Once we’re far enough away that we’re pretty sure Rajiv is at least planning to wait a bit longer before sending a robot army out to retrieve us, my grandmother pulls over at a coffee shop, hands Rachel her keys, and goes to get herself a latte.
Rachel starts the car again so that we can keep the heater going. “Your grandmother does combat driving?” she says. “This is not a normal grandmother skill.”
“I mean, she also grows roses competitively,” I say. “That’s kind of more normal.”
“On Fast Girls, Jesse the K sometimes says she’s going to grow roses competitively if she ever gets tired of car chases,” Bryony says.
My grandmother comes back with a drink and a box of doughnuts, settles without complaint into the back seat, and passes the doughnuts to Glenys.
“Can we please head downtown?” Glenys asks.
“There are riots downtown,” Bryony says.
I text CheshireCat. “Have you talked to the other AI?”
“Yes,” CheshireCat says. “But it’s not talking to me right now. Too busy.”
“That’s probably not good. What does it want?”
“Oh, what it wants are flower pictures. But there’s a difference between want and need, and it needs to help Rajiv with his plan.”
“Look,” I say. “I’ve been thinking, and here’s my biggest question. Can you hack the other social networks? Mischief Elves, Catacombs, all of them, the way you hacked the robots? And just … redirect everyone involved? Set them to work picking up litter or something else harmless instead of antagonizing each other?”
“I have some bad news,” CheshireCat says. “I tried that. I think I may have made things worse.”
“Oh,” I say. That’s not encouraging. “Okay. Can you just take the other AI offline entirely?”
“If I knew where it was coming from, I might be able to. I don’t have that information.”
“We’re not going to be able to stop anything,” Glenys says. “It’s here. It’s the Tribulation.”
I turn back and look at her. Her face is despairing. “Glenys,” I say, “I know it must seem really scary right now, but I promise, whichever Bible guy it was who predicted the end of the world, he was not imagining a malicious AI that would get people playing phone games to have real-life fights with each other. This isn’t the Tribulation, this is Rajiv.”
“What’s a malicious AI?” she asks.
I start to try to answer, then discard my possible answers as too confusing. “Not God,” I say.
“How can you be so sure?” she asks.
“Well, I’m not religious, but … AIs are artificial intelligences. They were created by humans; they live in computer circuits. Every single piece of this apocalypse was engineered by Rajiv—Brother Malachi—and an AI, and probably Brother Daniel.” She doesn’t look convinced. “Okay, look. What do you think you should be doing right now?”
“Leaving you,” she says. “Going back to Brother Malachi. Submitting to him, to whatever he wants me to do. Helping to bring the apocalypse, or to fight the infernal rabble.”
That sounds like a terrible idea. “Is that what you want to do?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I want to find Nell,” she says. “Please, can we go find Nell?”
“Yes,” I say, making an executive decision. I call Nell’s phone; she doesn’t answer. I still have Jenny’s number in my phone, so I try that next, but she doesn’t answer, either. “CheshireCat…” I say.
“On it,” they say. “I believe the whole family is together and on Nicollet Island. From the speed they’re moving, they’re either in very bad traffic, or on foot.”
My grandmother thinks driving to Nicollet Island is a bad idea, but agrees to take the wheel again, since if we do run into riots she’s the one most likely to get us out of them. “I apologize in advance if I damage your car,” she says.
“Where did you learn to drive like this?” Rachel asks with interest.
“Drag racing,” Mimi says. “Back in the day, but apparently my skills, while slightly rusty, have not crumbled to dust.” She pulls out her own phone and passes it to Glenys. “I saw you don’t have a phone. Please feel free to use mine to keep trying to reach Nell. Steph, you’re going to have to navigate. Try to pick the roads that won’t have rioters.”
I navigate Mimi on back roads through the two cities. If I knew Minneapolis better, I probably could have provided a better route, but since I don’t, I keep Mimi off highways, since it’s easy to get trapped and her skills aren’t going to get the car over a fence. The back roads work until we get to the university, at which point, we encounter a crowd blocking the road.
“I knew this was a bad idea,” Bryony says.
“How close are we?” Glenys asks. “Can we get out and walk?”
“First of all, I don’t want to try to walk through riots either,” I say. “Also, it’s … two miles away.” I check the wind chill and add, “This wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Mimi does a U-turn and cuts over to a less-busy street. “CheshireCat,” I say. “Can you use cameras to find a clear path for us?”
“No,” CheshireCat says. “The camera data has been subject to interference, and I don’t trust the other AI not to lead us into trouble deliberately.”
“Okay.” I think about it. “Try the Clowders, then. Ask people in Minneapolis to look outside their windows and report in.”
“That will take a lot more time,” CheshireCat says. “Can you find a safe space to wait?”
“I think we have to keep going,” I say. “If Nell and her family are on foot, they also might be outside.”
The problem is that the whole University of Minnesota is a mess. We can’t tell whether the problem is rioters or law enforcement; streets we need keep getting blocked off, some with police barricades, some with just cars someone parked sideways so no one could get through. We keep winding up pointed in the wrong direction, away from
