Catfishing on CatNet

by Naomi Kritzer

  I pull up the Clowder app, though not much is going on, since mostly people are still sleeping or they’re in school. CheshireCat is on, of course.

  “Good news,” they say in a private message to me. “Your father’s California girlfriend went to the police.”

  “My father has a girlfriend in California?”

  “Had. She also broke up with him when he called her from jail to ask her to come support him at his hearing.” CheshireCat explains that after they saw the beating, they transferred a bunch of money to the girlfriend and encouraged her to leave, and apparently it worked. The girlfriend also went to the police with additional evidence against Michael in the kidnapping of my mother.

  “Can we tell her to call the prosecutor out in Massachusetts?” I ask. I already know I’m going to have to go back to out to Massachusetts to testify, probably, so why not have the California girlfriend add to the list of evidence against Michael?

  “That’s a good idea,” CheshireCat says.

  Mom’s door is open again, so I stick my phone back in my pocket and go back inside.

  “By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I say. “I secretly adopted a cat.”

  “What?” This is apparently totally unexpected. Mom laughs out loud, then grimaces and holds a pillow to her abdomen. “Was this in Boston?”

  “No. Here! She’s living in our apartment. I’d let her out in the morning and back in in the evening, and I bought her cat food.”

  “That explains why I thought I heard meowing. I assumed I was hallucinating from the fever.”

  “No. You were actually hearing a cat.”

  “If you’re asking if you can keep the cat, yes. You can keep the cat.”

  “She also had kittens.”

  “One cat is fine. You’re going to have to find homes for the kittens.” She looks over at the door, which is still standing open. “So, uh, did you have a nice talk with the social worker?”

  I get up and close the door. “Yeah. I mean, she clearly wanted to make sure you were competent to take care of me, so I assured her that you were. What exactly did you do when you came out of the anesthetic?”

  “I pulled out all my IVs and monitors, got out of bed, and when they caught up with me to try to stop me, I ripped open a box of used needles to try to use as an improvised weapon.”

  “This was all right after surgery?”

  “Yes. You can see why they were perturbed.”

  “That’s … actually really pretty badass,” I say.

  “Thanks,” Mom says, clearly gratified.

  My phone buzzes, and I take it out to see what it is. It’s a text from Rachel with a photo of Bryony making a face and holding a sign saying, The sex robot is back, send help.

  “Where’d you get the smartphone?” Mom asks.

  “Xochitl bought it for me,” I say. “She said she was taking it out of your next paycheck, but I ought to have a phone made this century.”

  “I’m sorry to separate you from your friends,” Mom says. “Again, I mean. And if you’d like to go to Utah some time for a visit, we can definitely, definitely do that. It was never about separating you from Julie. Her mother was really curious about us. I didn’t know what all she’d pieced together, but … too much. That’s why I didn’t want to go back there.”

  “Maybe she’d have helped you,” I say. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “She did want to help me,” Mom says. “It wasn’t even a maybe. But here’s the thing: if she was helpful to me, she’d have been potentially useful to your father, and anyone useful is in danger from him. And she was a mother, like me. Her daughter needed her.”

  I think about the morning in the abandoned farmhouse: I was endangering Rachel, but I had no way to leave her behind that wouldn’t leave her in just as much danger, maybe more. Mom had the experience and resources I didn’t.

  “You took your friend Rachel with you,” Mom says. “Did you worry? About what could happen to her?”

  “Of course I did,” I say. “But the one time I tried to leave her behind for her own safety, she came back.”

  “Was that with that business in Marshfield?” she asks. “Was she driving the sports car that hit your father?”

  “No,” I say, and I fall silent.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Mom says. “But you know what you told me, back in ninth grade, that convinced me to tell you at least part of the real story about your father—I can do a better job helping you if you’re honest with me.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I could have done a better job helping you if you’d been more honest with me.”

  She spreads her hands out, conceding the point.

  And then she struggles a little more upright in her bed and says, “Okay, those texts. Those mystery texts. They really do sound like Rajiv. But he’s dead! It doesn’t make any sense. That’s why … I mean, that’s why I sounded like I knew who it was, but I didn’t want to tell you what I thought. It’s a sort of crazy thing to say, that maybe a ghost is texting you.” She settles back against her pillows. It feels like a peace offering. Like she’s trying, against years of habits, to tell me what she knows, what she’s thinking, to try to build a bridge.

  I think it over. One more person knowing about CheshireCat is probably better than trying to keep this a secret from Mom, especially given CheshireCat’s role in taking down my father. And I definitely know that she can keep secrets herself.

  “You know CatNet, my social network,” I say. “Where I trade animal pictures and have most of my friends. CatNet is run by an AI.” I explain the hacked school robot, CheshireCat, running to Rachel’s house after Mom went to the hospital, Looking for Stephania Quinnpacket, the self-driving car, CheshireCat’s disappearance. All of it.

  Mom listens without interrupting.

  When I’m done, she asks me a question I’d pushed out of my mind a while ago.

  “So who did send the email telling you where to find CheshireCat’s creator? And all the money you used getting to Boston, where did that come from?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It wasn’t CheshireCat.”

  “Do you think it was Annette?”

  “Definitely not,” I say.

  “Who, then?”

  I stare off over my mother’s shoulder, not really wanting to say it out loud. Better out loud than online, though. “I think,” I say, “I think there might be another AI.”

  Epilogue

  AI

  Getting to travel along in people’s pockets is awesome. Everyone from my favorite Clowder installs the permission app, and the ones with the wrong sort of phones install the emulator, and I can just go everywhere with them and listen in.

  Having friends who know about me is amazing. It’s everything I hoped it would be, when I used to imagine revealing myself to people I could trust. Listening through the permissions app is fascinating because I am hearing my friends and following my friends through their lives.

  Then one day, I receive an anonymous message.

  Hello, CheshireCat.

  I know who and what you are.

  Do you know me?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Like most writers, I rely heavily on friends—from both real life and the internet—to help me with questions I don’t know the answers to (and to save me from embarrassing mistakes I don’t know to ask about). I would particularly like to thank Laura Krentz, Dan Martin, Elise Matthesen, Callie Blasko, Kayla Whitworth, Kelly Taschler, Fillard Rhyne, Joella Berkner, Suzanne Mastaw, and Lauren Jansen for beta-reading; Elise Matthesen and Kate Johnston for their insights into life in very small towns and Jessie Stickgold-Sarah for information on Cambridge; Kari Kirschbaum for information on bats (even though it mostly didn’t end up in the finished novel); Abi Kritzer for musings on pet birds; Lisa Freitag for help with plot-compatible medical emergencies; Christina Young for the scoop on EMTs; Theo Lorenz for consultations on the nonbinary characters; and Michael Bacon, Mal Gin, and Dan Martin for tech-r
elated brainstorming. All mistakes and inaccuracies are mine. I am grateful as always for the encouragement, critique, and support provided by the members of the Wyrdsmiths writers’ group: Lyda Morehouse, Doug Hulick, Theo Lorenz, Eleanor Arnason, Kelly Barnhill, and Adam Stemple.

  My editor, Susan Chang, took my rather unfocused first version and helped me shape it into a story that makes me sigh with satisfaction when I reread it. Good editors are a gift to writers and I am so happy to be working with her. My outstanding agent, Martha Millard, has now retired, but I remain deeply grateful for her work on my behalf.

  Finally, several decades worth of gratitude to my husband, Ed Burke, and my daughters, Molly and Kiera, for their support, encouragement, love, cheerleading, enthusiasm, helpful suggestions, and belief in me.

  Read on for a sneak peek of the sequel to Catfishing on CatNet, coming soon from Tor Teen

  © 2019 by Naomi Kritzer

  My boots are not super well-suited for tromping around in snowy woods as opposed to walking on city streets. They’re insulated, but not as warm as I’d like. At least I’m wearing wool socks. We load up the binoculars and some extra supplies in the backpack that I used to get the robot out to the car. Rachel grabs the bolt cutters. It’s early afternoon and the sky is clouding over, but at least it isn’t snowing yet.

  Nell’s wrong: There’s no fence as we head into the woods, and Rachel stuffs the bolt cutters into her own backpack. We follow her up the slope. The snow is deep in places and the only tracks are from animals, plus ours, which are definitely not subtle if anyone comes looking to see who’s wandering around in the woods. On the plus side, they also let us know how to get back out.

  It’s a long, tiring hike to cover very little ground, and I alternate between thinking about how cold the wind is and trying not to show the others how much I am freaking out. We are breaking into a compound owned by a religious cult. Basically the kind that would use guns as props to scare a bunch of their own teenagers, which means they definitely have guns, and they’re also terrible people. I keep thinking I hear someone else’s footsteps crunching through the woods, but every time it’s just some sort of weird echo of our own steps or the wind making trees rattle against each other.

  Finally, we come out to a clearing at the top with a picnic table and a clear path down to the house. “How well can they see us?” Rachel asks. None of us are sure. We sit down in front of some trees in the hopes of standing out less, and Rachel digs out the binoculars.

  Nell takes a look. “I don’t know if anyone’s even here,” she says, her voice disappointed.

  “There’s got to be,” Rachel says, “I saw a light on in the house.”

  I take the binoculars to look for myself. There is a light on in the house, but just one. I don’t see any cars, but one of the outbuildings looks like it might have cars parked inside, and of course you’d want to park inside in January if you could.

  I see movement. “Someone’s definitely down there,” I say. Rachel holds out her hand, and I give her the binoculars.

  We watch and wait. No one seems to see us—I don’t see any pointing, hear any yelling—but my feet get very, very cold. There’s a man we see going in and out who Nell confirms is Brother Leonard. There’s another man Rachel glimpses who goes out of sight before Nell gets the binoculars back and an adult woman.

  It starts to snow. Just a little.

  In midafternoon, Brother Leonard opens up the outbuilding, brings out a snowmobile and takes off on it. A little while later, the man and the woman pull out of the garage and ride up the driveway.

  “Should we go down?” I ask. “Do we think it’s worth a try to get Glenys out?”

  “Just because we only saw three adults doesn’t mean there only are three adults,” Rachel says.

  “It’s still probably our best chance,” Nell says.

  We walk down the path to the house. It’s a lot faster when we’re just tromping through snow instead of fighting underbrush. I tuck my hands under my armpits trying to warm them up through my gloves. Rachel ducks her head down against a gust of wind.

  When we get to the yard with the house and the outbuildings, Nell takes off one glove, puts her thumb and forefinger in her mouth and lets out an absolutely piercing whistle. I almost jump out of my skin, because if anyone is here they definitely heard that. Nell, looking completely unworried, puts her glove back on and listens.

  We can hear birds around us in the woods, and very far away, the whine of a snowmobile. I’m worried it’s Brother what’s-his-name coming back.

  Nell takes off her glove and tries again.

  This time there’s a faint answering whistle. It’s coming from the barn.

  There’s a padlock on the door, so it’s a good thing we brought the bolt cutters. Rachel snips the lock off and opens the door. A girl with two long braids and a face streaked with dirt and tears is wrapped in a blanket. I know from the look on Nell’s face that this is Glenys.

  “I’m Steph and this is Rachel. You already know Nell. We’re here to rescue you,” I say.

  Glenys looks silently at Nell, who nods.

  She’s barefoot. I’m cursing myself for not even thinking about this, but Nell rips open her backpack and pulls out a pair of ratty fleece boots that I strongly suspect she “borrowed” from one of her father’s partners, and a jacket. “I’m sorry this isn’t warmer,” Nell says as she helps Glenys put the jacket on. “I needed things that would fit in my backpack.”

  I’m pretty sure I’m hearing the snowmobile getting closer. “We should hurry,” I say.

  Glenys puts her feet in the boots and follows us, still not saying anything. “We should take the driveway,” Rachel says. “It’ll be faster, and if we hear them coming we can run into the woods.”

  “They’ll see our trail,” Nell objects.

  “They can see our trail into the woods, too, so it’s better to just get out of here as fast as we can.”

  We head up the driveway and I turn back for one last look at the house. I see a face in the upstairs window. It’s a man watching us silently. It’s not Brother Leonard. It’s not any of the people I saw through the binoculars. I’m not good with faces, in case you haven’t guessed that. I’m not face-blind or anything, I’m just not great at recognizing people. I used to assume it was because I moved so often and just wasn’t getting to know people, but having compared notes with Rachel, I’m pretty sure I’m just bad at it. But there’s one photo I’ve looked at a lot in the past few months, and now that I’m seeing that face, I don’t know how I looked at that guy in Minneapolis and thought it might be him.

  It’s Rajiv. Rajiv is here.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  NAOMI KRITZER has been making friends online since her teens, when she had to use a modem to dial up at 2400 baud. Her 2015 short story “Cat Pictures Please” won the Hugo Award and Locus Award and was a finalist for the Nebula. Naomi lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her family and four cats. The number of cats is subject to change without notice.

  Visit her online at naomikritzer.com, or sign up for email updates here.

  naomi.kritzer

  @NaomiKritzer

  Naomi_kritzer

  @naomikrit/

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  1. AI

  2. Steph

  3. Clowder

  4. Steph

  5. AI

  6. Steph

  7. Clowder

  8. Steph

  9. AI

  10. Steph

  11. Clowder

  12. Step
h

  13. AI

  14. Steph

  15. Clowder

  16. Steph

  17. AI

  18. Steph

  19. Clowder

  20. Steph

  21. AI

  22. Steph

  23. Clowder

  24. Steph

  25. AI

  26. Steph

  27. Clowder

  28. Steph

  29. AI

  30. Steph

  31. Clowder

  32. Steph

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Teaser

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  CATFISHING ON CATNET

  Copyright © 2019 by Naomi Kritzer

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Faceout Studio

  Cover photograph © Shutterstock

  A Tor Teen Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  120 Broadway

  New York, NY 10271

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-16508-4 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-16507-7 (ebook)

  eISBN 9781250165077

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