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
