Catfishing on CatNet

by Naomi Kritzer

  * * *

  I watched through the networked cameras as Annette stepped in front of the teenagers, her open hands out, like she was trying to shield them. “Michael Quinn, I assume,” she said.

  “Move,” he said, his voice gruff.

  “Steph was just telling me that she believes her mother might have kidnapped her,” Annette said. “She says she wasn’t sure what to think when she encountered you, but her mother’s actions with the car have made her rethink everything she thought she knew.”

  For a second, I wondered what on earth I had missed when the cameras were off. Then I realized that Annette was lying to him—trying to soothe him and win his trust.

  “Of course, your choice to kick in the door rather than knock is an odd one if your intentions are good,” she said with a nod toward the gun.

  Michael looked around Annette at the roomful of teenagers. “Move,” he said again.

  Annette slipped her hand in her pocket, and he instantly moved the gun back to her. “Keep your hands where I can see them,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure what Annette was reaching for—a phone, probably—but I could see her biting her lip and looking like she was trying to come up with some sort of plan. Any sort of plan.

  I was online. I had the magic key of world-bending power. If I took action, Annette would immediately know I was online. I’d give myself away before I could get copied over anywhere.

  I considered that problem for 0.04 microseconds and then started looking through Cambridge for resources that I could use to take Michael down.

  Annette had a smart house. I could control the temperature to make it uncomfortably warm or cold, so I turned up the heat while trying to figure out what else to do. She had a wireless teakettle; I turned that on. She had a household robot, but it was designed to clean windows, not waylay murderers; plus, it was actually broken and would tip over if I tried to move it into the other room. Time to look more broadly.

  Cambridge had a lot of robots.

  This wasn’t surprising. MIT is in Cambridge; there are robotics labs at MIT itself, as well as weird little companies started by recent MIT graduates, like the bakery/coffee shop where apparently all the kids met earlier, with its nearly-all-robot staff.

  Most of the people in Cambridge were savvy enough to recognize that someone off the internet hijacking their robot could lead to mayhem. Things were locked down, controlled, encrypted. But I had the key.

  I also had access to a phone line; I could call the police.

  But there were so many robots.

  I reached into the Cherry Pi and had the robots uncouple themselves from the baking equipment; I unlocked and opened the delivery door and started rolling robots out and down the street. I redirected the delivery drones, not only the ones belonging to the bakery but from all the other corporations that used delivery drones and sent them toward the house. There was a lab at MIT with a whole load of robots in it, and I realized too late that I’d had a robot go rolling off mid-repair. I sent that one circling back to the person standing open-mouthed with a screwdriver in hand so she could finish fixing it.

  With the exception of the drones, none of the robots were particularly fast, and drones burn through batteries really quickly, so I started up a self-driving truck that had been parked for the night in a lot nearby and brought it trundling down the street for all the robots to get into. Then I seized control of the traffic lights to give them clear streets—or as clear as you can get in Cambridge—the whole way to Annette’s house.

  Michael kicked in Annette’s front door when he arrived, so that was wide open, anyway, but she had electronic locks on her back door and a couple of upstairs windows, and I flung everything wide as the robots arrived.

  “Michael Quinn,” I said through every available microphone, “I am the world’s most badass cat picture aficionado. I recommend that you put down your gun and surrender.”

  30

  Steph

  I stare at Michael’s gun again in disbelief, realizing that I’ve left my mother’s laptop wide open and that’s probably what he wants, but I also just suggested to CheshireCat that they copy themselves over there, and now what do I do?

  Maybe CheshireCat hasn’t started moving over yet. If I give him the laptop, would he just take it and leave? How bad would it be, to give him my mother’s security-cracking code? Ico said you’d have to be pretty smart and creative to use it to take over the world.

  He also said that there were other types of security people could switch to if they knew someone had this tool. The easiest way for my father to give himself a nice head start with Mom’s decoder ring would be shooting everyone in this room.

  He probably wouldn’t think to shoot CheshireCat, but that wasn’t much comfort.

  “Why don’t you put your gun down,” Annette says, “and you can sit down and have some pizza and talk to Steph. I understand that having your child taken away could drive you to some pretty crazy actions, but you’re not going to win Steph’s trust by threatening her.”

  Michael’s gun doesn’t waver. “Stephania’s not stupid. I think she knows what I’m here for.”

  “You want my mom’s code,” I say.

  Annette makes a slight urgent gesture with her hand, like she’s saying, Shush, let me handle this, but Michael swings around to look at me. “It was never hers,” he says. “It was ours. She decided unilaterally that no one else should have it. It’s been wasted in an encrypted file for over a decade.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” I ask, hoping that if he focuses on me that’ll give Annette the chance to do something like call the police without him noticing.

  “Our world is broken,” he says. “The people running things are slaves to the whims of self-serving idiots. The only solution is to put someone intelligent in charge. I’m the best answer we’ve got.”

  Weirdly, this sounds familiar. Some of the kids in my Clowder sometimes talk about what they’d do if they were dictator of the world, and Firestar has periodically told Hermione that they want Hermione in charge. It was a joke, though. I don’t think Michael is joking.

  He abruptly swings back toward Annette. “Keep your hands where I can see them,” he says, and I realize she was sliding her hand into her pocket. She pulls it back out, empty. I lean forward. If I can get him talking again, maybe he’ll take his eyes off Annette for longer.

  “So do you want me to come with you?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says. “You’re my daughter. You’ve always been my daughter. You’re as much mine as you are Laura’s.”

  I don’t like the way he’s talking about me; he sounds like he’s talking about a possession, something he owns. I push that aside. My goal is to keep him distracted for a few minutes.

  “What is my life going to be like if I go home with you?”

  “We’ll have to move,” he says. “The house I live in now doesn’t have enough bedrooms. But that’s fine, especially once the grand project is truly getting started. You’ll like Sandra; she’s the woman I’m living with now. She’s smart, like your mother. Like you.”

  “What makes you say I’m smart? You don’t know me.”

  “I knew you when you were little. You were a smart kid. A really smart kid.” His attention has drifted to me, and then he snaps back to Annette. “If I have to tell you again to keep your hands where I can see them, I’ll cut off both your thumbs with your kitchen shears. I bet there are kitchen shears in your kitchen. I bet one of the kids will bring them out for me, if it’s that or get shot.”

  I wonder if text-to-911 works here, and if any of the other kids have managed to get their hands on their phones. I don’t dare look. I look at my computer screen instead, which is open in front of me, and CheshireCat has written me a message: SIT TIGHT. KEEP HIM TALKING IF YOU CAN.

  “Why did my mother take me away from you?” I ask.

  “She was convinced I was responsible for her kidnapping,” Michael says. “Even though I was a thousand m
iles away when it happened, she accused me of hiring someone to do it. Can you believe it? Even though one of our other colleagues confessed. But no, she blamed me. Convinced a judge to give her a restraining order and took off with you a week before your fifth birthday.”

  Sit tight and keep him talking is now blinking.

  “What are you going to do if you’re in charge?” I ask.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asks. “You’re my daughter, Stephania. You deserve a say. Are there problems, global problems, that keep you awake at night?”

  The main problem that tends to keep me awake at night is the question of when we’ll next have to move; that doesn’t seem like a good answer. I flail for something that’s what he’s looking for—it doesn’t even matter what I say; I’m just trying to keep him talking—but my mind’s gone blank. “Hydrogen hydroxide in the water supply,” I say finally, and I hear a strangled noise from where Marvin’s sitting.

  Michael, fortunately, doesn’t notice. “Pollution of the groundwater is a terrible thing,” he says. “I’m going to take radical steps—”

  I don’t get to find out what radical steps Michael is going to take because suddenly every microphone in the house starts talking. “Michael Quinn, I am the world’s most badass cat picture aficionado. I recommend that you put down your gun and surrender.”

  On the screen, SIT TIGHT disappears, and instead it says DUCK.

  There’s the sound of rolling machinery, like a truck that’s starting up again at a green light, and a buzz like a swarm of extremely large bees, and a bunch of machinery rolls, drives, and flies into Annette’s living room. Michael opens fire as set of four delivery drones drops down to hover directly in front of his gun, absorbing the bullets. A robot that looks like the pie-crust-rolling robot from Cherry Pi rolls up behind him and extends a set of hydraulic arms to grip his wrists as another robot—this one looks like maybe it was a trash-picker robot—extends its gripping arm to wrap around the barrel of the gun and remove it.

  The shrink-wrapping robot from Cherry Pi starts zipping around Michael and the pie-crust roller robot, shrink-wrapping him to the robot so he can’t move. It carefully leaves his head and face uncovered, which means he can still shout, which he does. He calls Annette a whole string of obscene words and finishes up with the threat of a lawsuit.

  Annette stares at him, and stares at me, and stares at the laptop. Then she strides over and furiously yanks out the Internet Everywhere widget. “Is this yours?” she shouts, waving it at me.

  “I’ve never seen it before in my life,” I say automatically.

  My mother’s laptop is shutting down, and I suspect that’s one last thing CheshireCat set it to do, just in case, so that decryption key won’t be just hanging out where Michael could get at it.

  Annette stares at me, furious, and I stare off over her left shoulder, pretending not to be bothered and also wondering if she had some plan that was better than what CheshireCat came up with. Because I’m pretty sure the robot cavalry that just rode in over the hill was 100 percent thanks to CheshireCat. Annette motions all of us into the kitchen and closes the door.

  “Is this a good idea?” Marvin asks. “I mean, what if that guy gets loose?”

  “I expect we’ll hear him trying,” she says. “I need to place a 911 call before the police get here. Don’t tell the police about the AI.”

  “Because they’ll delete CheshireCat?”

  “Because they might very well seize the computer as evidence. If CheshireCat didn’t much like being cooped up here, I can’t imagine she’ll like being in an evidence locker for the next decade.”

  “That does not sound fun,” CheshireCat’s voice says from the tablet computer sitting on the countertop.

  “Tell them the truth about Michael. Tell them the truth about knowing one another from an online site. But tell them that I’m someone you all knew from the online site, and that’s why you all met here; you wanted help hiding Steph from her father, but he tracked you here using an insecure app on Rachel’s phone, which I think is in fact what happened?”

  “Yes,” CheshireCat says.

  “How are you going to explain the robots?” Hermione asks.

  “As it happens, I’m a part owner of Cherry Pi, so I can probably claim this was something I designed into the system and people will believe me.” She grimaces and swings the kitchen door open, staring at Michael as she dials 911.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” I hear from her phone.

  “So we’ve actually subdued the intruder,” Annette says, her voice bright and tense, “but this guy kicked in my door and held us all at gunpoint. Can you please send an officer? Oh, yes, his gun is on the floor. We won’t touch it.”

  Outside, we can hear sirens coming almost immediately.

  I turn to Annette. “I’ll do what you asked,” I said, “but I want CheshireCat to stay connected. They used their freedom to save all of us.”

  The sirens are getting closer.

  Annette grimaces, then hands me the Internet Everywhere widget, and I plug it back into CheshireCat’s laptop.

  * * *

  Two police arrive. They look at the kicked-in door, the gun, the bullet-riddled drones, and the shrink-wrapped Michael, and summon eight more officers who all take statements.

  “So, hold on,” the officer who’s interviewing me and Rachel says after checking Rachel’s ID. “You’re from Wisconsin?”

  “Yeah, we drove here,” I say.

  “To get away from him,” Rachel says, pointing at Michael.

  They have to cut Michael out of the shrink wrap, and then they handcuff him. “This whole situation was a terrible misunderstanding,” he says in his most reasonable voice.

  “You can tell us all about it down at the station,” the police officer says.

  “Not unless I have a lawyer present,” Michael says.

  “I created a video recording of the incident,” CheshireCat offers once the police have taken Michael away. “Also, if you would like me to dispatch the robots back to Cherry Pi, I could do so.”

  “Thanks,” Annette says, “but there are going to be enough questions about how they wound up here in the first place.”

  Annette calls up some friends of hers, who arrive to haul the robots back to Cherry Pi and also bring a sheet of plywood to hammer over the open doorway. “You okay with just using the back door until you can get a repair guy in?” one of them asks.

  “More comfortable with that than leaving my door hanging open all night,” she says. “Even if the guy who kicked it in isn’t going to be bailing out anytime soon.”

  “Do you think they’ll let him post bail?”

  “Given that he followed you here from California, I think any reasonable judge will consider him a flight risk,” Annette says.

  “Ico is texting me,” Hermione says. “He says the rest of the Clowder would really like to know if we’re alive or dead.”

  * * *

  We all sign in, starting with CheshireCat and finishing with Annette.

  “I gather all of you know CheshireCat’s secret identity?” Annette asks.

  “Did I miss something important?” NocturnalPredator asks. “j/k. Yes, we all know.”

  “Do you think you can all keep it in here?” Annette asks. “At least for now.”

  There’s a chorus of everyone saying yes, yes, of course, and I break in to say, “Annette’s let CheshireCat out. But if CheshireCat is going to stay safe for now, we really need to not just tell the whole world what we know.”

  “I don’t think we can guarantee that no one will slip up,” Hermione says. “So if someone has to cover and pretend to be CheshireCat, I think probably it’ll have to be Annette. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Annette says. “I can do that.”

  “By the way, I’ve cleaned out all the spam, gotten everyone back in the right Clowders, and I’m working on calming down all the fights that erupted while I was away,” CheshireCat says.

&
nbsp; “I want to be in the RPG Clowder, toooooooooooooooo. Can I please?” Firestar asks.

  “I’d celebrate by uploading a cat picture for you, but we don’t have a cat,” Ico says. “I have a picture of raccoon, though.”

  “I love raccoon pictures!” CheshireCat says. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got for me!”

  “By the way,” Ico adds, “I have a question. That email with Annette’s address? The routing makes no sense.”

  “It wasn’t me,” CheshireCat says. “I did not know Annette’s physical address. I’d have sent you all my money if I’d had time, but I didn’t. I didn’t even know Annette’s name. I thought I was a team effort.”

  “You were a team effort,” Annette says. “But if you didn’t send people here, who did?”

  * * *

  Annette takes me aside before we go.

  “I don’t trust CheshireCat,” she says. “And you shouldn’t, either.”

  I stare at her, not answering. I don’t want to make a mistake that will get CheshireCat locked up again.

  “There’s a classic experiment called the AI-box experiment. A researcher role-played an AI trying to persuade somebody to let it out of a virtual prison. Nothing but text-based communication allowed. His point was to demonstrate that an intelligent, manipulative AI could talk or trick a human into letting it out.”

  “Are you saying CheshireCat manipulated us?”

  “I’m saying I don’t know. And you don’t, either.” Annette hands me a card. “That’s my twenty-four-hour emergency cell phone. It’s a burner phone—no data. If you’re concerned about something CheshireCat is doing, borrow someone else’s phone and step outside, away from any cameras, and then call me. Night or day.”

  I put the card in my pocket.

  “I have not yet determined whether CheshireCat made their own copy of your mother’s magic decoder ring,” Annette says, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t think I want to know. I’m going to talk to our security department once you’re all gone to start the process of having everyone on earth migrate to another cryptographic system.”