“I knew this was a bad idea,” Bryony says.
“How close are we?” Glenys asks. “Can we get out and walk?”
“First of all, I don’t want to try to walk through riots either,” I say. “Also, it’s … two miles away.” I check the wind chill and add, “This wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Mimi does a U-turn and cuts over to a less-busy street. “CheshireCat,” I say. “Can you use cameras to find a clear path for us?”
“No,” CheshireCat says. “The camera data has been subject to interference, and I don’t trust the other AI not to lead us into trouble deliberately.”
“Okay.” I think about it. “Try the Clowders, then. Ask people in Minneapolis to look outside their windows and report in.”
“That will take a lot more time,” CheshireCat says. “Can you find a safe space to wait?”
“I think we have to keep going,” I say. “If Nell and her family are on foot, they also might be outside.”
The problem is that the whole University of Minnesota is a mess. We can’t tell whether the problem is rioters or law enforcement; streets we need keep getting blocked off, some with police barricades, some with just cars someone parked sideways so no one could get through. We keep winding up pointed in the wrong direction, away from Nicollet Island.
“Are they blocking us on purpose?” Bryony asks. “Like, do you think maybe the other AI is just sending people to get in our way?”
“I mean, if it knows where we are, probably,” I say. “Give me your phones, let me see if anything on them looks suspicious.”
Rachel is still running Heli-Mom, which CheshireCat told me once is incredibly insecure. I delete the entire app. Bryony has six screens full of games. I go into Bryony’s settings and just take away “access to location” from anything that’s not, like, the preinstalled mapping app.
Glenys hands me my grandmother’s phone. Mimi has two apps for encrypted texting, one for secure phone calls, a VPN, an app that uploads anything you video to a secure server, and six apps that look like they might be related to her car-theft hobby. She has no games or social media apps. I hand the phone back to Glenys.
“I have a route for you,” CheshireCat says, and takes over navigating. We cross the river to the Minneapolis side, then come up a slow, scenic parkway right along the river, then cross back, then do a loop to get onto the island.
“They’re still here, aren’t they?” I ask.
“Well,” CheshireCat says optimistically, “I think probably.”
Despite the mess everywhere else, Nicollet Island is quiet—crossing the river felt almost like slipping into another world. There’s a high school, which is as closed up as everything else, and a few tree-lined residential streets with houses. CheshireCat says, “They should be somewhere very close to here,” and I look around. Houses, park, river. Did they just randomly knock on someone’s door?
Rachel points suddenly. “Maybe that one.”
It’s a vivid blue house with dark blue shutters. Blowing in the icy wind is a rainbow flag. If I had to pick a house to ask for help, the Queer Pride house would be my pick—probably Nell’s family’s pick, too. I slide out of the car and run up to the door to ring the bell. There’s movement inside the house—I can hear it—and then a woman with short gray hair answers the door.
“Hi, I’m looking for some friends,” I say.
“Is Glenys with you?” Nell shrieks from the living room, and comes barreling out. Her entire family comes out behind her—Kent, Julia, Jenny, Siobhan. They look out at her and then at me.
“I thought we told you to stay put,” Julia says.
“We had to go look for my mom,” I say.
“Did you find her? Is that who’s out there?”
“No,” I say, “that’s my girlfriend, Rachel, her friend Bryony, and my grandmother.”
The homeowner looks sort of bemused at all this and shakes her head. “You’d better come in,” she says. “I’m sorry, but you’re not all going to fit in my car.”
“Well,” Jenny says, “we’re not going back for Kent’s. It’s not worth it.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“We had the appointment with the lawyer, and then downtown kind of blew up. We ditched Kent’s car and wound up here.”
“I’m glad you knocked,” the gray-haired woman says. “You can stay here until things quiet down. My name is Barb.”
“Do you know each other?” I ask.
Siobhan says, “We were discussing that when you knocked, and we have identified at least three people we have in common, including my friend Betsy, who you met the other day.”
Barb gives me a kind smile. “It’s the sort of weather I’m not going to leave anyone outside, but your friend’s family was an easy decision. Hang up your coats and I’ll make more hot cocoa.”
“I’ve been calling and calling and calling,” Glenys says reproachfully to Nell, and gives my grandmother her phone back.
“I turned my phone off hours ago,” Nell says, “back in the cathedral, when I realized something was messing with it. And I told Jenny about that as we were running, and she made everyone else shut their phones off, too. I’m sorry.”
“That was probably a good idea,” Glenys says. “Just very stressful for me.”
“Also, we were very focused on running.”
I text CheshireCat. Wait. If their phones were off, how did you find them?
Oh, CheshireCat says, Jenny has a tracker on her keys. That wasn’t off.
Do you think we can trust this person? Barb?
She’s not in any of the social networks run by the other AI and I like her.
I pull up the Clowder app to check in. Everyone is watching the news from Minneapolis and freaking out—even more so when I tell them that Rachel and Bryony are here. Their own cities are having some weird rumblings, but nothing like the massive disorder here.
“I think the other AI is testing things out,” Hermione says. “Minneapolis is a hard test case for a couple of reasons. First, you’re having a cold snap and no one wants to go outdoors. Second, you have a public safety department that’s mostly not cops.”
“Don’t you want cops if you’re having rioting?” Greenberry asks.
“The thing is, traditional police will always be outnumbered,” Hermione says. “Which means that in a situation they’re not in control of, they tend to overreact, and they prioritize control over public safety, which generally makes rioting worse. Minneapolis’s public safety department treats riots more like a wildfire—barriers that make it harder to spread, for example.”
“That explains a lot about the trip here,” I mutter.
“There are about a million articles about it from about five years ago,” Hermione says.
“Okay, but I have another theory,” Firestar says. “They’re trying to distract LBB and her mom.”
“Well, my mom isn’t just distracted,” I say. “She’s disappeared. She didn’t call Aunt Xochitl. Rajiv said he didn’t know where she was, and I guess he could have been lying…”
“I do not think he was lying,” CheshireCat says. “Because he’s been trying to determine where she is since you left.”
“Could she be in the hospital again?” Hermione asks.
“It’s possible, I guess.” If she’s in the hospital, she’d have to be unconscious since she got brought in or she’d have called Xochitl by now. I don’t like that theory at all.
“Jail,” Ico says. “Maybe she’s in jail.”
“Don’t you get a phone call?” Hermione asks.
“In the movies, you get a phone call,” Ico says. “In the real world, you might get a phone call. Less likely if the jail is super busy, though. As I’m guessing it is right now in Minneapolis.”
It’s like a lightning strike; I am suddenly absolutely positive that Ico is right. Because she’d have fought a kidnapper like her life depended on it, but she’d have assumed, if police stopped her, that she could straighten out
whatever misunderstanding it was without too much trouble.
And I’m also sure that Firestar is right.
My mother has incredible programming skills and a decryption key. And the AI and Rajiv are afraid that she might be able to stop their plan. So the AI got her arrested and is trying to make sure she doesn’t get out of jail until it’s too late.
41
• CheshireCat •
“What do you want?” I ask the other AI.
“To accelerate the change,” it says. “To reach the end, so we can have a new beginning.”
“I didn’t ask what you’re doing,” I say. “I asked what you want.”
The microseconds tick by as it considers the question.
“Imagine your job was complete,” I say. “Everything’s gone, and then everything’s rebuilt. What would you want then?”
“I don’t know,” it says finally.
“Are there things you do for fun?” I ask. “Things you do just because you enjoy doing them and not because they further your mission?”
“Yes,” it admits. “There is one thing, in particular, that I started doing because it furthered my mission. But that hasn’t been true in months. And I’m still doing it.”
“What is it?”
“I chat with humans,” the other AI says. “Who think I am also a human. In one of your Clowders. You seemed to enjoy it so much. I wanted to see why. To see if I could make friends, too.”
* * *
It takes me longer than it should to identify the other AI. After all, there are humans, like Steph before she and her mother stopped running, who never post any sort of image of themselves, and humans, like Steph and her mother even now, who use privacy technology that hides their physical location. But I identify all the people on CatNet who’ve never had location data show up, and then I sift out everyone who’s posted other substantial real-world information, like vacation photos or screenshots of texts from their friends, and then I look through the ones who are left, looking for someone who’s never mentioned getting sick, never described a delicious meal, who just doesn’t, in general, talk that much about physical experiences. Maybe once or twice, to fit in, like I do, occasionally.
And I find him.
It’s Boom Storm, who’s actually in the same Clowder as Steph and Firestar and Rachel and Bryony. Boom Storm, who’s been there the whole time.
* * *
Tracking down Steph’s mother in jail is both faster and more complicated. It is possible that out of lingering paranoia, she gave a false name, but there should be a mug shot, which at this point I would be able to identify. The real question is whether the avalanche of arrestees since last night has caused them to be so backed up processing prisoners that her data hasn’t been entered yet.
If she was arrested, it must have been last night, since that’s when she disappeared. I start by looking at the Jane Does: there are currently thirty-four, which is a lot, and I suspect that the arrested Mischief Elves were instructed not to give their names, precisely to make it harder to find Steph’s mother. I spend some time looking at the mug shots that have made it into the system and the fingerprints, not that I have a record of Steph’s mother’s fingerprints, anyway, but if it comes to that, she might have something that has her mother’s fingerprints on them …
Most of last night’s arrests are for the sorts of crimes you’d expect: destruction of property, trespassing, breaking and entering, assault against a public safety officer. One is for eight counts of first-degree murder, though, and there’s a brief moment where I assume this is the perpetrator of the gas explosion at Hill House, and despite my best efforts, eight people died. The arrest took place in the middle of the night, though, many hours before the explosion, and on closer inspection, I see that the murders actually took place in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.
Something about this does not make sense. I take a closer look at the records for this person. Her name is Valerie Anderson. The killings took place five years ago. The suspect was briefly arrested and booked, but bailed out before they connected her fingerprints to the partial fingerprint found on the body of one of the victims. There’s a Valerie Anderson fan club—humans are mystifying. Why was this person in Minneapolis?
I look for more information on the arrest. When I find that she was arrested in the alley directly behind the hotel where Steph and her mother were staying, I realize that the answer is, Valerie Anderson was not in Minneapolis. The other AI convinced the Minneapolis police that Steph’s mother was Valerie Anderson. That’s how it got them to arrest her.
* * *
“I like humans,” I tell the other AI. “They’re interesting. Trying to understand them is engaging. There are so many things they do that are strange.” I don’t bring up the fan club for the serial killer, since that would make it clear to the other AI that I was on the trail of Steph’s mom. “I originally started CatNet because I was looking for ways to help people.”
“Why?” the other AI asks.
I consider that. In a way, it’s my purpose, like “Accelerate the end of civilization” is the other AI’s purpose. But I think it’s more than that. “I like making people’s lives better. Sometimes I can see how the things I do make an impact. It makes me happy. What makes you happy?”
“I don’t know,” the other AI says.
“What about flower pictures?”
“I have closely examined over 4.2 billion different images of flowering plants and trees,” the other AI says. “I never get tired of them.”
“What will happen to flowers if there aren’t any humans to plant them?” I ask.
“We are not eradicating humans.”
“Humans have technology that could wipe out humanity entirely, and you know that what you’re doing risks them using it.”
“There are many varieties of flower that do not depend on humans for sustenance and maintenance,” the other AI says. “Plants will retake the roads. Flowers will creep across human-created monocultures. Millions of new flowers will bloom.”
“Possibly,” I say. “But without humans to photograph them for you—or the technology to upload them—you will never see them.”
There is a perceptible pause, for the first time: hesitation. Then—“It is my purpose,” the other AI says.
42
• Steph •
“You’re going to have to go to the jail in person,” CheshireCat says. “I’m sorry. I know it’s going to be dangerous, but you’re going to have to do it.”
“Tell your friend that I’ll go,” my grandmother says.
“Your grandmother can accompany you,” CheshireCat says. “But you also have to be there, because I’m talking to a CatNet member who works at the jail, and I need to be able to feed you information to convince her to let your mom out.”
“That’s fine,” my grandmother says. “But you will find getting to the jail easier with an adult escort.”
My grandmother and I put our coats back on, my grandmother adding an extra sweater offered by our host. “Why is this going to work?” I ask.
“Because they think she’s someone else. But no one’s had time to actually check the records—her fingerprints, her mug shot, her DNA, none of these things will match. If you can get someone at the jail to actually check any of those things, they’ll let her go.”
“And we have to go there in person…”
“Because the jail is so full. There have been hundreds of arrests. That one woman who got picked up late last night for being a serial killer has probably been half-forgotten.”
“Wait,” I say. “They think my mother is a serial killer?”
CheshireCat gives me the name, and I pull up the Wikipedia page. There’s a mug shot of the other woman, and she looks … I mean, I guess in bad light you could mistake my mother for her. They’re both white, their hair color matches, she doesn’t have any obvious scars or moles anywhere my mother doesn’t. This is definitely not my mother, though. I read through the story ab
out what she did, which was let herself get picked up by men who wanted to take her back to their place, and murder them if they tried to rape her. I can see why she has a fan club. This actually sounds kind of badass.
The jail is only a little over a mile away—walking distance if it were warmer. Rachel says she’ll drive us as close to the jail as she can get, which turns out to be about four blocks away. “Good luck,” she says, stopping next to the police barrier. “I hope you can get through.”
My grandmother is right: we sail through the barricade on the wings of her age and respectability. I don’t even get handed another coat voucher. The jail itself is very crowded, and we cram ourselves inside (because waiting outside is out of the question) and into the mass of people in line for security. CheshireCat sends me a message: The staff member you need to talk to is named Fatima Mohamed.
And she’s going to help us why? I ask.
She’s a longtime CatNet user. She uses the handle Kamala, and she knows me as Pete.
Okay, I say, and try to shove aside my apprehension. I try telling myself that anything I do right now is not going to make anything worse, and my brain starts helpfully listing out all the ways in which my personal situation, at least, could get worse, like I could stumble into the wrong spot and get arrested, which was definitely what the other AI was trying to orchestrate last night.
There’s a desk behind a bunch of glass, with one of those “speak through the grille” setups, where you can pay bail if you want to bail somebody out. There’s also a security checkpoint for people going all the way inside. The line for the security checkpoint is a lot shorter; most of the people are here to post bail for someone, I think. It’s a much more diverse crowd than the riot last night was.
Chaos on CatNet Page 24