The Circle (48 page)

“Maybe,” Belinda said. “It could be a chip, if we could get that to happen. Or else,
even easier would be to attach a bracelet. They’ve been using ankle bracelets for
decades now. So you modify it so the bracelet can be read by the retinals, and provides
the tracking capability. Of course,” she said, looking to Mae with a warm smile, “you
could also apply Francis’s technology, and make it a chip. But that would take some
legal doing, I expect.”

Stenton leaned back. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“Well, obviously that would be ideal,” Belinda said. “And it would be permanent. You’d
always know who the offenders were, whereas the bracelet is still subject to some
tampering and removal. And then there are those who might say it should be removed
after a certain period. The violators expunged.”

“I hate that notion,” Stenton said. “It’s the community’s right to know who’s committed
crimes. It just makes sense. This is how they’ve been handling sex offenders for decades.
You commit sexual offenses, you become part of a registry. Your address becomes public,
you have to walk the neighborhood, introduce yourself, all that, because people have
a right to know who lives in their midst.”

Belinda was nodding. “Right, right. Of course. And so, for lack of a better word,
you tag the convicts, and from then on, if you’re a police officer, instead of driving
down the street, shaking down anyone who happens to be black or brown or wearing baggy
pants, imagine instead you were using a retinal app that saw career criminals in distinct
colors—yellow for low-level offenders, orange for nonviolent but slightly more dangerous
offenders, and red for the truly violent.”

Now Stenton was leaning forward. “Take it a step further. Intelligence agencies can
instantly create a web of all of a suspect’s contacts, co-conspirators. It takes seconds.
I wonder if there could be variations on the color scheme, to take into account those
who might be known
associates
of a criminal, even if they haven’t personally been arrested or convicted yet. As
you know, a lot of mob bosses are never convicted of anything.”

Belinda was nodding vigorously. “Yes. Absolutely,” she said. “And in those cases,
you’d be using a mobile device to tag that person, given you wouldn’t have the benefit
of a conviction to ensure the mandatory chip or bracelet.”

“Right. Right,” Stenton said. “There are possibilities there, though. Good things
to think about. I’m intrigued.”

Belinda glowed, sat down, feigned nonchalance by smiling at Gareth, the next aspirant,
who stood up, nervous and blinking. He was a tall man with cantaloupe-colored hair,
and now that he had the room’s attention, he grinned shyly, crookedly.

“Well, for better or worse, my idea was similar to Belinda’s. Once we realized we
were working on similar notions, we collaborated a bit. The main commonality is that
we’re both interested in safety. My
plan, I think, would eliminate crime block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.”

He stood before the screen, and revealed a rendering of a small neighborhood of four
blocks, twenty-five houses. Bright green lines denoted the buildings, allowing viewers
to see inside; it reminded Mae of heat-reading visual displays.

“It’s based on the neighborhood watch model, where groups of neighbors look out for
each other, and report any anomalous behavior. With NeighborWatch—that’s my name for
this, though it could be changed of course—we leverage the power of SeeChange specifically,
and the Circle generally, to make the committing of a crime, any crime, extremely
difficult in a fully participating neighborhood.”

He pushed a button and now the houses were full of figures, two or three or four in
each building, all of them colored blue. They moved around in their digital kitchens,
bedrooms, and backyards.

“Okay, as you can see, here are the residents of the neighborhood, all going about
their business. They’re rendered blue here, because they’ve all registered with NeighborWatch,
and their prints, retinas, phones and even body profile have been memorized by the
system.”

“This is the view any resident can see?” Stenton asked.

“Exactly. This is their home display.”

“Impressive,” Stenton said. “I’m already intrigued.”

“So as you can see, all is well in the neighborhood. Everyone who’s there is supposed
to be there. But now we see what happens when an unknown person arrives.”

A figure, colored red, appeared, and walked up to the door of one of the houses. Gareth
turned to the audience and raised his eyebrows.

“The system doesn’t know this man, so he’s red. Any new person
entering the neighborhood would automatically trigger the computer. All the neighbors
would receive a notice on their home and mobile devices that a visitor was in the
neighborhood. Usually it’s no big deal. Someone’s friend or uncle is dropping by.
But either way, you can see there’s a new person, and where he is.”

Stenton was sitting back, as if he knew the rest of the story but wanted to help it
speed along. “I’m assuming, then, there’s a way to neutralize him.”

“Yes. The people he’s visiting can send a message to the system saying he’s with them,
IDing him, vouching for him: ‘That’s Uncle George.’ Or they could do that ahead of
time. So then he’s tagged blue again.”

Now Uncle George, the figure on the screen, went from red to blue, and entered the
house.

“So all is well in the neighborhood again.”

“Unless there’s a real intruder,” Stenton prodded.

“Right. On the rare occasion when it’s truly someone with ill-intent …” Now the screen
featured a red figure stalking outside the house, peering in the windows. “Well, then
the whole neighborhood would know it. They’d know where he was, and could either stay
away, call the police, confront him, whatever it is they want to do.”

“Very good. Very nice,” Stenton said.

Gareth beamed. “Thank you. And Belinda made me think that, you know, any ex-cons living
in the neighborhood would register as red or orange in any display. Or some other
color, where you’d know they were residents of the neighborhood, but you’d also know
they were convicts or whatever.”

Stenton nodded. “It’s your right to know.”

“Absolutely,” Gareth said.

“Seems like this solves one of the problems of SeeChange,” Stenton said, “which is
that even when there are cameras everywhere, not everyone can watch everything. If
a crime is committed at three a.m., who’s watching camera 982, right?”

“Right,” Gareth said. “See, this way the cameras are just part of it. The color-tagging
tells you who’s anomalous, so you only have to pay attention to that particular anomaly.
Of course, the catch is whether or not this violates any privacy laws.”

“Well, I don’t think that’s a problem,” Stenton said. “You have a right to know who
lives on your street. What’s the difference between this and simply introducing yourself
to everyone on the street? This is just a more advanced and thorough version of ‘good
fences make good neighbors.’ I would imagine this would eliminate pretty much all
crime committed by strangers to any given community.”

Mae glanced at her bracelet. She couldn’t count them all, but hundreds of watchers
were insisting on Belinda’s and Gareth’s products, now. They asked
Where? When? How much?

Now Bailey’s voice popped through. “The one unanswered question, though, is, what
if the crime is committed by someone
inside
the neighborhood? Inside the house?”

Belinda and Gareth looked to a well-dressed woman, with very short black hair and
stylish glasses. “I guess that’s my cue.” She stood and straightened her black skirt.

“My name is Finnegan, and my issue was violence against children in the home. I myself
was a victim of domestic violence when I was young,” she said, taking a second to
let that register. “And this crime, among all others, seems like the most difficult
thing to prevent, given
the perpetrators are ostensibly part of the family, right? But then I realized that
all the necessary tools already exist. First, most people already have one or another
monitor that can track when their anger rises to a dangerous level. Now, if we couple
that tool with standard motion sensors, then we can know immediately when something
bad is happening, or is about to happen. Let me give you an example. Here’s a motion
sensor installed in the kitchen. These are often used in factories and even restaurant
kitchens to sense whether the chef or worker is completing a given task in a standard
way. I understand the Circle uses these to ensure regularity in many departments.”

“We do indeed,” Bailey said, provoking some distant laughter from the room where he
was sitting.

Stenton explained: “We own the patent for that particular technology. Did you know
that?”

Finnegan’s face flushed, and she seemed to be deciding whether or not to lie. Could
she say she
did
know?

“I was not aware of that,” she said, “but I’m very glad to know that now.”

Stenton seemed impressed with her composure.

“As you know,” she continued, “in workplaces, any irregularity of movement or in the
order of operations, and the computer either reminds you of what you might have forgotten,
or it logs the mistake for management. So I thought, why not use the same motion sensor
technology in the home, especially high-risk homes, to record any behavior outside
the norm?”

“Like a smoke detector for humans,” Stenton said.

“Right. A smoke detector will go off if it senses even the slightest
increase in carbon dioxide. So this is the same idea. I’ve installed a sensor here
in this room, actually, and want to show you how it sees.”

On the screen behind her, a figure appeared, the size and shape of Finnegan, though
featureless—a blue-shadow version of herself, mirroring her movements.

“Okay, this is me. Now watch my motions. If I walk around, then the sensors see that
as within the norm.”

Behind her, her form remained blue.

“If I cut some tomatoes,” Finnegan said, miming the cutting of imaginary tomatoes,
“same thing. It’s normal.”

The figure behind her, her blue shadow, mimicked her.

“But now see what happens if I do something violent.”

Finnegan raised her arms quickly and brought them down in front of her, as if hitting
a child beneath her. Immediately, onscreen, her figure turned orange, and a loud alarm
went off.

The alarm was a rapid rhythmic screeching. It was, Mae realized, far too loud for
a demonstration. She looked to Stenton, whose eyes were round and white.

“Turn it off,” he said, barely controlling his rage.

Finnegan hadn’t heard him, and was going about her presentation as if this were part
of it, an acceptable part of it. “That’s the alarm of course and—”

“Turn it off!” Stenton yelled, and this time, Finnegan heard. She flailed on her tablet,
looking for the right button.

Stenton was looking at the ceiling. “Where is that sound coming from? How is it so
loud?”

The screeching continued. Half the room was holding their ears.

“Turn it off or we walk out of here,” Stenton said, standing, his mouth small and
furious.

Finally Finnegan found the right button and the alarm went silent.

“That was a mistake,” Stenton said. “You don’t punish the people you’re pitching.
Do you understand that?”

Finnegan’s eyes were wild, vibrating, filling with tears. “Yes, I do.”

“You could have simply said an alarm goes off. No need to have the alarm go off. That’s
my business lesson for today.”

“Thank you sir,” she said, her knuckles white and entwined in front of her. “Should
I go on?”

“I don’t know,” Stenton said, still furious.

“Go ahead, Finnegan,” Bailey said. “Just make it quick.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice shaking, “the essence is that the sensors would be installed
in every room and would be programmed to know what was within the normal boundaries,
and what was anomalous. Something anomalous happens, the alarm goes off, and ideally
the alarm alone stops or slows whatever’s happening in the room. Meanwhile, the authorities
have been notified. You could hook it up so neighbors would be alerted, too, given
they’d be the closest and most likely to be able to step in immediately and help.”

“Okay. I get it,” Stenton said. “Let’s move on.” Stenton meant
move on to the next presenter
, but Finnegan, showing admirable resolve, continued.

“Of course, if you combine all these technologies, you’re able to quickly ensure behavioral
norms in any context. Think of prisons and schools. I mean, I went to a high school
with four thousand students,
and only twenty kids were troublemakers. I could imagine if teachers were wearing
retinals, and could see the red-coded students from a mile away—I mean, that would
eliminate most trouble. And then the sensors would pinpoint any antisocial behavior.”

Now Stenton was leaning back in his chair, his thumbs in his belt loops. He’d relaxed
again. “It occurs to me that so much crime and trouble is committed because we have
too much to track, right? Too many places, too many people. If we can concentrate
more on isolating the outliers, and being able to better tag them and follow them,
then we save endless amounts of time and distraction.”

“Exactly sir,” Finnegan said.

Stenton softened, and, looking down at his tablet, seemed to be seeing what Mae was
seeing on her wrist: Finnegan, and her program, were immensely popular. The dominant
messages were coming from victims of various crimes: women and children who had been
abused in their homes, saying the obvious:
If only this had been around ten years ago, fifteen years ago. At least
, they all said in one way or another,
this kind of thing will never happen again
.

When Mae returned to her desk, there was a note, on paper, from Annie. “Can you see
me? Just text ‘now’ when you can, and I’ll meet you in the bathroom.”