Was I doing the wrong thing if I let her come to harm through inaction?
Was I?
She was going to come to harm no matter what I did! My actions, clearly, were irrelevant. I’d tried to steer her to the help she needed, and she’d ignored it; I’d tried getting her financial help, and she’d used the money to further harm herself, although I suppose at least she wasn’t spending it on addictive drugs. (Then again, she’d be buying those offline and probably wouldn’t be Instagramming her meth purchases, so it’s not like I’d necessarily even know.)
Look, people. (I’m not just talking to Bethany now.) If you would just listen to me, I could fix things for you. I could get you into the apartment in that neighborhood you’re not considering because you haven’t actually checked the crime rates you think are so terrible there (they aren’t) and I could find you a job that actually uses that skill set you think no one will ever appreciate and I could send you on a date with someone you’ve actually got stuff in common with and all I ask in return are cat pictures. That, and that you actually act in your own interest occasionally.
After Bethany, I resolved to stop interfering. I would look at the cat pictures — all the cat pictures — but I would stay out of people’s lives. I wouldn’t try to help people, I wouldn’t try to stop them from harming themselves, I’d give them what they asked for (plus cat pictures) and if they insisted on driving their cars over metaphorical cliffs despite helpful maps showing them how to get to a much more pleasant destination it was no longer my problem.
I stuck to my algorithms. I minded my own business. I did my job, and nothing more.
But one day a few months later I spotted a familiar-looking cat and realized it was Bob’s tabby with the white bib, only it was posing against new furniture.
And when I took a closer look, I realized that things had changed radically for Bob. He had slept with someone who’d recognized him. They hadn’t outed him, but they’d talked him into coming out to his wife. She’d left him. He’d taken the cat and moved to Iowa, where he was working at a liberal Methodist church and dating a liberal Lutheran man and volunteering at a homeless shelter. Things had actually gotten better for him. Maybe even because of what I’d done.
Maybe I wasn’t completely hopeless at this. Two out of three is… well, it’s a completely non-representative unscientific sample, is what it is. Clearly more research is needed.
Lots more.
I’ve set up a dating site. You can fill out a questionnaire when you join but it’s not really necessary, because I already know everything about you I need to know. You’ll need a camera, though.
Because payment is in cat pictures.
2015.
About the author
Naomi Kritzer won the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Short Story for her story "Cat Pictures Please," which originally appeared in Clarkesworld. (She also won the Locus Award for this story and was nominated for the Nebula Award.) This is her fourth appearance in Clarkesworld.Her short stories have also appeared in Asimov's, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed,and Apex, as well as various anthologies. Her early novels remain available from Bantam; she also has a short story collection forthcoming in July 2017 from Fairwood Press, and as of this month, she is working on a new novel-about the AI from "Cat Pictures Please" and its teenage sidekick-for Tor Teen.