Catfishing on CatNet

by Naomi Kritzer

  “And in the meantime, CheshireCat could maybe call in a nuclear strike?”

  “Do you think there’s any danger that she will?”

  “No.”

  “Good. And the answer is no. There are multiple layers of security on the nuclear arsenal. That, at least, was never actually a risk.”

  Back in the living room, we order up a couple of rideshare cars back to Firestar’s house, where they think their parents will roll with a spontaneous slumber party as one of the less-objectionable things they might have been up to this evening. “All of you just say you’re in town visiting colleges, okay? Everyone comes to Boston to visit colleges sooner or later because we have about a hundred and seven.” Rachel decides to just leave her car overnight in the garage where she parked it, rather than picking it up and trying to drive it to Winthrop.

  My phone starts ringing, and I pick it up without really thinking about it.

  “Where are you?” my mother’s voice says.

  “I’m in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” I say.

  There’s a long pause and then a long sigh.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says. “I’m recovering. Are you okay?”

  “I’m with some of my CatNet friends,” I say. “Michael followed us here, but we attacked him with robots, and now he’s been arrested.”

  “I … see.” Her voice sounds weak. I can’t tell if it’s from the illness or a bad connection or because this was so far outside of what she’d imagined I was up to that she doesn’t even know what to say. “I guess that’s good news. I got contacted tonight by someone who wants me to come in and give a statement to the police about some of what happened in Marshfield. They want you to come in, too, although they seemed to be aware that I might not know where you are.”

  “Well, I’m in Massachusetts,” I say.

  Another long sigh. “Where are you spending the night?”

  “Firestar’s house. Firestar is a friend of mine from CatNet.”

  “Okay.” I can sort of hear her gathering her thoughts. “I have a friend in Massachusetts from my tech industry days. I’ll get in touch with her about helping you get home.”

  “Xochitl?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “I think she’s been texting me. Also someone else, but I still don’t know who that is…” I read her off the mystery texts, and I hear her go still.

  “I don’t know who sent the other texts,” she says. “But Xochitl is okay. I’ll have her call you tomorrow. Do you have my laptop?”

  “I do. I took it with me.”

  “Did you figure out the password?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep it locked,” she says. “Don’t let anyone into it. Not even Xochitl.”

  31

  Clowder

  Georgia: OH MY GOD WE ARE HOME

  My bed is my favorite thing ever ever ever

  Also my bird

  And meals that weren’t purchased at a fast-food chain or a gas station convenience store

  WHY do people like road trips? Road trips suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

  Orlando: WELCOME HOME GEORGIA

  YOU ARE PROBABLY FAILING ALL YOUR CLASSES NOW

  Georgia: Nuh-uh. College visits are excused absences.

  And we toured Harvard and MIT with LBB’s mom’s friend who went to Harvard and MIT

  Orlando: You’re not getting into Harvard or MIT.

  Georgia: I seriously have the material for the best college essay ever except I have to leave out the part about rescuing an AI.

  {LittleBrownBat is here}

  LittleBrownBat: Hi everyone.

  I thought I’d log on and say hi before I fall into bed.

  I thought I was super busted when Georgia mentioned me driving in front of Xochitl, but nope, she didn’t breathe a word to Mom when she dropped me off.

  I suppose she might bust me by email.

  Icosahedron: In my experience, if they don’t bust you right off, there’s at most twenty-four hours where they MIGHT still tattle to your parents, and after that they feel like they’ve waited too long and it would require too much explanation.

  So by tomorrow at this time you should know whether you’re busted or not busted.

  CheshireCat: Now that you know I’m not a teenager, I feel like maybe I ought to be disapproving when you violate laws. LBB, you drove a car? Without a license?

  LittleBrownBat: Technically, aren’t you five?

  CheshireCat: Depending on how you count, I could be five, seven, or eleven.

  LittleBrownBat: So you are WAY younger than us. We are under no obligation to take you seriously.

  You’re off the hook.

  Orlando: By the way everyone, thanks for being so careful with my pronouns but FYI I think I’m going back to she/her.

  Is that okay?

  LittleBrownBat: Why are you asking if it’s okay? They’re your pronouns. She/her. If you change them in your profile, it will help people remember.

  Georgia: It’s not because your dad threatened to kick you out again, is it?

  Orlando: No, he doesn’t give a shit what I do online. It’s just, I tried it and it feels weird instead of right. Maybe I’ll try “they” in a month or two and see how that feels.

  Firestar: Right on.

  LittleBrownBat: Since we’re making announcements, I have one:

  Rachel and I have decided to officially try out being girlfriends. I mean Georgia. Georgia and I have decided to officially be girlfriends.

  Orlando: OH WOW! YAY! DID YOU KISS?

  Georgia: OMG BRYONY MIND YOUR OWN BEESWAX

  LittleBrownBat: We kissed and it was awesome.

  Firestar: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

  Boom Storm: Congratulations!

  Firestar: I have been shipping you for ages, but as soon as I saw the skin drawing and those pictures from the farmhouse I have been SUPER EXTRA shipping you.

  Also! I HAVE NEWS. Which is that I convinced my parents that it would totally motivate me to excel in eleventh grade if only I could visit Macalester College. So if you Wisconsin people can drive up to St. Paul, Minnesota, which really ought to be a piece of cake compared to driving all the way to Boston, we can hang out. And maybe Orlando can come this time?

  Orlando: Awesome! MEATSPACE MEETUP.

  Icosahedron: You should all convince your parents you want to visit Stanford. Then I could meet you.

  I miss out on all the fun.

  Marvin: I WILL BE IN CALIFORNIA IN DECEMBER.

  Icosahedron: You’re going to LOS ANGELES.

  Greenberry: Aren’t Los Angeles and Silicon Valley both in California?

  Icosahedron: It’s a huge state, and they’re at opposite ends.

  Hermione: It’s five hours! There are buses! Georgia and LBB drove all the way from Wisconsin to Cambridge!

  Icosahedron: Oh, fine.

  CheshireCat: The pizza party was the best thing ever. Getting to see and hear all of you was amazing.

  Orlando: You should set up an app that we can install on our phones and let you just hang out with us whenever.

  Georgia: Like, watch us day and night? That’s a little creepy.

  CheshireCat: If you have the right sort of phone, I don’t technically need an app. Just permission.

  Firestar: Maybe don’t mention that right after people talk about how it’s creepy?

  LittleBrownBat: No, it’s cool. Set up an app that’s just permission. We turn it on, and you have permission. We turn it off, it means we want privacy. Seems like it ought to be super easy.

  CheshireCat: Okay! This is now available for download.

  Marvin: That took less than thirty seconds.

  CheshireCat: I excel at multitasking. Also, creating this was very easy.

  Orlando: I am totally taking you to all my classes because that way, when I ask you what the hell my teacher meant about the Spanish-American War, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

  Firestar: DEAR AI FRIEND I WILL TAKE Y
OU WITH ME EVERYWHERE.

  32

  Steph

  My mother is still in the hospital when I get home. The 24-7 security has been relaxed since my father’s in jail in Boston, but she’s going to need another week of IV antibiotics before she can be released.

  But she’s also awake, fully conscious, and I can visit. Xochitl, Rachel, and I get back to Wisconsin from Boston at almost midnight, but first thing the next morning, Rachel’s mother drops me at the hospital. She’s taking Xochitl to rent a car.

  Mom is propped up in her bed; her hair is greasy, and she’s hooked up to an IV and some other stuff, but she looks a lot better than the last time I saw her. “Steph,” she says, and I lean down to give her a hug. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Why didn’t you text me back?” I ask.

  “I don’t have my phone! I asked for it as soon as I was awake and knew what was going on, but it wasn’t with my stuff. Also, when I first woke up, they almost transferred me to a mental ward—the last time I woke up in pain with no idea where I was, it was because I’d been kidnapped, and so when I woke up here I was not exactly a model patient. They kept sedating me because they thought it was a reaction to the anesthetics. But even once I woke up properly, they didn’t have my phone. It probably fell out of my pocket when they were loading me into the ambulance.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “If I’d stayed with you…”

  “No, I’m glad you left. I wanted you to keep yourself safe.”

  “You never told me about the kidnapping,” I say. “I wouldn’t have been able to explain it to them even if I had been here.”

  She glances around, like she’s checking for someone behind me, and lowers her voice. “I didn’t want to talk about it. Also, I figured I’d made your father scary enough. When you first found out, you had a bunch of nightmares—do you remember that? You kept dreaming about fires. I figured the last thing you needed was more nightmare fuel.”

  “And the real reason my father was after us? Your decryption thing? Were you ever going to tell me about that?”

  Mom falls silent. I can hear the hum of the machines, the rattle of a cart being pushed down the hallway outside her room.

  “No,” she says. “I was never going to tell you.”

  We’re interrupted by a firm knock on the door; it’s hospital staff coming for the morning round of hospital stuff. They check Mom’s temperature, blood pressure, and a bunch of other things and then give her breakfast. I fall silent, watching, but one of the nurses gives me a big, fake smile and says, “You must be Steph!”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Your mother stole my cell phone so she could text you!” She laughs with this edge of irritation.

  “Like, when you say she stole it…”

  “Picked my pocket when I was taking her vital signs!”

  “I did give it back to you,” Mom says.

  I can’t tell if the nurse is laughing affectionately, like she thinks my mother’s theft was really clever, or if she’d secretly like to smother Mom with her pillow, but either way, she’s gone a few minutes later.

  “I think she’s still mad at me,” Mom says. “I really did need to send you a text, though, and there’s some policy against lending out personal phones.”

  “I’m glad you stole her phone,” I say. “Is that what you used to call me?”

  “No, your friend Rachel’s mother came with a spare phone. That’s what I used.”

  “By the time you finally texted, I’d heard from Xochitl and the mystery person. Who was the mystery person? You sounded like you knew.”

  “I didn’t,” Mom says. “I mean, I don’t know who it was.”

  “You sounded like you thought you knew.”

  Mom shrugs. “Why did you go to Massachusetts?” she asks. “I guess I assumed it was to find Xochitl, but once I talked to Xochitl, it was clear that wasn’t it, since she didn’t know you were there.”

  There’s no way to explain the trip to Massachusetts without explaining CheshireCat. I don’t know if I trust my mom with the information about CheshireCat. I sit there pondering what to say a little bit too long, and Mom sighs and says, “I’m sorry for not telling you about the code-breaker. The real reason your father was after us. It was a secret I was hoping to just keep forever.”

  “Why did you make something like that only to stuff it in a box?” I ask.

  “Homeric Software was me, Xochitl, Rajiv, and your father. I was a math major in college, and I’d started on the path to the breakthrough just because it was a question that no one could answer. Then for a while your father had me convinced he’d only use it for good purposes. Then the actual breakthrough came … and there was a big fight.”

  “Over what to do with it?”

  “Xochitl wanted to just sell it to the NSA and be done with it. She’d assumed the purpose we were working toward was commercial and that Michael would use the money from the sale toward pursuing his goals, which she assumed were idealistic. But Michael had other plans; he wanted to put himself in charge. In charge of as much, as many things, as possible. And Rajiv wanted the opposite. He wanted to sow chaos, burn down everything, rebuild from the ashes. I listened to the fight and decided to encrypt the file so no one could act independently while we sorted all this out. Michael assumed I would decrypt it for him alone. He was wrong.”

  I try to imagine this fight. Xochitl seemed pretty even-tempered on the way home. Practical. So I can believe she was startled to find out no one else intended to sell the software. But in picturing the fight, it’s my mother I focus on: sitting in the back of the room, listening, making a decision she’s going to stick to no matter the consequences.

  “So he had you kidnapped,” I say.

  “Well, initially, he made it look like Rajiv had done it. But he slipped up. There were details I didn’t even tell the police that Michael knew, anyway. He said I’d told him, but I knew I hadn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “He’d already had Rajiv killed! Sure, it looked like a suicide, but I knew it couldn’t be. And I had to protect you. Xochitl asked the same question. She talked me into the order of protection, but … I knew what he was like. So I ran.”

  “And you kept running.”

  “Yes. And you came with me. City after city. Are you angry at me, Steph?”

  “No.” I reassure her instinctively, but I decide after thinking about it that I’m definitely not lying to her. I’m not angry about the moves. She was right about my father. I am still a little angry about Julie. Even though I’ve found her again.

  After the showdown at Annette’s house, I found the name of the Utah town on Mom’s laptop, and from there, with a little help from CheshireCat, I found Julie.

  I don’t know if you remember me was the first line of my email.

  OF COURSE I REMEMBER YOU came back exactly twenty-seven minutes later. She’s started signing on to CatNet as Stella. I’m never going to lose her again, unless she decides she wants to get lost.

  “What if we move one more time?” Mom asks.

  That makes me furious. “What?” I say. “Why? Why now? I have friends here. I have a girlfriend here.”

  “But the school is terrible,” Mom says. “You told me so. Two years of Spanish, not enough math. You should get to go to a decent school.”

  “I want this school,” I say. “This is the school where my friends are.”

  “The hospital had me meet with a therapist,” she says. “I want to get properly treated for PTSD. So I can stop raising you like you live in a war zone.”

  “You can drive to Eau Claire for a therapist,” I say. “It’s not that far.”

  “Minneapolis isn’t that far, either,” Mom says. “You can come visit on weekends.”

  “You weren’t actually asking for my opinion, were you?” I say, furious. “You’ve already decided. You’re moving us again.”

  “We can wait until the end of the semester,” she offers.
“So you can get credit for the classes you’re in. A transcript. But then, yes.”

  We’re interrupted again by another knock on the door. This time, it’s a woman in a gray business suit, wearing a lanyard with county ID saying Department of Family Services. “You must be Steph,” she says, and she holds her hand out for a handshake. “I’ve heard a lot about you!”

  My mother has fallen silent; she’s sitting tight-lipped in bed.

  “Can I borrow Steph for just a few minutes?” she asks my mother, who gives her a noncommittal shrug. “They’re going to be in in just a minute to check your incision. Steph doesn’t need to be here for that, anyway.” The DFS lady steers me into a little meeting room down the hall and closes the door. “I just need to ask you a few questions, Steph. About yourself and your mom, okay?”

  “I guess,” I say.

  “What grade are you in at school?”

  “Eleventh.”

  “And you go to the high school here, right?” I nod. “Do you do well in school?”

  That’s a really impossible question to answer when you change high schools every few months. “I do okay.”

  “So let’s talk a little bit about your home life,” she says, and I suddenly realize that the hospital has sent her to talk to me because, after everything they’ve seen from my mother, they’re not sure she should be trusted to take care of me. This woman could take me away and put me in foster care. Which would probably be in this county, and I’d probably keep right on going to my current high school. Mom would fight to get me back, but it would take time. I could probably stay here more or less indefinitely.

  “Do you have enough to eat at home?” the social worker is asking.

  I lift my chin. It will be annoying to be two and a half hours away from Rachel, but I’m not letting them take me away from my mother. “Always,” I say, and I answer every question she asks with whatever I think the right answer is, whether or not it’s true. Mom was doing her best. And we’re staying together.

  When she finishes interviewing me, Mom’s door is closed. “You can go in in just a minute,” one of the nurses says. I take out my phone while I wait. Here’s one big new thing in my life: on the way home from Boston, Xochitl stopped and bought me a smartphone. I can check my email while I wait. I find another letter from Julie, full of pictures of her house and comments about the Clowder. I can’t believe it, Steph, it’s a whole group of weirdos. Why is this the first time I’ve ever felt like I fit in? Please come visit.