCat send the robot to retrieve it, but if my phone is compromised, I definitely don’t want to have that conversation with CheshireCat right now.

I put on all my layers, take the money my mother left for me to pay for room service food, and—I’d been planning to use my own phone to order a taxi, but the room’s courtesy tablet has a Get Taxi button, so I hit that, turn on my phone’s “hide my location” app, and head to the elevator.

“I can’t see where you are,” CheshireCat.

“Good, that means it’s working,” I say. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Trust me.”

CheshireCat can normally see people’s locations even when they’ve turned off location services (they’re just too polite to mention it), but because my mother is paranoid, she set up a bunch of security apps on my phone, including a VPN and an app that actually hides my location. I’m not convinced that uninstalling the Mischief Elves app will un-compromise my phone, but I also don’t want to just turn my phone off, because without it, I won’t have any way to talk to CheshireCat.

“Are you going to the garage?” they ask.

“Shh,” I say.

“Because I’m not sure that’s entirely a good idea.”

“Yeah,” I say. “You might be right about that.”

“I think you should stay at the hotel. In your room. That seems like the safest option right now.”

I want to tell CheshireCat about the note, but there’s no way to do that that’s not potentially compromised. “I have some information you don’t,” I say. “Just hold tight.”

The taxi pulls up, and I run out and get in. “Destination?” the car asks.

I mute my phone’s microphone and start to give the taxi my address, then decide to have it let me out at the end of my alley instead.

“This will be billed to your hotel room with an additional 15 percent convenience fee,” the car says.

“That’s fine,” I say.

“Current traffic conditions may require a longer route.”

“That’s also fine.”

“Please fasten your seat belt and adjust your headrest,” the car says, and then goes into its marketing spiel as it starts moving. “You have chosen the best of all possible taxi options, the Robono Tranquility 9000, which has an unparalleled safety record and fully optimized street routing—”

There’s a button I can press to shut it up, so I press it.

I’ve been climbing in and out of second-story windows for years, and I scouted the best routes up and down when we first moved in, but I haven’t actually climbed out, let alone in, from our Minneapolis apartment. Doing it with snow, ice, and a frigid wind is going to make this exciting. Not the good kind of exciting.

I turn my phone’s mic back on before I get out of the taxi and say, “CheshireCat, I need your robot to go unlock the apartment balcony door.” I don’t wait for a response; it’s so brutally cold I’m afraid I won’t be able to grip properly if I don’t get there as fast as I can. I run down the alley to my backyard, then use the window of the garage to climb up to the garage roof, stepping carefully because this would be a really bad time to slip and fall. From the end of the garage, I can reach a tree branch, then swing from there onto the edge of the balcony, then over the rail.

The door is locked. “CheshireCat,” I hiss.

No response.

I bang on the door. “This door,” I say.

Still no response.

“CheshireCat, can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Bring the robot.” I take out my phone and stare at it. Then I pull off my right glove and dial Rachel, even though it’s 3:00 a.m. and she is definitely asleep.

She picks up on the third ring. “What’s wrong?” she asks, sounding a lot less sleepy than she should.

“Can you please go online, right now, and ask CheshireCat if they can bring the new robot to open the balcony door in my apartment?”

Somewhere far away, I can hear a siren, and I have a really bad feeling someone saw me climbing and thinks I’m breaking in.

“Also, tell them to hurry.”

“Okay,” Rachel says, and I hear the click of keys; she’s typing. “Okay, they say they’ll do that right now, and also they think something might be wrong with your phone.”

I hear a clunk from inside; I think CheshireCat overshot with the robot and ran it straight into the sliding glass door to the balcony. Then, to my immense relief, I hear the click of the lock sliding back. I open the door, and the warm air surges out around me. I slam it shut inside.

“Did it work?” Rachel asks me anxiously.

“It worked, it worked. I’m inside,” I say. Now that I’m inside, I actually start shaking harder. My teeth rattle. CheshireCat trots the robot off to the kitchen, and I hear water running. I think they’re putting on the kettle.

“What’s going on?” Rachel asks.

“Hang on,” I say. “I’m going to call you back on a different phone.”

I power down my