The Circle

by Dave Eggers

  There was a smattering of applause. Santos smiled, nodded, and continued.

  “We’ve all wanted and expected transparency from our elected leaders, but the technology wasn’t there to make it fully possible. But now it is. As Stewart has demonstrated, it’s very easy to provide the world at large full access to your day, to see what you see, hear what you hear and what you say. Thank you for your courage, Stewart.”

  The audience applauded again for Stewart with new vigor, some of them guessing what Santos was about to announce.

  “So I intend to follow Stewart on his path of illumination. And along the way, I intend to show how democracy can and should be: entirely open, entirely transparent. Starting today, I will be wearing the same device that Stewart wears. My every meeting, movement, my every word, will be available to all my constituents and to the world.”

  Stenton got off his stool and made his way to Santos. He looked out to the assembled Circlers. “Can we give Congresswoman Santos a round of applause?”

  But the audience was already clapping. There were whoops and whistles, and Santos beamed. While they roared, a technician emerged from the wings and hung a necklace around Santos’s head—a smaller version of the camera Stewart had been wearing. Santos held the lens to her lips and kissed it. The audience cheered. After a minute, Stenton raised his hands, and the crowd quieted. He turned to Santos.

  “So you’re saying that every conversation, every meeting, every part of your day will be broadcast?”

  “Yes. It will all be available on my Circle page. Every moment till I sleep.” The audienced applauded again, and Stenton indulged them, then again asked for quiet.

  “And what if those who want to meet with you don’t want a given meeting to be broadcast?”

  “Well, then they will not meet with me,” she said. “You’re either transparent or you’re not. You’re either accountable or you’re not. What would anyone have to say to me that couldn’t be said in public? What part of representing the people should not be known by the very people I’m representing?”

  The applause was drowning her out.

  “Indeed,” Stenton said.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” Santos said, bowing, putting her palms together in a posture of prayer. The applause continued for minutes. Finally, Stenton gestured for calm once more.

  “So when are you starting this new program?” he asked.

  “No time like the present,” she said. She pushed a button on the device around her neck, and there it was, the view from her camera, projected on the giant screen behind her. The audience saw itself, with great clarity, and roared with approval.

  “It begins now for me, Tom,” she said, “And I hope it begins soon for the rest of the elected leaders in this country—and for those in every one of the world’s democracies.”

  She bowed, she put her hands together again, and then began to walk off the stage. As she was nearing the curtains at stage-left, she stopped. “There’s no reason for me to go that way—too dark. I’m going this way,” she said, and the lights in the auditorium came on as she stepped down to the floor, into the bright light, the room’s thousand faces suddenly visible and cheering. She walked straight up the aisle, all the hands reaching to her, grinning faces telling her thank you, thank you, go forth and make us proud.

  That night, in the Colony, there was a reception for Congresswoman Santos, and she continued to be swarmed with new admirers. Mae briefly entertained the notion of trying to get close enough to shake her hand, but the crowd around her was five deep, all night, so instead Mae ate from the buffet, some kind of shredded pork that had been made on campus, and waited for Annie. She’d said she would try to make it down, but was on a deadline, preparing something for a hearing at the EU. “They’re whining about taxes again,” she said.

  Mae wandered the room, which had been decorated in a vaguely desert theme, with smatterings of cacti and sandstone in front of walls of digital sunsets. She saw and said hello to Dan and Jared, and a few of the newbies she’d been training. She looked for Francis, hoping he wouldn’t be there, but then remembered, with great relief, that he was at a conference in Las Vegas—a gathering of law enforcement agencies he was introducing to ChildTrack. As she wandered, a wallscreen sunset faded to make way for the face of Ty. His face was unshaven, and there were bags under eyes, and though he was clearly and thoroughly tired, he was smiling broadly. He was wearing his customary oversized black hoodie, and took a moment to clean his glasses on his sleeve before looking out at the room, left and right, as if he could see them all from wherever he was. Maybe he could. The room quickly hushed.

  “Hey everyone. Sorry I can’t be there with you all. I’ve been working on some very interesting new projects that are keeping me away from incredible social activities like the one you’re enjoying. But I did want to congratulate you all on this phenomenal new development. I think it’s a crucial new step for the Circle and will mean a great deal to our overall awesomeness.” For a second he seemed to be looking at whoever was operating the camera, as if confirming he’d said enough. Then his eyes returned to look into the room. “Thank you all for your hard work on it, and let the party truly begin!”

  His face disappeared, and the wallscreen again displayed the digital sunset. Mae chatted with some of the newbies in her pod, some of whom hadn’t seen any live addresses from Ty before, and were close to euphoric. Mae took a picture, zinged it and added a few words: Exciting stuff!

  Mae picked up her second glass of wine, deciding how she could do so without taking the napkin under it, which would serve no purpose and end up in her pocket, when she saw Kalden. He was in a shadowy stairwell, sitting on the steps. She meandered her way over to him, and when he saw her, his face brightened.

  “Oh hi,” he said.

  “Oh hi?”

  “Sorry,” he said, and leaned into her, intending a hug.

  She recoiled. “Where have you been?”

  “Been?”

  “You disappeared for two weeks,” Mae said.

  “It hasn’t been that long, has it? And I’ve been around. I looked for you one day but you looked busy.”

  “You came to CE?”

  “I did, but I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “And you couldn’t leave a message somehow?”

  “I didn’t know your last name,” he said, smiling, as if he knew far more than he was letting on. “Why didn’t you contact me?”

  “I didn’t know your last name, either. And there’s no Kalden listed anywhere.”

  “Really? How were you spelling it?”

  Mae began to enumerate the permutations she’d tried, when he interrupted.

  “Listen, it doesn’t matter. We both screwed up. And now we’re here.”

  Mae stepped back to take him in, thinking maybe, somewhere on him, she would find some clue as to whether or not he was real—a real Circler, a real person. Again he was wearing a snug longsleeve shirt, this one with narrow horizontal stripes in greens and reds and browns, and again he had maneuvered his way into very narrow black pants that gave his legs the look of an inverted V.

  “You do work here, right?” she asked.

  “Of course. How else could I get in? Security is pretty good here. Especially on a day like today, with our luminous guest.” He nodded to the congresswoman, who was signing her name on someone’s tablet.

  “You look like you’re ready to leave,” Mae said.

  “Do I?” Kalden said. “No, no. I’m just comfortable back here. I like to sit during these things. And I guess I like to have the option of fleeing.” He threw his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the stairs behind him.

  “I’m just glad my supervisors saw me here,” Mae said. “That was my first priority. Do you have to be seen here by a supervisor or anything?”

  “Supervisor?” For a moment, Kalden looked at her as if she’d just said something in a familiar and yet incomprehensible language. “Oh yeah,” he said, nodding. “They saw me
here. I took care of that.”

  “Have you told me what you do here yet?”

  “Ah, I don’t know. Have I? Look at that guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “Oh, never mind,” Kalden said, seeming to have already forgotten whom he was looking at. “So you’re in PR?”

  “No. Customer Experience.”

  Kalden tilted his head. “Oh. Oh. I knew that,” he said, unconvincingly. “You’ve been there a while?”

  Mae had to laugh. The man was not all there. His mind seemed barely tethered to his body, much less the earth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his face turning to her, now looking impossibly sincere and clear-eyed. “But I want to remember these things about you. I was actually hoping I’d see you here.”

  “How long have you worked here again?” she asked.

  “Me? Um.” He scratched the back of his head. “Wow. I don’t know. A while now.”

  “One month? A year? Six years?” she asked, thinking he really was some kind of savant.

  “Six?” he said, “That would be the beginning. You think I look old enough to have been here six years? I don’t want to look that old. Is it the grey hair?”

  Mae had no idea what to say. Of course it was the grey hair. “Should we get a refreshment?” she asked.

  “No, you go ahead,” he said.

  “Afraid to leave your hideout?”

  “No, just feeling less social.”

  She made her way to a table where a few hundred glasses of wine had been poured and were waiting.

  “Mae, right?”

  She turned to find the two women, Dayna and Hillary, who were building a submersible for Stenton. Mae remembered meeting them on her first day, and since then had been getting their updates on her second screen at least three a day. They were weeks away from finishing the craft; Stenton planned to take it to the Marianas Trench.

  “I’ve been following your progress,” Mae said. “Incredible. You’re building it here?”

  Mae glanced over her shoulder to make sure Kalden hadn’t made a quick exit.

  “With the Project 9 guys, yeah,” Hillary said, waving a hand at some other, unknown part of the campus. “Safer to build it here, to keep the patented stuff secure.”

  “This is the first vessel big enough to really bring back full-sized animal life,” Dayna said.

  “And you guys get to go?”

  Dayna and Hillary laughed. “No,” Hillary said. “This thing’s built for one man and one man only: Tom Stenton.”

  Dayna looked askance at Hillary, then back to Mae. “The costs of making it big enough for more people are pretty much prohibitive.”

  “Right,” Hillary said. “That’s what I meant.”

  When Mae returned to Kalden’s stairwell, holding two glasses of wine, he was in the same place, but he had somehow gotten himself two glasses of his own.

  “Someone came by with a tray,” he said, standing up.

  They stood briefly, each two-fisted, and Mae could think of nothing but clinking all four glasses together, which they did.

  “I ran into the team building the submersible,” Mae said. “You know them?”

  Kalden rolled his eyes. It was startling. Mae hadn’t seen anyone else do that at the Circle.

  “What?” Mae said.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Did you like the speech?” he asked.

  “The whole Santos thing? I did. Very exciting.” She was careful with her words. “I think this will be a momentous, uh, moment in the history of demo—” She paused, seeing him smile. “What?” she said.

  “Nothing,” he said. “You don’t have to give me a speech. I heard what Stenton said. You really think this is a good idea?”

  “You don’t?”

  He shrugged and drained half his glass. “That guy just concerns me sometimes.” Then, knowing he shouldn’t have said that about one of the Wise Men, he changed tacks. “He’s just so smart. It’s intimidating. You really think I look old? What would you say? Thirty?”

  “You don’t look that old,” Mae said.

  “I don’t believe you. I know I do.”

  Mae drank from one of her glasses. They looked around, watching the feed from Santos’s camera. It was being projected onto the far wall, and a group of Circlers stood, watching, while Santos mingled a few feet away. One Circler found his own image caught on the congresswoman’s camera, and positioned his hand to cover his second, projected, face.

  Kalden watched closely, his brow furrowed. “Hm,” he said. He tilted his head, like a traveler puzzling out some odd local customs. Then he turned to Mae, and looked at her two glasses and at his own, as if just now realizing the humor in both of them standing two-fisted in a doorway. “I’m gonna get rid of this one,” he said, and downed the glass in his left hand. Mae followed suit.

  “Sorry,” she said, for no reason. She knew she would soon be tipsy, probably too tipsy to hide it; bad decisions would ensue. She tried to think of something intelligent to say while she could.

  “So where does all that go?” she asked.

  “The stuff from the camera?”

  “Yeah, is it stored somewhere here? The cloud?”

  “Well, it’s in the cloud, sure, but it has to be stored in a physical place, too. The stuff from Stewart’s camera … Wait. You want to see something?”

  He was already halfway down the stairwell, his limbs nimble and spidery.

  “I don’t know,” Mae said.

  Kalden looked up, as if he’d had his feelings hurt. “I can show you where Stewart is stored. You want to? I’m not taking you to some dungeon.”

  Mae looked around the room, scanning for Dan and Jared, but couldn’t find them. She’d stayed an hour, and they’d seen her, so she assumed she could leave. She took a few pictures, posted them, and sent a series of zings, detailing and commenting on the proceedings. Then she followed Kalden down the stairs, three flights, to what she assumed was the basement. “I’m really trusting you,” she said.

  “You should,” Kalden said, approaching a large blue door. He passed his fingers over a wall-mounted pad and it opened. “Come.”

  She followed him down a long hallway, and she had the feeling she was passing from one building to another, through some tunnel far underground. Soon another door appeared, and again Kalden released the lock with his fingerprints. Mae followed, almost giddy, intrigued by his extraordinary access, too tipsy to measure the wisdom of following this calligraphic man through this labyrinth. They rode down what Mae guessed was four floors, exited into another long corridor, and then entered another stairwell, where they again went down. Mae soon found her second glass of wine cumbersome, so she finished it.

  “Anywhere I can put this?” she asked. Without a word, Kalden took the glass and left it on the lowest step of the stairway they’d just finished.

  Who was this person? He had access to every door he encountered, but he also had an anarchic streak. No one else at the Circle would abandon a glass like that—which amounted to some grand act of pollution—and no one else would take such a journey in the middle of a company party. There was a muffled part of Mae that knew Kalden was likely a troublemaker here, and that what they were doing was probably against some or all rules and regulations.

  “I still don’t know what you do here,” she said.

  They were walking through a dimly lit corridor that sloped gently downward and with no apparent end.

  He turned. “Not much. I go to meetings. I listen, I provide feedback. It’s not very important,” he said, walking briskly ahead of her.

  “Do you know Annie Allerton?”

  “Of course. I love Annie.” Now he turned back to her. “Hey, you still have that lemon I gave you?”

  “No. It never turned yellow.”

  “Huh,” he said, and his eyes briefly left their focus on her, as if they were needed somewhere else, somewhere deep in his mind, for a brief but crucial calculation.

  “Where are we?” Mae a
sked. “I feel like we’re a thousand feet underground.”

  “Not quite,” he said, his eyes returning. “But close. Have you heard of Project 9?”

  Project 9, as far as Mae knew, was the all-encompassing name for the secret research being done at the Circle. Anything from space technology—Stenton thought the Circle could design and build a far better reusable spacecraft—to what was rumored to be a plan to embed and make accessible massive amounts of data in human DNA.

  “Is that where we’re going?” Mae asked.

  “No,” he said, and opened another door.

  They entered a large room, about the size of a basketball court, dimly lit but for a dozen spotlights trained on an enormous red metallic box, the size of a bus. Each side was smooth, polished, the whole thing surrounded by a network of gleaming silver pipes forming an elaborate grid around it.

  “It looks like some kind of Donald Judd sculpture,” Mae said.

  Kalden turned to her, his face alight. “I’m so glad you said that. He was a big inspiration to me. I love that thing he once said: ‘Things that exist exist, and everything is on their side.’ You ever see his stuff in person?”

  Mae was only passingly familiar with the work of Donald Judd—they’d done a few days on him in one of her art history classes—but didn’t want to disappoint Kalden. “No, but I love him,” she said. “I love his heft.”

  And with that, something new appeared on Kalden’s face, some new respect for, or interest in, Mae, as if at that moment she’d become three-dimensional and permanent.