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-related 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
