The Circle (56 page)

A knock startled her. She looked beyond Annie’s prone form to find Francis behind
the glass, in the viewing area. He raised a tentative hand, and Mae waved. She would
see him later, at an all-campus event to celebrate the latest Clarification milestone.
Ten million people were now transparent worldwide, the movement irreversible.

Annie’s role in making it possible could not be overstated, and Mae wished she could
witness it. There was so much Mae wanted to tell Annie. With a duty that felt holy,
she’d told the world about Kalden being Ty, about his bizarre claims and misguided
efforts to derail the completion of the Circle. Remembering it now, it seemed like
some kind of nightmare, being so far under the earth with that madman, disconnected
from her watchers and the rest of the world. But Mae had feigned her cooperation and
had escaped, and immediately
told Bailey and Stenton about it all. With their customary compassion and vision,
they’d allowed Ty to stay on campus, in an advisory role, with a secluded office and
no specific duties. Mae hadn’t seen him since their subterranean encounter, and did
not care to.

Mae had not reached her parents in a few months now, but it would be only a matter
of time. They would find each other, soon enough, in a world where everyone could
know each other truly and wholly, without secrets, without shame and without the need
for permission to see or to know, without the selfish hoarding of life—any corner
of it, any moment of it. All of that would be, so soon, replaced by a new and glorious
openness, a world of perpetual light. Completion was imminent, and it would bring
peace, and it would bring unity, and all that messiness of humanity until now, all
those uncertainties that accompanied the world before the Circle, would be only a
memory.

Another burst of color appeared on the screen monitoring the workings of Annie’s mind.
Mae reached out to touch her forehead, marveling at the distance this flesh put between
them. What was going on in that head of hers? It was exasperating, really, Mae thought,
not knowing. It was an affront, a deprivation, to herself and to the world. She would
bring this up with Stenton and Bailey, with the Gang of 40, at the earliest opportunity.
They needed to talk about Annie, the thoughts she was thinking. Why shouldn’t they
know them? The world deserved nothing less and would not wait.

Dave Eggers grew up near Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house
in San Francisco that produces books, a quarterly journal of new writing (
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern
), and a monthly magazine,
The Believer
. McSweeney’s publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history
to illuminate human rights crises around the world. In 2002, he cofounded 826 Valencia,
a nonprofit youth writing and tutoring center in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Sister centers have since opened in seven other American cities under the umbrella
of 826 National, and like-minded centers have opened in Dublin, London, Copenhagen,
Stockholm, and Birmingham, Alabama, among other locations. His work has been nominated
for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle
Award, and has won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, France’s Prix Médicis, Germany’s
Albatross Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the American Book Award. Eggers
lives in Northern California with his family.

Other titles by Dave Eggers available in eBook format
A Hologram for the King •
978-1-938073-31-1
How We Are Hungry •
978-0-307-42630-7
What Is the What •
978-0-307-39036-3
The Wild Things •
978-0-307-47756-9
You Shall Know Our Velocity •
978-0-307-42608-6
Zeitoun •
978-0-307-73943-8

Visit:
www.mcsweeneys.net

For more information, please visit
www.aaknopf.com