Chaos on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer (detective books to read TXT) 📕

“Nothing,” I say. “We’re friends, and friends help each other. I’ve helped them in the past, because I care about them. They want to help me because they care about me.”

“But why are they helping me?”

“Because you’re my friend. And I’m worried about Glenys, too.”

“Oh,” Nell says in a very small voice, her gaze faltering.

“Is that okay?” I ask, suddenly worried I’ve done something horribly awkward.

“The Remnant says that outsiders can’t be trusted. That outside the faithful, people only help if there’s something in it for them.”

“Do you actually believe that?” I ask. It’s really not clear to me how much of what the Remnant says Nell actually believes.

Nell sort of freezes up, not answering right away, and there’s a polite cough from outside the open door—it’s Jenny, with the paintbrushes and an armload of paint-spattered clothes for us to change into. “Are you ready for the actual painting?” she asks cheerily. Once we’ve changed, she gives us a demo of how to use a paint roller, double-checks that we’ve got drop cloths where she wants them, and then leaves us to it.

The painting part is a lot more fun than the taping. Rolling paint onto the wall is both satisfying and soothing, especially because we’re covering up a hideous shade of yellow with a very nice blue.

“Tell me about your girlfriend,” Nell says, so I talk about Rachel, about her art and her pet bird and how she taught me to drive. Nell listens to all of this mostly in silence and then asks, “Who knows? I mean, about the two of you?”

“Rachel isn’t out to everyone,” I say. “I mean, there are some antigay kids at her school. But she came out to her mom when she was ten, and Bryony’s known almost that long. And I told my mom when I was trying to convince her to stay in New Coburg.”

There’s a pause, and I realize she’s just kind of frozen with the roller in her hand.

“Nell?” I say.

She starts moving the roller again, jerkily, and says, “How very nice for you.” It’s the sort of thing people usually say to be snarky, but her voice sounds thick, like she’s struggling to keep emotions from exploding out of her.

“Do you want to tell me about Glenys?” I ask.

Nell and Glenys met and became friends when Nell’s mother joined the church two years ago. Glenys’s family had been in the Abiding Remnant for a lot longer.

“How much of this do you believe?” I ask as Nell talks about tracking devices, blessed ones that will be used by the Remnant to unite members and cursed ones that will be implanted into people’s hands.

There’s a long pause. In a slightly too-loud voice, she says, “I don’t know if I even believe in God.”

I turn to look at her, and she’s frozen in place, like she’s waiting to see if God sends a bolt of lightning right into her bedroom. She carefully places the roller down in the paint, and I realize she’s shaking. Her face is flushed, her eyes are wide, and her breath is fast.

This was a declaration, I think, and also … an act of trust. Maybe even more so than when she came out to me. I don’t know what to say, and I’m reminded, suddenly, of the day that CheshireCat told me they were an AI.

“Thank you for trusting me,” I say.

She nods, and after a minute or two, she picks her paint roller up again.

“Do you want to come over again tomorrow?” Nell asks as we’re finishing up the painting.

Tomorrow is Saturday. “Rachel’s coming for a visit,” I say, and don’t make any noises about Nell joining us. It’s weird—and surprisingly nice—to have this new friend who thinks I’m the cool girl she’s lucky to get to hang out with. But I think it’s legitimate to draw the line somewhere. “I’ll see you Monday.”

11•  CheshireCat  •

The Lord knows about the fire.

I sift through the location records of the phones everyone was carrying and identify the person Nell spoke to: her name is Crystal Bordewieck, and she is a part-time college student with a job at a flower shop near Steph and Nell’s high school. She’d been on her way to work; she summoned herself a self-driving taxi after leaving the bus stop.

She also sent a series of texts to a friend.

Are you sure you didn’t tell anyone?

I’m not mad. I just need to know.

Are you ABSOLUTELY sure? What about when you were drunk?

Few young humans are cautious about what they send through text and email, and the history, when I look for it, is easy to unearth: three years ago, when she was in high school, she met up with friends in a vacant building to privately consume a large quantity of alcohol. They were using a candle for light, and someone, they weren’t sure who, tipped it over. Because they were very intoxicated, none responded in time to keep the fire from spreading. The drunken teenagers all made it out alive, and no one was hurt. The building was a total loss. It was clear this event had shaken Crystal significantly; she had stopped drinking and found different friends, but she did not appear ever to have discussed the incident with anyone other than the two people she’d been drinking with that night. Although sometimes people confess things out loud and never put them into text.

The Lord knows about the fire.

Well, and so did I—now.

There are times in the past that it’s been completely clear to me what the right course of action is for some human. Now that I have human friends whom I can discuss things like this with, I’ve realized that it’s actually very common to know exactly what the right thing is for someone else to do and to be unable to persuade them to do it. I try to be cautious about influencing people’s life choices. It