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

turn the volume down on my phone. “Okay, okay, I’ve fixed it. Okay. Where’s Steph? Do you know where Steph is?”

“I do know where Steph is. Why are you asking?”

“Because she’s in danger, and she needs my help.”

“She accepted danger willingly for the greater good,” Cat says, and goes into an explanation about hostages and programmers and a rogue AI.

I interrupt to say, “The person guarding her is my mother.”

There’s a pause. “Your mother seems like a singularly bad choice,” Cat says.

“Yes. Were you expecting that they will let Steph go at some point? Because…” I swallow hard. “Please just tell me where she is.”

Cat reels off an address, and I write it down and look it up in the maps. It’s several blocks beyond Steph’s house, and it is sometime after 1:00 a.m. and still incredibly frigid outside. I’m going to need a whole lot of clothing and maybe a flashlight. I slip back into my bedroom. Glenys is still sleeping. I get back into clothes as quickly as I can, including long underwear and wool socks, and then I investigate what looks like go bags packed by the door. There’s a flashlight on top of the first one I open, and I put it in the pocket of my coat. In my school backpack, I throw the things I brought along to help rescue Glenys, then leave a note for Glenys and slip out the front door. If anyone hears me going, they don’t stop me.

The wind has died down, so that’s one mercy.

And it’s less dark than I’d expected, because there are streetlights all over. That’s another mercy, although I’d have been happier doing a one-in-the-morning walk in a peaceful little small town instead of a city. There are people out and about at all hours here, but none of them bothers me or really pays any attention to me at all. Unless you count the dog on a walk, which sniffs me as his owner says, “Leave the lady alone, Tristan.”

My phone buzzes with a text from a number I don’t recognize. This is Cat. Would you like some robot allies?

Like the one you sent along to help rescue Glenys?

Different model, Cat says.

Yes, please, I say.

I’ll have them head to the house.

I wonder about the word them. Is Cat using the gender-neutral singular they, or does Cat mean multiple robots—and if the second one, how many robots?

I should try to plan, but it’s hard to plan properly without knowing anything about the terrain. I know Steph is in the kitchen. She’s probably restrained. I have scissors and a utility knife and a pair of bolt cutters, but I remember how hard it was to get through a single cheap padlock. I worry about that as I walk, even though the picture was taken in an ordinary-looking kitchen.

The house is on the far side of a bowl-shaped park. I trudge across the snowy expanse and up a hill. The porch light is on like they’re expecting another visitor. I don’t knock. I go around to the side of the house and scramble up onto the gas meter to peer in through a window.

There’s a buzzing overhead, and I look up to see a delivery drone swooping around in the dark. No, two delivery drones. They perch like birds along the edge of the roof. Another one comes. Then another. The robots? I take out my phone. “Are you sending me delivery drones?” I ask. “What good are those going to do?”

“They can provide a distraction. I’m looking for other options, but I’m limited by what’s nearby.”

Another drone buzzes to the roof. “Are any of the drones carrying anything useful?” Briefly, I have visions of a drone-delivered parcel with military-grade weaponry in it, or even a good set of night-vision binoculars, but of course it’s things like camping equipment and children’s toys.

I go around to the backyard. I think the kitchen is probably on this side of the house; the lights are all on, and I can see the sort of windows you’ll see over a sink, higher up so you don’t splash them with water when you’re washing dishes. Unfortunately, all the windows have shades, and all the shades are down. There’s a back door, but there aren’t any footprints in the snow, and I think probably it’s not used much, which means probably it’s locked, and people in the Remnant tend to believe in three simultaneous locks just to be sure.

I try the other side of the house but can see even less from over here.

So. Now what?

If it were me in there and Steph out here, she’d maybe climb to get inside. I look up at the second story dubiously. Everything’s shut up tightly. There’s a third story, and then a roof.

Are there any basement windows?

On this side, the basement has a window well. I take the plastic cover off the window well and take a look at the window. It’s big enough to climb through, but shut tightly like everything else and locked. I could break the glass, but they’d hear. That seems like a bad plan unless I want to create a distraction. On the other side of the house, there’s one of those narrow windows high up on the wall you sometimes see in basement laundry rooms. I poke at it. This one’s a lot looser in the frame.

I think about an argument I heard at some point about these windows in my grandparents’ house. For a basement to be a legal place for an apartment, you need one of the big windows with a window well so that someone could maybe escape that way in a fire. But if you’re small, you can fit through the other kind. If it opens.

I’m small enough that I’m pretty sure I’d fit, but is it loose enough that I can get it open, that’s the real question. Without anyone hearing.

I pull my phone out. “CheshireCat, are any of the drones carrying tools? Like