The Circle (45 page)

“Let’s get a libation,” Francis said, and they decided on a glittering brewery on
the water fronted by a wide outdoor patio. Even as they approached, Mae saw recognition
in the eyes of the array of pretty young people drinking outdoors.

“It’s Mae!” one said.

A young man, seeming too young to be drinking at all, aimed his face at Mae’s camera.
“Hey mom, I’m home studying.” A woman of about thirty, who may or may not have been
with the too young man, said, walking out of view, “Hey honey, I’m at a book club
with the ladies. Say hi to the kids!”

The night was dizzy and bright and went too fast. Mae barely moved at the bayside
bar—she was surrounded, she was handed drinks, she was patted on the back, she was
tapped on the shoulder. All night she pivoted, turning a few degrees, like a haywire
clock, to greet each new well-wisher. Everyone wanted a picture with her, wanted to
ask her when all this would happen. When would we break through all these unnecessary
barriers? they asked. Now that the solution seemed clear and easy enough to execute,
no one wanted to wait. A woman a bit older than Mae, slurring and holding a Manhattan,
expressed it best, though unwittingly: How, she asked, spilling her drink but with
eyes sharp, How do we get the inevitable sooner?

Mae and Francis found themselves at a quieter place down the Embarcadero, where they
ordered another round and found themselves joined by a man in his fifties. Uninvited,
he sat down with them, holding a large drink in both hands. In seconds he’d told them
he was once a divinity student, was living in Ohio and heading for the priesthood,
when he discovered computers. He’d dropped it all and moved
to Palo Alto, but had felt removed, for twenty years, he said, from the spiritual.
Until now.

“I saw your talk today,” he said. “You connected it all. You found a way to save all
the souls. This is what we were doing in the church—we tried to get them all. How
to save them all? This has been the work of missionaries for millennia.” He was slurring,
but took another long swallow from his drink. “You and yours at the Circle”—and here
he drew a circle in the air, horizontally, and Mae thought of a halo—“you’re gonna
save all the souls. You’re gonna get everyone in one place, you’re gonna teach them
all the same things. There can be one morality, one set of rules. Imagine!” And here
he slammed his open palm upon the iron table, rattling his glass. “Now all humans
will have the eyes of God. You know this passage? ‘All things are naked and opened
unto the eyes of God.’ Something like that. You know your Bible?” Seeing the blank
looks on the faces of Mae and Francis, he scoffed and took a long pull from his drink.
“Now we’re all God. Every one of us will soon be able to see, and cast judgment upon,
every other. We’ll see what He sees. We’ll articulate His judgment. We’ll channel
His wrath and deliver His forgiveness. On a constant and global level. All religion
has been waiting for this, when every human is a direct and immediate messenger of
God’s will. Do you see what I’m saying?” Mae looked at Francis, who was having little
success holding back a laugh. He burst first, and she followed, and they cackled,
trying to apologize to him, holding their hands up, begging his forgiveness. But he
was having none of it. He stepped away from the table, then swirled back to get his
drink, and, now complete, he rambled crookedly down the waterfront.

Mae awoke next to Francis. It was seven a.m. They’d passed out in her dorm room shortly
after two. She checked her phone, finding 322 new messages. As she was holding it,
her eyes bleary, it rang. The caller ID was blocked, and she knew it could only be
Kalden. She let it go to voicemail. He called a dozen more times throughout the morning.
He called while Francis got up, kissed her, and returned to his own room. He called
while she was in the shower, while she was dressing. She brushed her hair, adjusted
her bracelets, and lifted the lens over her head, and he called again. She ignored
the call and opened her messages.

There was an array of congratulatory threads, from inside and outside the Circle,
the most intriguing of which was spurred by Bailey himself, who alerted Mae that Circle
developers had begun to act on her ideas already. They’d been working through the
night, in a fever of inspiration, and within a week hoped to prototype a version of
Mae’s notions, to be used first in the Circle, polished there and later rolled out
for use in any nation where Circle membership was strong enough to make it practical.

We’re calling it Demoxie
, Bailey zinged.
It’s democracy with
your
voice, and
your
moxie. And it’s coming soon
.

That morning Mae was invited to the developers’ pod, where she found twenty or so
exhausted but inspired engineers and designers, who apparently already had a beta
version of Demoxie ready. When Mae entered, cheers erupted, the lights dimmed, and
a single light shone on a woman with long black hair and a face of barely contained
joy.

“Hello Mae, hello Mae’s watchers,” she said, bowing briefly. “My name is Sharma, and
I’m so glad, and so honored, to be with you today. Today we’ll be demonstrating the
very earliest form of Demoxie. Normally we wouldn’t move so quickly, and so, well,
transparently, but given the Circle’s fervent belief in Demoxie, and our confidence
that it will be adopted quickly and globally, we couldn’t see any reason to delay.”

The wallscreen came to life. The word
Demoxie
appeared, rendered in a spirited font and set inside a blue-and-white striped flag.

“The goal is to make sure that everyone who works at the Circle can weigh in on issues
that affect their lives—mostly on campus, but in the larger world, too. So throughout
any given day, when the Circle needs to take the company’s temperature on any given
issue, Circlers will get a pop-up notice, and they’ll be asked to answer the question
or questions. The expected turnaround will be speedy, and will be essential. And because
we care so much about everyone’s input, your other messaging systems will freeze temporarily
until you answer. Let me show you.”

On the screen, below the Demoxie logo, the question
Should we have more veggie options at lunch?
was bookended by buttons on either side,
Yes
and
No
.

Mae nodded. “Very impressive, guys!”

“Thank you,” Sharma said. “Now, if you’ll indulge us. You have to answer, too.” And
she invited Mae to touch either Yes or No on the screen.

“Oh,” Mae said. She walked up to the screen and pushed Yes. The engineers cheered,
the developers cheered. On the screen, a happy face appeared, with the words
You are heard!
arcing above. The question
disappeared, replaced by the words
Demoxie result: 75% of respondents want more veggie options. More veggie options will
be provided
.

Sharma was beaming. “See? That’s a simulated result, of course. We don’t have everyone
on Demoxie yet, but you get the gist. The question appears, everyone stops briefly
what they’re doing, responds, and instantly, the Circle can take appropriate action
knowing the full and complete will of the people. Incredible, right?”

“It is,” Mae said.

“Imagine this rolled out nationwide. Worldwide!”

“It’s beyond my capability to imagine.”

“But you came up with this!” Sharma said.

Mae didn’t know what to say. Had she invented this? She wasn’t sure. She’d connected
a few dots: the efficiency and utility of the CircleSurveys, the constant Circle goal
of total saturation, the universal hope for real and unfiltered—and, most crucially,
complete—democracy. Now it was in the hands of the developers, hundreds of them at
the Circle, the best in the world. Mae told them this, that she was just one person
who connected a few ideas that stood inches apart, and Sharma, and her team, beamed,
and shook her hand, and they all agreed that what had already been done was setting
the Circle, and possibly all of humanity, on a significant new path.

Mae left the Renaissance and was greeted, just outside the door, by a group of young
Circlers, all of whom wanted to tell her—all of them on their tiptoes, bursting—that
they had never voted before, that they had been utterly uninterested in politics,
had felt disconnected entirely from their government, feeling they had no real voice.
They told her that by the time their vote, or their name on some petition, was filtered
through their local government, and then their
state officials, and finally their representatives in Washington, it felt like sending
a message in a bottle across a vast and troubled sea. But now, the young Circlers
said, they felt involved. If Demoxie worked, they said, then laughed—when Demoxie
is implemented, of
course
it will work, they said—and when it does, you’ll finally have a fully engaged populace,
and when you do, the country and the world will hear from the youth, and their inherent
idealism and progressivism will upend the planet. This is what Mae heard all day,
as she wandered through the campus. She could barely get from one building to another
without being accosted.
We’re on the verge of actual change
, they said.
Change at the speed that our hearts demand
.

But throughout the morning, the calls from the blocked number continued. She knew
it was Kalden, and she knew she wanted no part of him. Talking to him, much less seeing
him, would be a significant step back now. By noon, Sharma and her team announced
that they were ready for the first actual all-campus Demoxie tryout. At 12:45 everyone
would receive five questions, and the results would not only be tabulated immediately,
but, the Wise Men promised, the will of the people would be enacted within the day.

Mae was standing in the center of the campus, amid a few hundred Circlers eating lunch,
all of them buzzing about the imminent Demoxie demonstration, and she thought of that
painting of the Constitutional Convention, all those men in powdered wigs and waistcoats,
standing stiffly, all of them wealthy white men who were only passably interested
in representing their fellow humans. They were purveyors of an innately flawed kind
of democracy, where only the
wealthy were elected, where their voices were heard loudest, where they passed their
seats in Congress to whatever similarly entitled person they deemed appropriate. There
had been some incremental improvements in the system since then, maybe, but Demoxie
would explode it all. Demoxie was purer, was the only chance at direct democracy the
world had ever known.

It was twelve thirty, and because Mae was feeling strong, and feeling so confident,
she finally succumbed and answered her phone, knowing it would be Kalden.

“Hello?” she said.

“Mae,” he said, his voice terse, “this is Kalden. Don’t say my name. I’ve rigged it
so the incoming audio isn’t working.”

“No.”

“Mae. Please. This is life or death.”

Kalden held a power over her that shamed her. It made her feel weak and pliable. In
every other facet of her life she was in control, but his voice alone disassembled
her, and opened her to an array of bad decisions. A minute later she was in the stall,
her audio was off, and her phone rang again.

“I’m sure someone is tracing this,” she said.

“No one is. I bought us time.”

“Kalden, what do you want?”

“You can’t do this. Your mandatory thing, and the positive reaction it’s gotten—this
is the last step toward closing the Circle, and that can’t happen.”

“What are you talking about? This is the whole point. If you’ve been here so long,
you know more than anyone that that’s been the
goal of the Circle since the beginning. I mean, it’s a circle, stupid. It has to close.
It has to be complete.”

“Mae, all along, for me at least, this kind of thing was the fear, not the goal. Once
it’s mandatory to have an account, and once all government services are channeled
through the Circle, you’ll have helped create the world’s first tyrannical monopoly.
Does it seem like a good idea to you that a private company would control the flow
of all information? That participation, at their beck and call, is mandatory?”

“You know what Ty said, right?”

Mae heard a loud sigh. “Maybe. What did he say?”

“He said the soul of the Circle is democratic. That until everyone has equal access,
and that access is free, no one is free. It’s on at least a few tiles around campus.”

“Mae. Fine. The Circle’s good. And whoever invented TruYou is some kind of evil genius.
But now it has to be reined in. Or broken up.”

“Why do you care? If you don’t like it, why don’t you leave? I know you’re some spy
for some other company. Or Williamson. Some loony anarchist politician.”

“Mae, this is it. You know this affects everyone. When were you last able to meaningfully
contact your parents? Obviously things are messed up, and you’re in a unique position
to influence very crucial historical events here. This is it. This is the moment where
history pivots. Imagine if you could have been there before Hitler became chancellor.
Before Stalin annexed Eastern Europe. We’re on the verge of having another very hungry,
very evil empire on our hands, Mae. Do you understand?”

“Do you know how crazy you sound?”

“Mae, I know you’re doing that big plankton meeting in a couple days. The one where
the kids pitch their ideas, hoping the Circle buys them and devours them.”

“So?”

“The audience will be big. We need to reach the young, and the plankton pitching is
when your watchers will be young and vast. It’s perfect. The Wise Men will be there.
I need you to take that opportunity to warn everyone. I need you to say, ‘Let’s think
about what closing the Circle means.’ ”

“You mean completing?”

“Same thing. What it means for personal liberties, for the freedom to move, do whatever
one wants to do, to be free.”

“You’re a lunatic. I can’t believe I—” Mae meant to finish that sentence with “slept
with you” but now, even the thought of it seemed sick.