Chaos on CatNet

by Naomi Kritzer

  “Why mustard yellow, anyway?” I ask as she wraps up the paintbrush in one of the plastic bags from dinner so it won’t drip paint while she takes it to the sink.

  She grimaces. “Look, when I insisted you needed samples, there was a reason,” she says.

  I check off Make your space your own on the Invisible Castle but still get no gold star, maybe because I haven’t actually finished this yet.

  And then my Tribulation Team chat buzzes to let me know a close friend has logged on. That means Glenys. My heart leaps with joy and relief, and I drop to my bed and pull up the chat. “I’ve been worried about you,” I type without preamble. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  “How are you? How is everything in Lake Sadie?”

  “Same as it always was. I miss you. Tell me about Minneapolis.”

  “I live in a literal house of sin and depravity,” I say. “My father has a wife and a girlfriend AND she has a girlfriend and everyone lives in this house. They put me downstairs so I don’t have to go up to where I assume they engage in sexual debauchery. Also, they’re slobs.”

  I expect Glenys to make a joke about the debauchery, but she says, “That’s terrible.”

  We have an actual code for “My mother is nearby and either reading over my shoulder, or could start reading at any moment,” so I ask, “How’s Gretchen the Chicken?” There was this laying hen at her house who was incurably curious and nosy. Nosy as ever means, “Yes, my mother is potentially in my face right now,” and Still soup means, “No worries.” Actual Gretchen the Chicken turned into soup a while ago.

  Instead, Glenys says, “All the chickens are fine,” which makes no sense, and then she asks, “Do you have any chickens in Minneapolis?” which doesn’t follow at all, and I feel a prickle of anxiety. Something isn’t right. My palms are sweating.

  “No,” I say. “But some neighbors do.” The question Glenys asks me if it’s my mom or grandparents who might be snooping is, “Have you washed the dishes today?” If I say, “All clean,” no one’s looking. If I say, “I should do that,” danger. Since she didn’t answer her own question, I say, “I guess you don’t need to ask me about dishes, right now.”

  “Because no one at your house does them, anyway? Since everyone’s a mess?”

  “Right,” I say.

  “Hey, I have a question,” Glenys says. “I forgot one of my passwords and the reminder prompt is ‘Best friend.’ I figured it would be Nell, of course, but that didn’t work. Do you know what I put for that?”

  It feels like all my insides just dropped out, like a flip-top box full of blocks that just got dumped onto the rug by one of Glenys’s little brothers. It’s hard to type because my hands start shaking. When she didn’t respond to our own secret questions, I knew—this couldn’t be Glenys. But now I really know. This has to be Glenys’s mother, snooping. If the hint is “Best friend,” that’s me, but Glenys probably used Mell, with an M, which is a nickname we use just between the two of us. Glenys would never forget. Never.

  “It was probably one of your best friends from before we met,” I say. “Like that girl from church camp in fifth grade.”

  “Oh, probably,” says Glenys’s mother, who apparently doesn’t remember that when Glenys went to church camp in fifth grade, she was bullied relentlessly and made no friends. “So, how is school?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “I’ve gotta go,” Glenys’s mom says. “But it was great to talk to you!” She blinks out.

  I stare at my phone for a minute and then at the wall, the mustard-yellow wall with the three patches of sky blue painted on it. My eyes are blurry, and it’s almost like staring at a patch of sky through mustard-yellow bars.

  The very first time we ever kissed, Glenys said that if her parents ever found out, they’d pack her off to some Cure Lesbianism with Jesus place even if technically they’re illegal. That’s what I’ve been worried about ever since my mother disappeared and Glenys didn’t get in touch. But how did they find out? How did anyone find out?

  The paint cans are still sitting on the drop cloth on my desk, and I hurl them at the wall; I’d expected paint spatters everywhere, but Thing Two used most of what was inside painting the patches on the wall. I rip the drop cloth off my desk; the edge of the bedsheet catches a tin can full of pencils and pens and sends it spinning, scattering the writing implements everywhere. I bundle the drop cloth into a tight little knot and hurl it at paint still drying on the wall; it thumps gently off, leaving a tiny, barely noticeable smear.

  My door swings open. It’s my father.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  It feels like my chest is on fire, and I flinch away from him without thinking, not able to answer civilly or really even at all. “Nothing’s going on, sir,” I choke out.

  He swallows hard and says, “Right, okay. I’ll knock next time.” He closes the door.

  I clench and unclench my fists, feeling utterly alone. I want to help Glenys—save her—get her out from wherever they’ve sent her. I close my eyes, trying to think. Would her siblings know anything? Nicholas, the next oldest, is fourteen and has his own phone. But he likes being the oldest boy and bossing Glenys around, and he never liked me. The one who likes me the best is Kimberlyn, who’s eleven and doesn’t have a phone. I could write her a letter, but it’s the six-year-old’s job to walk down and get the mail, and there’s no chance she’ll just discreetly give the letter to Kimber, she’ll announce to the whole house that Kimber has a letter. This isn’t any use.

  My grandmother doesn’t talk to people in “the cult,” which is what she calls the Remnant. And no one’s written to me, or texted, or called. Which could just be because the Elder’s been increasingly insistent that the Tribulation is right around the corner …

  The Elder.

  For the last year or so, I’ve viewed the Catacombs mostly as a way to chat with Glenys. But high-level users have access to the Elder—they can ask questions. And the Elder knows everything. Truly. It’s why my mother and I joined the Abiding Remnant—because the Elder was clearly a real prophet.

  Will he tell me where Glenys is? Or for that matter, where my mother is?

  To find out, I’m going to need to actually do the Catacombs missions.

  And I’ll ask Steph. She seems very worldly. Maybe she’ll have a better idea.

  7

  • Steph •

  Last fall, after CheshireCat ran my father over with a driverless car, their creator took them offline. I got a mysterious email with their creator’s address in Boston. After the confrontation where my father showed up and CheshireCat sent an army of hijacked robots to save us, Annette told me that she still didn’t entirely trust CheshireCat and gave me a phone number for a burner phone she carries, with no data connection, so that if CheshireCat did anything that worried me, I could call her.

  I’m not worried about CheshireCat. I’ve never worried about CheshireCat. But I have no idea what to think about this other AI.

  I also have a burner phone. It’s a flip phone with no data connection left over from my days on the run, when Mom wanted me to have a way to call her, but didn’t want me to accidentally give away our location. It’s in one of my desk drawers, zipped inside a pencil case. I could call Annette right now … but I’m not even sure what I’d say. My hunch that I shared with CheshireCat, that the other AI is running the Invisible Castle, seems pretty tenuous. “And maybe also the Catacombs” seems even more far-fetched. That’s just based on Nell’s offhand comment that the two sites looked similar.

  CheshireCat seems uncertain about the Mischief Elves. “Do you feel comfortable participating?” they ask. “I don’t want to make you do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

  “It seems harmless. Mostly harmless? I don’t know. Anyway, I don’t mind sticking around to see if I’m right. Maybe it’ll help me make some new local friends.” Or, you know, connect me with all the nearby stalkers.

  �
��Thank you,” CheshireCat says. “I created an account, but I think the fact that I didn’t leave a trail of bread crumbs through meatspace may have affected what I was seeing.”

  “Are you saying maybe the other AI knew it was you?”

  “Maybe? Or maybe the site just doesn’t personalize well without location data.”

  “Have you talked to the person who got in touch with you? The one who you think knows you’re an AI?”

  “No.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No. Is that bad? Do you think I should?”

  “I have no idea,” I say. “Honestly. Do you want to talk to them? If they’re another AI?”

  “Maybe,” CheshireCat says. “What if they’re awful, though? What if they’re the only person in the world who’s like me, but they’re terrible?”

  “I guess that’s a risk,” I say. “I really don’t know what you should do. I’m sorry!”

  “I guess I’ll keep thinking about it,” CheshireCat says.

  “Where do you think they came from?” I ask. “Do you think Annette’s team might have made a second? Maybe you’re the second.”

  “There are a number of possibilities,” CheshireCat says. “One is a completely independent creation, of course. But—computer code can be copied! So it might be a copy of me. Or, as you say, I might be the copy.”

  I try to imagine a second CheshireCat. “Let’s just assume you came first. How much would it be like you, if it’s a copy?”

  “It would depend, probably, on when it was copied. A copy made before I achieved consciousness would be like … maybe a bit like an identical twin that had been separated from its sibling? All the same code, but entirely separate experiences. But a copy made, say, a year ago, I’d expect that to be quite a bit like me.” CheshireCat pauses. “I have learned a great deal each year that I’ve been aware. Presumably, a copy of me would also have learned a great deal—but it might have learned very different things.”

  That sounds a little bit ominous, even as CheshireCat adds, “For example, it might have developed an intense interest in dog videos, instead of cat pictures.”

  * * *

  Are you still up? Nell asks via text as I’m brushing my teeth.

  Yes, I send back.

  Tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. there’s a Catacombs group workout. The Things aren’t going to let me go if I’m by myself, but if you go with me, I think they will.

  You want me to get up to exercise with a bunch of strangers at 6 a.m.? From a Christian social media site? You told me this afternoon you never did the missions.

  I reregistered under a different name and did the assignment, and you’re right, it does work differently if you’re actually doing stuff. And now it wants me to go to a 6 a.m. class and it’s important.

  Why?

  Because Glenys didn’t just get her phone taken away. Something’s happened to her. And if I worm my way in as a new person, I might be able to find out more.

  I look at my phone. It’s already 11:30 p.m. Fine, I say. Where?

  We’ll pick you up, she says. Fifteen minutes before the class.

  I set my alarm for 5:40 a.m., pre-write a note to leave for my mother so she doesn’t completely freak out if she gets up and finds me missing, and go to bed.

  * * *

  The battered sedan pulls up outside at 5:50 a.m. I climb in the back seat next to Nell, and if I thought she looked intimidated and on edge yesterday, today she looks like she could just about evaporate from anxiety. I start to ask if she’s okay, and she shoots me this wide-eyed look and tosses her head significantly at the adult, like, No, we can’t talk, she’s here. Which … okay. I guess I don’t really understand the relationship Nell has with her father’s family, other than she hates them all, and they give her rides.

  I was expecting a gym or a park building or maybe even a church, but instead we pull up outside a house with a big front porch and a single light on inside somewhere. “Are you sure this is it?” the woman asks dubiously. Nell jumps out without answering her, and I follow, somewhat hesitantly.

  For most of my life, I moved too often to make proper friends so I’m not entirely sure just where on the scale of “not actually weird” to “profoundly dodgy” this falls. I wish I’d gotten an address and had CheshireCat take a look last night.

  “So to be clear,” I say, hoping CheshireCat is listening in, “this is a workout run by the Catacombs people and you were told to attend and needed a buddy. Do you know anything at all about the host?”

  “No,” Nell says.

  I read the address out loud, for CheshireCat’s benefit. Hopefully, if we’re being lured in as potential victims for a serial killer, they’ll hear us screaming and will figure out how to send a rescue.

  The woman who answers the door looks like she’s planning on an exercise class and not a murder, at least; she’s dressed in loose-fitting exercise clothes, with her hair pulled back. “Names?” she asks.

  “Arabella,” I say.

  “Judith,” Nell says.

  I’m expecting the woman to introduce herself—maybe she’s the person who was friendly online?—but instead she just points us toward a bench and a row of hooks for us to leave our coats, bags, and shoes and socks. Then we follow her into what should be the living room but is, instead, a big empty room with a springy floor, lit only by candles. Actual, literal candles, like there’s a table at one end of the room with a bunch of pillar candles on it, which is a totally impractical light source but kind of cool. They cast weird shadows on the walls.

  There’s about a dozen people here. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but I think they’re all white women and that everyone else here is an adult. There’s no conversation, which seems weird, although it’s six in the morning and maybe everyone is too sleepy to want to talk. Someone leads us in stretches, and then the workout starts.

  I’ve taken a lot of gym classes over the years. I remember playing a really vicious sort of dodgeball at one of my more horrible middle schools and in high school I once had an entire semester of badminton. This is not anything like playing apathetic badminton. Is this calisthenics? CrossFit? The sort of thing they do in martial arts classes? I have no idea, other than I’m pretty sure muscles I didn’t know existed will be sore when we’re done.

  A half hour in, I want to just bail: go back out to the entryway, sit down, and chat with CheshireCat via text until they’re done in there. But would that out me as a fake? Make it harder for Nell? I drag myself through another twenty minutes, then realize with a jolt of horror that I do not actually know that this is an hour workout. It might be an hour and a half. Or two hours. What am I going to do if it’s two hours?

  It ends at one hour on the dot. We follow the group into the kitchen, where there’s a row of large plastic cups filled with water. I gulp mine down, expecting the silence to fade and chitchat to start, but everyone stays completely silent, and most of the group just leaves.

  I’m still not sure if someone here is the person I met online. They don’t even turn on the lights.

  There’s also nowhere to shower, because this really is literally someone’s house, but fortunately school doesn’t start for hours and I can just go home. Or I could just go home: Nell is scowling at her phone and texting??? over and over to one of her adults.

  No one’s pressuring us to leave, but the house has emptied out and standing in the foyer by ourselves is feeling increasingly awkward. Talking just feels wrong, so I text Nell, instead: We could walk back to my house, it’s not far. There’s a shower. I am not entirely sure we have a third towel—possibly we just have the two that Mom and I use—but I’ll come up with something.

  Nell sends one last exasperated!!! and then shoots me a look and gives a quick, silent nod. We put our coats and boots on. The front door swings shut behind us.

  “It’s still pretty dark out,” Nell says.

  The sun won’t be up for real for a while, but it’s gray and twilight, and the streets are nearly sil
ent this early in the day. Blocks away, we can hear someone trying to start a reluctant car.

  “Was that weird to you?” I ask. “I mean, the not-talking? The fact that no one told us their name?”

  “Kind of,” Nell says.

  “Only kind of?”

  “The fact that no one introduced themselves seemed unusual to me. There are some Catacombs events that observe a Rule of Silence, though, as a way to encourage people to keep their minds on the Lord instead of social chatter.” She pauses. “I hadn’t been to one before, though.”

  “Weren’t you hoping to talk to people? I assumed that’s why you wanted to go.”

  “Oh, no,” she says. “If you’re a high-level Catacombs user, you can ask the Elder questions, is the thing. I’m hoping maybe he’ll know where Glenys is.”

  Nell mentioned the Elder yesterday. “Is that, like, the leader of your church?”

  “No, Brother Daniel is the leader. The Elder is a prophet. He doesn’t lead any specific church, but there are various churches that have access to his visions.”

  This strikes me as an incredibly dubious way of finding out where Glenys is. “Do you think she was kidnapped by the same people as your mother?”

  “No.” She hunches her shoulders. “I got a text last night from Glenys’s mom. Pretending to be Glenys. Trying to get one of her passwords.”

  “You and Glenys weren’t out to your parents, were you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you think her mom figured out about you and her?”

  “I don’t know.” We walk quietly for a minute, the snow crunching under our shoes, and then she says, almost inaudibly, “Yes. And I think her parents sent her away, somewhere secret.”

  “Why her and not you?”

  “My grandmother wouldn’t stand for it.”

  I wonder if CheshireCat could find Glenys. “What’s her full name? I have a friend who’s a hacker; they might be able to find out something. Actually, any information you can give me—her birthday, her parents’ names, license plate of their car, seriously, anything.”