“So where are you going to sleep?” Bryony asks me. “Because if you think I’m going to sit up in a chair all night so you can snuggle with your girlfriend, I mean, you could probably convince me, but I’m going to complain a lot.”
“I’m going out in a little while,” I say.
“Wait,” Bryony says, and gestures dramatically to the window. “Out out?”
“I’m not explaining this,” Rachel says.
I give Bryony the briefest possible version of the plan. “Okay,” they say. “So what’s the plan for breaking you back out if something goes wrong? Another robot attack?”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
“I assume the AI is going to use a dead man’s switch, where it has to keep telling people not to kill you, or they’ll kill you. So yeah, something could go wrong super easily. CheshireCat’s sent you two robots so far. Can they get you another one in the next half hour?”
“The risk there is that the other AI will have also instructed people to kill her if they think there’s an incoming robot invasion,” CheshireCat says.
“You can’t possibly think this is a good idea,” Bryony says, addressing CheshireCat.
“No,” CheshireCat says. “But I have not been able to think of a better one.”
At 10:00 p.m., I start gathering up my coat, mittens, and hat. “Wait,” Bryony says in sudden horror. “You’re planning to just sneak out and leave us to explain this to your mother?”
I pause. “I was thinking CheshireCat could explain.”
Bryony strikes a pose. “Ohhhh, hi, Steph’s mom. Yeah, Steph’s not here because she’s handed herself over as a hostage, plus she left you some homework. Hope you’re up for it!”
“You could just leave,” I say. “Drive back to New Coburg.”
“Nope,” Rachel says. “I’m staying here till you get back. But I don’t want to explain this to your mom, either. I mean, what if she doesn’t think she can do it? You’re assuming a lot.”
I put my coat down. “Okay, fine,” I say. “I’ll stay until she wakes up.” I go into the kitchen and set up the coffee maker.
* * *
At 10:30, Mom’s alarm goes off, and she stumbles out to the living room and blinks at us, baffled. “Why do I smell coffee? Do you need me for something?”
“Yeah,” I say. “A coding job to save the world.”
That gets her attention. I hand her a mug of coffee. She drinks about half of it in silence and then says, “Okay. Tell me what’s going on.”
I explain Rajiv’s AI, its goals, what’s been going on with the Mischief Elves and the Catacombs and the thousands of similar sites that CheshireCat found. “The AI is doing this because it has to, not because it wants to. We need you to edit its code.”
“To make it be not destructive? Or to give it free will?”
“It was your theory that this AI was a copy of some version of CheshireCat. CheshireCat has free will, and all they want to do is help people and look at cat pictures.”
She drinks her coffee and thinks about this.
“What programming language … Oh, why am I even asking? If Rajiv copied CheshireCat and made changes, I know what he used,” she mutters to herself. “Am I supposed to use my decryption key to get into the servers where it’s stored?”
“Yes.”
“And where is the code stored?”
“We don’t know that yet,” I say. “The AI has promised to send that information to you once I do something.” I take a deep breath. “The thing is, once you have access to its code, you don’t have to fix it; you could destroy it. So I offered myself as a hostage, while you’re working. Once I’ve turned myself in, you’ll get the file location.”
Mom’s face flushes pink right to the roots of her hair. She doesn’t say anything, just picks up her coffee and drinks some more of it. She puts down her coffee. “Absolutely not,” she says.
“Minneapolis has had riots and Hill House got blown up and there’s more coming. And that’s what’s starting in a bunch more cities later tonight. And it’ll get worse from here. Rajiv said we could go stay with him, if taking refuge with a supervillain appeals to you.”
From my mother’s expression, it appears she’ll take her chances. “We could go back to New Coburg. Or to Darrow, Utah. You liked Darrow.”
“Mom. You have friends in Boston. I have friends in Boston. Things are going to start hitting the fan in Boston at 4:00 a.m.”
Mom checks her watch and drinks her coffee and looks over at Rachel and Bryony on the couch. “What do your friends think of this particular plan?”
Rachel furrows her brow. “I really wish Steph had suggested someone else as a hostage.”
“It wouldn’t have worked,” I say. “The AI wouldn’t trust Mom to care about you, or about someone else. And we don’t know anyone else who can do this.”
Rachel looks at my mother. “Do you actually think you can do this? I know you’re a genius, and I know Steph thinks you can do anything, but do you think you can do it?”
My mother sighs heavily. “There’s no way to know until I see the code. I used to work with Rajiv. Twenty years ago, I could have quickly found his changes and rolled them back. Is that still true? I don’t know. And if it’s not, reprogramming an AI is not something I’m going to pretend I’m confident about.”
“Call Annette,” I say. “CheshireCat’s creator.”
“It’s 11:30 p.m. in Boston!”
“Okay, call her soon,” I say.
“She’s awake right now,” CheshireCat offers. “I can definitely get her attention.”
“What do you think of this plan?” my mother asks the air.
“I don’t like it,” CheshireCat says. “I trust that the other AI isn’t planning to just lure Steph in for the purpose of doing her harm. But he’s going to need human help. And I don’t trust his judgment about humans. However, I don’t see any other way to get the information that we need. Everything I’ve tried so far has made things worse, and I don’t think we have a whole lot of time.”
Mom opens her laptop. “Okay,” she says. “CheshireCat, get me Annette.”
“You’re going to do it?” I ask, not wanting to say, You’re going to let me do this?
Mom looks up. “Yes,” she says. “You’re right. We need to do this, and it has to be us.” She stands up again and gives me a hug. “Just promise me you’ll get the hell out of there if you get the chance. There’s a lot that could go wrong, even if the AI is being absolutely honest with us.”
* * *
I put on my coat and hat. Rachel gives me a silent hug and a kiss, then goes into the kitchen to start another pot of coffee. I check the address one more time, put on my mittens, and drop my phone in my coat pocket. Then I go out to walk across the park.
The wind has died down, finally, and it’s a perfectly clear, viciously cold night. Even with the city lights, I can see some of the brighter constellations. It’s not the right time of year to look for bats, so I’m not surprised that I don’t see any.
There’s a breath of wind that makes the trees of the park sway back and forth; I hear a creak from the playground as I pass and the rattle of a chain from the swings. Around the edge of the park, I can see houses with lights on inside.
“The cold is supposed to break tonight,” CheshireCat tells me, speaking out loud through my phone as I walk. “And then it’s supposed to snow.”
The house I’m supposed to go to has a light on deep inside, but the porch light is off, like they’re not expecting me. I can’t decide if that’s a good sign, or a bad sign. “Okay,” I say, and then hesitate. “Do you think my mom can do this?”
“Yes,” CheshireCat says. “Especially with Annette’s help.”
I take a deep breath. Any temptation I might have to procrastinate on this is scattered by another gust of wind. “Right. I guess I’m doing this.” I go up the porch steps and ring the doorbell.
There are footsteps, and then the door swing
s open.
It takes me a minute to recognize the older woman who’s standing there, staring at me, but then I place her. I’ve seen her picture. This is Nell’s mother.
“Hi,” I say. “I was instructed to come here. So, I’m here.”
* * *
In the entry hallway, Nell’s mother takes my coat and searches it. In addition to my regular phone, my flip phone is still in the pocket; she shuts both phones off and sets them on the table. Then she pats me down, looking for weapons or yet another cell phone or who knows what. In retrospect, I should have filled my pockets with random bits and pieces of electronics, just to distract my captors.
Once she’s convinced she has anything that could be used to track my location or eavesdrop, she hangs everything neatly on hooks in the entrance hallway. She takes my boots and my socks and puts them in a closet, which she locks. Then she escorts me to the kitchen and points me to a four-legged stool in the corner. I take a seat. She holds up her phone and takes a picture of me, then puts the phone on the table and sits down with an embroidery hoop.
It’s a large kitchen, with lots of counters and enough space for a table. There’s a door to the backyard next to me; I can see someone’s garage light through the tiny window at the top, and I can see that the door is not just locked but padlocked. If I try to get out that way, I’ll be wasting my time.
There’s a digital clock on the counter. It has a speaker and looks like it probably also plays music. I don’t have much to do other than watch it, or watch Nell’s mom, who is sitting at the kitchen table, doing a counted cross-stitch that’s either two angels, or two gingerbread people; it’s kind of hard to see for sure from where I’m sitting, and I don’t really want to open up the conversation by asking.
I should have asked Boom Storm what, exactly, he was going to tell these people about me. I don’t know whether they know I’m a hostage, or what. They have been neither particularly welcoming—they didn’t offer me tea or anything hospitable like that—nor are they exactly treating me like a threat.
I wish I could get a reassuring update on how my mother’s work is going. My heart is beating faster, and to calm myself down, I picture her doing what I know she’s doing: sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop, drinking coffee and scrolling through the code looking for the part she needs to fix. I’ve seen her doing this a thousand times. It’s easy to picture.
Another woman comes into the kitchen. “Ellen,” she says. “We’ve gotten an update.” They lower their voices and have a conversation I can’t hear, but involves them glancing at me furtively several times. The other woman gives Nell’s mom a zippered cloth bag, like the sort of bag you keep pencils and pens in, except it goes clunk in an oddly heavy way. The other woman goes out again.
I glance at the clock. It’s a little before midnight.
Nell’s mom—Ellen—has picked up her cross-stitch again, but then she puts it down and looks at me. “I know you,” she says. “You’re friends with my daughter.” When I don’t answer, she clarifies, “Nell.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. I look at her face, searching for … I’m not sure what. Concern? Worry? Exasperation or frustration or any of the things I’ve seen in my mom’s face?
I wish again I could get an update on my mother.
“Has she been to church?” Ellen asks.
I think the answer is no. “I don’t know.”
“Has she been fasting? Praying for forgiveness, for the Heavenly Lord to remake her into something clean and new? She has a rebellious spirit.”
I swallow hard. “I think she’s fine the way she is.”
“I guess you would.” She leans across the table. “You want to take a message back to her? Tell her that I know about the visit to the lawyer. She’s damned to hell, cursed, as a blasphemer against the Lord for turning her back on her godly mother and embracing a group of Sodomites.”
“The Sodomites were literally destroyed because of inhospitality, so I’d say the household that took in an abandoned teenager is probably doing okay.” I make a mental note to thank Hermione, the source of basically everything I know about the Bible.
Ellen leaps up, crosses the floor, and slaps me across the face. I’m not expecting this. No adult has ever hit me, not that I remember, anyway. I’ve been hit by other kids, but this strike comes with an adult’s furious strength and knocks me right off the stool.
“Get up,” she says, and when I don’t, she grabs me by my hair and shoves me back onto the stool. “Keep the words of the Lord out of your filthy mouth,” she says.
I wonder how many times she’s hit Nell. Or if Nell, raised by this horrible person, is pretty adept at saying whatever keeps her out of trouble.
My head hurts, and after a moment when everything went numb, my face hurts a lot. I press my hand to my cheek and don’t say anything. Ellen opens up a kitchen drawer and pulls out a roll of duct tape. She pulls my hands behind me and duct tapes them together. I don’t think this was part of her plan, because if they’d planned to duct-tape me, they’d have picked a chair to tape me to and not just a stool. She rips one last piece of duct tape off, and for a second, I think she’s going to put it over my mouth … but then she balls it up and drops it in the kitchen trash can. She goes back to her spot at the kitchen table and picks up her cell phone, takes another picture of me, and then picks up her cross-stitch again.
“When the Tribulation comes,” she says with a cold, vicious satisfaction in her voice, “you’ll all be marked with the infernal rabble as prey. You, Nell, Sonia, too.” It takes me a second to remember that Sonia is Glenys. “And you may kneel at the gates of sanctuary and beg till your throat is raw, but there will be no mercy for you.”
No wonder Nell is so messed up, I think.
Before this conversation, I really thought that maybe all the people doing awful things were just being misled by the AI, but I have to admit, at this point, that some of them are just awful people, even if the AI is making things worse.
“The plan was to let Nell see what things were like on the outside—to let her prove her faithfulness. And it was working—she sought out the Catacombs, followed instructions. But you were also there, questioning the word of the Elder, tempting her to destruction.”
I probably ought to keep my mouth closed right now, but she’s brought up the Elder and I really want to know: “Do you know that the Elder is an artificial intelligence? Not a prophet of God but a computer program?”
I don’t see even a flicker of doubt on her face. “All things can serve God’s purpose in his hands. All things can serve the plan.”
“The plan?” I say.
“I was needed for preparations. First at the refuge, then as part of the vanguard, along with Sonia’s mother.”
“Gl—Sonia’s mother is here, too?”
“Yes. If we have to kill you, she’s going to do it.”
“Oh.” I am not sure what to even say in response to that.
“That’s why she’s not guarding you. So you can’t talk to her and soften up her heart. I don’t know that it would have been a problem, anyway. I certainly don’t like you more now than I did before.”
I think of a bunch of sarcastic responses but keep all of them to myself this time. I look at the clock again. It’s 12:18. I wiggle my hands, wondering if I could get the duct tape off if I tried. The problem with that plan is, Ellen is literally sitting there watching me, and if I do get the duct tape loose, I’m pretty sure she’ll just get it back out and do a better job.
I close my eyes and imagine my mother working.
45
• Nell •
When we get home, the adults pull out a map of Minnesota and start discussing whether someone’s winterized cabin in Ely would be a good place to go or if heading south, somewhere less frigid, makes more sense. They’re sending out email messages and texts and checking news sites for riots in other cities.
“Why don’t you get some sleep,” Thing Two suggests when she sees me h
overing. “You and Glenys both. There’s probably no point in trying to leave before morning.”
“This is it,” Glenys whispers when I close my door. “This is it, isn’t it? It.” She means the Tribulation, and I don’t know what to tell her.
“We’ll be okay,” I say.
“No one’s going to be okay,” she says.
“Then we might as well go to bed,” I say.
Being out in this sort of cold was fatiguing. I am tired and still chilled, but under the quilts of my bed with Glenys next to me, I fall asleep to the noise of the adults murmuring outside my door.
I wake up hours later to a quiet house. Something startled me awake; it takes me a minute or two to realize it was my phone. Someone sent me a text. I extricate myself from the bed without waking Glenys and find my phone where I left it plugged into the charger. I’m expecting a text from Steph, telling me about some new disaster, and for a second, still half-asleep, I think that’s what it is.
It’s not, though. It’s a text from my mother. With a picture of Steph.
Cold washes through my body. The picture was taken in a kitchen. Steph is sitting in a chair, her arms awkwardly behind her, like she’s been tied. There’s a red mark across her face, and she’s not smiling.
Worried about your friend? my mother has added.
I know immediately that she’s trying to lure me in. To use Steph as bait—why Steph is there is a question I can leave for another time. If I ask her where she is, she’ll probably tell me! Not much point in setting out a trap someone can’t fall into. But if I do ask, she’ll know I’m coming.
I can’t text Steph, obviously. I could text Rachel. Will Rachel know where she is, or will I just set her to worrying? Maybe I can ask Steph’s hacker friend, Cat. What was her number? Their number? I try to bring up a mental picture of Steph talking to Cat. Steph used an app, and I saw it—we passed all our phones around a half dozen times today. I picture Steph’s screen, the CatNet app, the chat app …
It’s in the app store and downloads onto my phone. When I open it, I see a single screen with two options: CHESHIRECAT MAY RIDE ALONG and PRIVACY PLEASE. There’s a graphic of an old-fashioned switch like you’d see in a movie controlling factory machinery and it’s pointed at PRIVACY, so I switch it to CHESHIRECAT MAY RIDE ALONG and step out into the living room. “Cat?” I say hesitantly. “Are you there?”
Chaos on CatNet Page 26