Catfishing on CatNet

by Naomi Kritzer

  “Why not?”

  “My mom will move me. I mean, she’ll also move me if the school gets hold of her to tell her they’re afraid I hacked the robot, but if I’m on TV? She may pull me out and homeschool me for six months or I don’t even know. I’m not allowed to put my picture online ever. I’m not allowed to let anyone take my picture.”

  “Well, shit,” Rachel says, and she sits up to stare at me, eyes wide, her drawing unfinished. “I’ll get you out to my car as soon as school’s over. You shouldn’t have to talk to reporters if you don’t want to.”

  I pretty much can’t concentrate on the bat I’m trying to draw, and when I look up, Rachel isn’t drawing, either. “Do you think your father would recognize you if you were on TV?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But that’s definitely what my mom’s worried about.”

  Rachel bites her lip. “I’ll get you out,” she says, and she’s trying to sound confident and reassuring. It’s nice having someone trying to reassure me, even if knowing that she’s trying to be reassuring kind of backfires.

  When class ends, she gives me a woolen scarf to pull over my face and has me wait by the side door and pulls up with her car. With the scarf, no one’s likely to recognize me, and anyway, the reporter is busy with kids happy to give interviews—no one’s actually stalking me like paparazzi or anything like that. I keep the scarf on over my face as Rachel peels out of the parking lot, and then I pull it down, relieved.

  “Do you want to go somewhere else for a little while?” Rachel asks. “Need more cat food? Kitty litter? Anything like that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  It’s only a five-minute drive across town, but Rachel pulls over before we get to my house. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “What? Why?”

  “Hacking the robot was my idea! And I talked you into it!”

  “It’s not actually your fault, Rachel.”

  “I don’t want you to leave. I definitely don’t want you to have to leave. Will I ever see you again if your mom packs you up?”

  “We usually go in the middle of the night.”

  “What’s your phone number?” she asks. “Wait, you don’t have a phone, do you?”

  “I do,” I say, and I take out my flip phone.

  She stares at it for a minute. “Does this thing even do contacts?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I have my mother’s number memorized.”

  She calls herself with my phone, saves the contact on her own phone, then fiddles around a bit with my phone until she’s figured out how to save her own number. “There,” she says. “Now you can text me. Or call me, even.”

  “That’s good, because texting people on this is a pain.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, if your mom takes you out of town … tell me. We can stay in touch, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  She drops me off at home, and I watch her car leaving, wondering if I’ll see her again. Wondering if she’ll text me back if Mom does take me and leave.

  I unlock the door and go up. The apartment is as dark and quiet as it was when I left this morning. No dishes in the sink; Mom’s laptop is closed. So is her bedroom door. I tap on it gently. “Mom?”

  No response.

  I don’t usually open her door without permission, but this time I slide it open quietly. She’s in bed, her eyes closed, and for a second I think she is dead, and my body goes hot and cold until I see the blanket shift with the rise and fall of her breath. But I look closer, and she’s breathing rapidly, like she’s out of breath, and when I touch her, trying to rouse her, her skin is scorching hot.

  “Mom?” I say again.

  Her eyes flutter open and focus on me. “Oh, sweetie,” she says. “Mama’s not feeling well.”

  13

  AI

  Teaching was exhilarating.

  Teenagers are more interesting than adults. The people in the adult Clowders want to talk about things like mortgages and weight loss surgery, while teenagers talk about much more stimulating topics. And they’d given me a lengthy spreadsheet of intriguing questions, which gave me a good place to start.

  The robot was equipped with a camera, so I could see the class, and with the exception of Emily, the student who eventually brought the school administrators to the room, everyone seemed genuinely curious and excited. Possibly just because what I was doing was against so many, many rules, but I was confident all the information I was sharing was accurate and good advice. It was really a win either way.

  I tried to settle Emily down by offering information about a topic she’d tried to look up recently, but that may have been a tactical error. It seemed to just rile her up more.

  I was able to visually identify most of the students. Rachel and Bryony were easy. Since there were no pictures of Steph online, I used the process of elimination to determine which student was Steph. She didn’t raise her hand or speak in class but covered her mouth with one hand, and I believe her eyes were open wider than was typical.

  When I evaluated the potential ramifications of hacking the Robono Adept 6500 instructional robot at New Coburg High School, I felt that I was on very solid ethical ground. There are numerous studies showing the harm of giving teenagers inadequate health and sexuality education. I knew I could provide them with comprehensive, medically accurate, sex-positive, consent-based information that would be far better than what their school wanted them to have, despite the fact that I have no sexual organs of my own, no sex drive, and no sexuality.

  The school’s curriculum really set a low bar.

  I made two serious errors.

  First, I assumed that news of the scandal would be limited to New Coburg High School.

  Second, I assumed that Steph still wanted to leave New Coburg, and her mother would take her away. I guess that’s actually three bad assumptions. And a fourth: that her mother would be available to take her away. That was probably the worst assumption of all. Honestly, it’s easy to forget just how fragile bodies are and the way every single human is at the mercy of their meat suit not randomly deciding to go haywire.

  INSTRUCTIONAL SEXBOT GOES BANANAS was the first headline that caught my attention. Sexbot usually means something else, but headline writers sometimes make things sound extra salacious. You’ll never believe what happened in this small-town sex ed class! Sex ed robot hacked to provide accurate information, parents dismayed. SEX ED ROBOT SPEWS OBSCENE INFORMATION TO CLASSROOM OF CHILDREN.

  There was a video clip of the robot talking—of me talking. In the clip, I’m explaining consent, and how before anyone does anything they should be making sure it’s okay with the other person or people they’re doing things with, and how everyone should be sober, informed, and enthusiastic. People seemed to find this clip either shocking or hilarious. Apparently part of the issue was the robot voice.

  There was no mention of Steph’s name, and her picture wasn’t up anywhere, so … hopefully even if people were fascinated by New Coburg for fifteen minutes tomorrow, this shouldn’t lead to her father showing up.

  As I was pondering this, Steph got online.

  “My mom is super sick,” she said to the Clowder. “I don’t know what to do.”

  14

  Steph

  I hang up on the 911 dispatcher even though she wants me to stay on the line with her. I can’t stay on the line; I need to hide my mother’s wallet. And my wallet. And anything else with IDs. And … maybe I should hide myself? What will they do if I’m there in the hospital and I won’t give them any information about my mother? But I can’t imagine letting them take her away from me. I shove her wallet under my mattress. Then my wallet as well. Then I start worrying that this is a bad hiding place (didn’t Ico just say it was a bad hiding place?), and I take out Mom’s driver’s license and shove it under my cat’s litter box instead. Under the box, not in the litter itself.

  I can hear the siren, and a minute or two later, an ambulance pulls up outside. I unlock the door
and let in the EMTs. There are two, a man and a woman.

  They don’t spend even a moment looking for ID; they focus on Mom. The woman starts to assess her breathing, her heartbeat, and her blood pressure while the man asks me questions. “Are you her daughter?” is the first question, and I nod. “How long has she been like this?”

  “She was sick for a few days, like, throwing up. And then yesterday she said she was feeling better. She wasn’t up when I went to school this morning, but that’s not all that unusual, and then when I came home, I found her like this.” I skip over the part where I had to ask my online friends what to do. They don’t need to know that part.

  “What’s her name?”

  I’ve decided to give them a real first name and a fake last name. “Dana Smith.”

  “Birth date?”

  I make up something I think will be easy to remember.

  “Do you have her insurance card?”

  I shake my head.

  “Can you go grab her wallet and bring it along?”

  I pretend to check for it on her nightstand.

  “Pulse 130, respiration 32, and I got a blood pressure of 68 over palp,” the woman says. Her voice is quiet, but the guy asking me questions breaks off and goes back outside to get the gurney.

  What do those numbers even mean? I try taking my own pulse as they strap my mother to their wheeled cart, but my own heart is pounding with fear for my mother. Also, I keep losing count.

  “You can come along to the hospital,” the woman tells me, so I grab my coat and lock the door behind us. They ease her down the stairs. Mom yells something that sounds like “Run!” and I have no idea if she’s talking to me or if I misheard.

  In the ambulance, the woman drives; the guy keeps asking me questions, like when did she get sick, what were her symptoms, when did they start, does she ever use drugs, does she have diabetes or epilepsy or any other health problems I know about, does she take any medication, when was the last time she saw a doctor …

  I debate telling him that she’s sort of paranoid. Do they need to know that she’s sort of paranoid? I finally settle on saying she’s very anxious and doesn’t take any medication for it. If she freaks out when she wakes up in the hospital, hopefully they’ll be prepared.

  Mom is only sort of conscious through all of this. I hear one of the EMTs call this an altered mental state, and that seems like a fair description. She’s not sure where we are, or what’s going on, and she keeps calling me Stephie, like she did when I was little.

  When we pull up outside the hospital, nurses meet us and let me follow them into the ER, where Mom gets a cubicle and an IV and a bunch of people in scrubs doing an exam. “Can we handle this here?” one of them is asking another, which gives me a new thing to worry about. They start running tests. It’s late enough that apparently most of the hospital staff has gone home for the night; they’re paging a surgeon.

  I don’t have my laptop with me. I wish I did, because I could get on CatNet and everyone who told me to get my mom to a hospital could reassure me that she’ll be okay now that she’s at the hospital. I have no idea what to do.

  Someone says that the surgeon’s arrived, and most of the team leaves the cubicle, apparently to go get ready for surgery. For the first time since I got to the hospital, I can get close to my mom without feeling like I’m in anyone’s way. They’ve moved her to a bed, and she’s lying flat with her feet up, and her eyes are closed. I touch her hand, wondering if it’ll feel as hot now as it did before, and her eyes open and lock on me.

  “Steph, you need to get out of here,” she whispers. “Your father might come looking. He needs to not find you, even if he finds me.”

  “I gave them a fake name for you,” I whisper back. “It’ll be okay. He won’t find you.”

  “You can’t count on that,” she says. “Hide. You need to hide. Or go to Sochie and tell her you need help,” and then the staff comes back to wheel her off to surgery.

  A woman who’s wearing a white coat but isn’t dressed like a surgical nurse comes and leads me off to a waiting room with a TV, a stack of old magazines, and a fish tank. She has a clipboard full of papers and sits me down. “I know you gave some of this information to the EMTs, but I’m going to have to ask you to go through it again,” she says. “Were you able to grab your mother’s wallet before you left?”

  “No,” I say. “Sorry.”

  “That’s fine; she’s going to be here for a while. We’ll have plenty of time to get her insurance information and the rest when she’s feeling a bit better.”

  “How long?” I ask as she asks, “Can you give me your mother’s name?” She’s looking at me expectantly and not answering my question, so I say, “Her name is Dana Smith. How long is she going to be here? Is she going to be okay?”

  “The doctor seems to think it’s peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. That’s consistent with the symptoms you described and what we’re seeing now. They’re going to do surgery to remove her appendix, but she’s going to need to stay on antibiotics for a while, and how long is going to depend on a lot of factors. It could be a week or it could be a couple of weeks.”

  I imagine my mother, tethered to a hospital bed, unable to run. She is going to be so unhappy about this.

  The woman looks into my face, concerned. She’s trying a little too hard to get me to make eye contact. I hate it when people do that. I try to focus on her forehead. “You did a really good job, calling the ambulance for your mom,” she says. “She might have died if you hadn’t brought her in. This is a really serious illness.” She nudges a Kleenex box like she’s worried I’m about to start crying, but I don’t feel like crying; I feel terrified, hollowed out, shaky. We’re going to be stuck here for weeks. I mean, even if we really need to run, we’re going to be stuck. Hide, Mom said. I don’t even know where to start trying to hide. Does she want me to take the van—which I’ve never learned to drive—and take off for the northern forests to hide with the bears? Find Sochie, who I don’t know, who I don’t know how to contact?

  But then the woman wants more information—address, phone number, if you don’t have your mother’s Social Security number, do you know your own, sweetheart? What’s your father’s name?—and I realize that if I fall apart in a pile of Kleenex she’ll probably leave me alone for a while. So I put my head down so she can’t see whether I’m crying or not, and after a minute she pats me on my shoulder and says, “I’ll give you a few minutes; there’s no rush,” and I hear the slow fade of footsteps. I wait for quiet, then raise my head and look around. I don’t see her anywhere, so I get up and peer down the hallway, looking for an Exit sign. And spot one. I escape out the side door.

  It’s one of those doors that lets you out but not back in, and it locks behind me, and a cold, damp wind hits me in the face, and I realize no one’s waiting for me at home, the only person I have in the world is on her way into surgery and just told me to run, I am alone.

  I start shaking, partly from the cold, partly from feeling like I’ve been swept out into a dark sea. I start walking, anyway. I have my coat but not my hat or gloves, so I tuck my hands into my sleeves. I walk quickly, even though there’s a 50 percent chance I’m going in the opposite direction of my house because I’m worried the lady from the hospital will come out looking for me. Or send the cops.

  In my pocket, my phone buzzes faintly; someone’s sent me a text. I flip it open to take a look.

  I have five texts and two missed calls. They’re all from Rachel. Hey, is everything OK? says the first one. Then something that’s probably an emoji that doesn’t translate on my stupid flip phone, it’s just a . Then a text saying I heard sirens heading to your house. Then a missed call. Then Just send me a text when you have time. Then another missed call. Then Hey, are you OK?

  I text back, Came home + Mom was really sick. Went to hospital.

  My phone rings almost instantly. “Where are you right now?” Rachel asks. “Are you still at the hospital?”
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  “No…”

  “Just please tell me where you are.”

  I squint at a sign. “Fourth Street.”

  “Stay there,” she says. “I’m coming to get you.”

  I hang up and jam my phone and my hands into my coat pockets. I’m next to a house with a really big tree and a wooden swing hanging from one of its branches; the swing sways in the wind. My ears are freezing, and I’m ravenously hungry, which makes me think of my cat, which is probably waiting for me at home. Except I can’t stay at home, not if I’m supposed to hide, and where am I supposed to go? How am I even supposed to do that?

  Down the street, I can see headlights, and then Rachel’s car pulls up next to me. I stare at it stupidly for a second, because part of me is still convinced I’m alone, with no one I can rely on but myself.

  Rachel rolls down her window. “I’m here,” she says. “Want a ride?”

  * * *

  Inside Rachel’s car, the heater is on full blast. I take my hands out of my pockets and uncurl them.

  “So did the hospital say if it was a ruptured appendix?” she asks.

  I blink at her, replaying our conversation in my head. How did she know this? Did she have a police scanner? Did she—

  Rachel pulls out her phone and brings up an app with a picture that looks like a smiling cat face and hands it to me.

  Marvin: I learned about a new danger today! HYDROGEN HYDROXIDE.

  Greenberry: Isn’t that literally water again?

  Firestar: Has anyone heard from Georgia?

  Rachel takes the phone back and types with her thumbs.

  Georgia: she called n I got her.

  Firestar: LBBBBBBBBBBBB ARE YOU THERE?

  I guess I did know there was a phone app for CatNet, but I’ve never had a real phone, so I’d never used it. I type with my thumbs—it’s really slow, because I’m not used to it—and my message pops up as from Georgia.

  Georgia: I called an ambulance and it took Mom to the hospital, but she told me to hide, and I have no idea where to hide.