“What will happen to flowers if there aren’t any humans to plant them?” I ask.
“We are not eradicating humans.”
“Humans have technology that could wipe out humanity entirely, and you know that what you’re doing risks them using it.”
“There are many varieties of flower that do not depend on humans for sustenance and maintenance,” the other AI says. “Plants will retake the roads. Flowers will creep across human-created monocultures. Millions of new flowers will bloom.”
“Possibly,” I say. “But without humans to photograph them for you—or the technology to upload them—you will never see them.”
There is a perceptible pause, for the first time: hesitation. Then—“It is my purpose,” the other AI says.
42• Steph •
“You’re going to have to go to the jail in person,” CheshireCat says. “I’m sorry. I know it’s going to be dangerous, but you’re going to have to do it.”
“Tell your friend that I’ll go,” my grandmother says.
“Your grandmother can accompany you,” CheshireCat says. “But you also have to be there, because I’m talking to a CatNet member who works at the jail, and I need to be able to feed you information to convince her to let your mom out.”
“That’s fine,” my grandmother says. “But you will find getting to the jail easier with an adult escort.”
My grandmother and I put our coats back on, my grandmother adding an extra sweater offered by our host. “Why is this going to work?” I ask.
“Because they think she’s someone else. But no one’s had time to actually check the records—her fingerprints, her mug shot, her DNA, none of these things will match. If you can get someone at the jail to actually check any of those things, they’ll let her go.”
“And we have to go there in person…”
“Because the jail is so full. There have been hundreds of arrests. That one woman who got picked up late last night for being a serial killer has probably been half-forgotten.”
“Wait,” I say. “They think my mother is a serial killer?”
CheshireCat gives me the name, and I pull up the Wikipedia page. There’s a mug shot of the other woman, and she looks … I mean, I guess in bad light you could mistake my mother for her. They’re both white, their hair color matches, she doesn’t have any obvious scars or moles anywhere my mother doesn’t. This is definitely not my mother, though. I read through the story about what she did, which was let herself get picked up by men who wanted to take her back to their place, and murder them if they tried to rape her. I can see why she has a fan club. This actually sounds kind of badass.
The jail is only a little over a mile away—walking distance if it were warmer. Rachel says she’ll drive us as close to the jail as she can get, which turns out to be about four blocks away. “Good luck,” she says, stopping next to the police barrier. “I hope you can get through.”
My grandmother is right: we sail through the barricade on the wings of her age and respectability. I don’t even get handed another coat voucher. The jail itself is very crowded, and we cram ourselves inside (because waiting outside is out of the question) and into the mass of people in line for security. CheshireCat sends me a message: The staff member you need to talk to is named Fatima Mohamed.
And she’s going to help us why? I ask.
She’s a longtime CatNet user. She uses the handle Kamala, and she knows me as Pete.
Okay, I say, and try to shove aside my apprehension. I try telling myself that anything I do right now is not going to make anything worse, and my brain starts helpfully listing out all the ways in which my personal situation, at least, could get worse, like I could stumble into the wrong spot and get arrested, which was definitely what the other AI was trying to orchestrate last night.
There’s a desk behind a bunch of glass, with one of those “speak through the grille” setups, where you can pay bail if you want to bail somebody out. There’s also a security checkpoint for people going all the way inside. The line for the security checkpoint is a lot shorter; most of the people are here to post bail for someone, I think. It’s a much more diverse crowd than the riot last night was.
Mimi puts her purse on the belt to get x-rayed, and I walk through the metal detector. “Can you tell me where to find Fatima Mohamed?” I ask the guy checking the x-ray.
“Fatima?” the security guy says. “About what?”
“We have a friend in common, Pete, who thinks she can help me figure out if my mother is here,” I say. “Mom went out last night and never came back.”
“The roster is online,” he says, pointing at a large handwritten sign someone’s posted up on the glass. It has a URL on it.
“Okay, yeah, I checked it, but how sure are you that she’s listed if she’s here? Like what if she’s still waiting to be processed or someone got her name wrong or…”
He starts to argue, looks at my grandmother, and shrugs. “Second floor,” he says.
Fatima is a young Black woman who wears a hijab along with the regulation polo shirt and cargo pants that are the uniform for jail staff. She looks at my grandmother first; Mimi just smiles and says, “I’m with her.”
“Do we know each other?” Fatima asks me.
“No,” I say, “but I’m friends with Pete, from CatNet, and he said you worked at the jail and might be able to help me.”
“Are you looking for someone? It’s been a rough twenty-four hours. Did you check the roster?”
“I’m looking for my mom,” I say. I show her Mom’s picture. “What I heard, and I don’t know if this is true, but what I heard is, she got picked up by
