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

and check the time. “No,” I say. “We’ve been snacking on the road and I’m not hungry. We’re all here, right? Everyone who’s coming? Let’s go.”

We make our way up a residential street that’s so narrow I’m surprised cars can even fit. The sidewalks here are made out of red brick. The house, when we reach it, is a blue house with a small front porch and a bay window. We stop, and everyone looks at me.

I’m going to have to knock. My mouth goes dry, but we’ve come all this way, and I said they had to wait for me, and I’m here with my friends and they have my back as literally as possible. They follow me up the front steps, and watch as I ring the bell. I hear a ding … dong from somewhere deep in the house. We wait. Someone’s coming; fingers part the curtain that hangs over the window in the door, and someone peers out at us.

For a minute, I am not sure if they’re going to open the door, and I wonder what we even look like. Five teenagers. Do we look like Harvard students? MIT students? Do we look like we’re going to ask for money, or directions, or like we’re going to try to tell her about the Bible or the Book of Mormon? I have just started wondering what we’re going to do if this person doesn’t open the door when I hear the lock turn.

A woman swings open the door. She’s younger than I’d expected. I mean, obviously older than us, but younger than my mom.

“Yes?” she says, and waits.

Everyone looks at me. I step forward.

“Hi,” I say. “I’m here to talk to you about CheshireCat, the sentient AI, who is our friend and who has gone missing.”

Her lips part, and she stands for a moment, her eyes going from me to the rest of the group. “Really,” she says. “How did you … you know what? Come in. Let’s not talk on the porch.”

Her name is Annette; she introduces herself as we all troop in, shedding sweaters and jackets and purses and backpacks in her little front hallway. Her living room is full of bookcases with a mix of books and little figurines from an anime show that both Firestar and Hermione get kind of excited about. Annette is a geek.

“Can I offer you tea? Hot chocolate? Hot cider?” Annette asks. When none of us reply, she adds gently, “I’m just trying to be a good hostess. I haven’t harmed your friend, and I’m not going to harm any of you. But if you’re not comfortable eating or drinking my food, there are some unopened cans of soda in my fridge, and I can offer you those.”

We all end up accepting cups of tea, but we follow her into the kitchen, partly because it feels weird to sit in her living room without her, partly because we don’t exactly trust her. It’s a small kitchen and pretty crowded with all of us there.

Annette has some sort of robot in the corner, but it’s shut off. “A friend of mine built that,” she says when she sees me looking at it. “It cleans stuff, but it’s not very good at it.” Her stove is a bright red ceramic stove, gas, and she brews loose-leaf tea in a large teapot. She hands out mugs from her cabinet, offers sugar cubes, and then we trail after her back into her living room, holding our mugs of tea.

“Now,” she says, holding her own cup against her knees. “Tell me about your friend.”

My mouth goes dry. I should have prepared for this part, but I wasn’t sure who I’d be talking to or what they’d ask or say. Tell me about your friend seems like it ought to be easy, although I’m not entirely sure to start. “CheshireCat created CatNet, which is where we all met,” I say, and then I pause to gather myself. Marvin and Hermione jump in and start talking, and Annette lets them go, listening as they talk about the site. The Clowders, the cat pictures, our friendships.

“Did you take CheshireCat away because of what they did to stop my father?” I ask when there’s a pause.

“Was your father the victim of the car accident?” Annette asks.

“He wasn’t a victim of anything. He was trying to kidnap me,” I say.

“You should know that her father is terrible,” Hermione says.

“A genuinely dangerous person,” Firestar adds.

Annette leans back, listening but looking skeptical. I think about taking out the fake news article my mother had laminated—will that convince her, or will she look it up in a database and get even more dubious when it’s not there? “He pulled a gun on me,” I say, which seems to sell her a bit more on the idea that he’s not the good guy here. And then I try, “Do you know a programmer named Xochitl Mariana? She’s friends with my mother.”

It’s a little bit of a shot in the dark. Boston is big. There are lots of tech people. But she clearly recognizes the name; I watch her expression change slightly and feel a mix of hope and apprehension. Annette puts down her tea, leans forward, and asks, “Who exactly are your parents?”

“My father’s name is Michael Quinn, and my mother’s name was Laura Packet, I guess, before she changed it.” I lean forward myself and press my advantage. “Where’s CheshireCat? What did you do with them?”

She taps a laptop distractedly. “In here,” she says. “All the files are intact. Just cut off from the internet, because I was really not prepared to deal with my AI attempting murder. Where is your mother, right now? For that matter”—she sweeps her eyes around the room—“what are the rest of you even doing here?”

“My mother’s in the hospital,” I say.

“I talked to my mother this morning,” Rachel assures her.

“I live in Winthrop,” Firestar says.

“My mother thinks I’m visiting colleges,” Hermione says. “And I am.