The Circle

by Dave Eggers

  “Yes,” Mae managed. “Of course.”

  “Good. He’s anxious to meet you. At six this evening, you’ll be brought to his office. Please collect your thoughts in the meantime.”

  Mae’s head echoed with self-denunciations. She hated who she was. How could she have done that, risked her job? Embarrassed her best friend? Jeopardized her father’s health insurance? She was an imbecile, yes, but was she some sort of schizophrenic, too? What had overtaken her the night before? What sort of person does that? Her mind argued with itself while she worked, feverishly, trying to do something visible to demonstrate her commitment to the company. She handled 140 customer queries, her record so far, while answering 1,129 survey questions, and while keeping the newbies on target. The pod aggregate score was 98, which she took pride in even while knowing there was some luck, and some of Jared’s involvement, too—he knew what was happening with Mae and had pledged his help. At five p.m. the chute closed and Mae worked on her PartiRank for forty-five minutes, bringing it from 1,827 to 1,430, a process entailing 344 comments, posts, and almost a thousand smiles and frowns. She converted 38 major topics and 44 minor ones, and her Retail Raw was $24,050. She felt sure that this would be noticed and appreciated by Bailey, whose concentration on PartiRank was the most acute of the Three Wise Men.

  At five forty-five, a voice called her name. She looked up to see a figure at the door, someone new, a man of about thirty. She met him at the door.

  “Mae Holland?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Dontae Peterson. I work with Eamon, and he’s asked me to bring you up to his office. You ready?”

  They took the same route Mae had taken with Annie, and along the way Mae realized that Dontae didn’t know Mae had been to Bailey’s office before. Annie had never sworn her to secrecy, but the fact that Dontae didn’t know indicated that Bailey didn’t know, and that she shouldn’t reveal this herself.

  As they entered the long crimson hallway, Mae was sweating heavily. She could feel rivulets making their way from her armpits to her waist. She couldn’t feel her feet.

  “Here’s a funny portrait of the Three Wise Men,” Dontae said as they stopped at the door. “Bailey’s niece did it.”

  Mae pretended to be surprised by it, delighted by its innocence and crude insight.

  Dontae took the large gargoyle knocker and rapped the door. It opened, and Bailey’s smiling face filled the void.

  “Hello!” he said. “Hi Dontae, hi Mae!” He smiled wider, acknowledging his rhyme. “Come in.”

  He was wearing khakis and a white button-down, looking freshly showered. Mae followed him as he took in the room, scratching the nape of his neck, as if almost embarrassed by how well he’d done here.

  “So this is my favorite room. Very few people have seen it. Not like I’m super-secret about it or anything, but time just doesn’t allow me to give tours and such. Have you seen anything like this before?”

  Mae wanted to say, but couldn’t, that she had seen this very room before. “Not remotely,” she said.

  Something happened in Bailey’s face at that moment, some twitch that seemed to bring the left corner of his eye and the left side of his mouth closer together.

  “Thank you Dontae,” Bailey said.

  Dontae smiled and left, closing the heavy door behind him.

  “So Mae. Tea?” Bailey was standing before an antique tea set, a silver pot emitting a narrow corkscrew of steam.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Green? Black?” he asked, smiling. “Grey?”

  “Green, thanks. But you don’t have to.”

  Bailey was busy with the preparations. “You’ve known our beloved Annie a long time?” he asked, pouring carefully.

  “I have. Since sophomore year in college. Five years now.”

  “Five years! That’s, what, thirty percent of your life!”

  Mae knew he was rounding up a bit, but she emitted a tiny laugh. “I guess so. A long time.” He handed her a saucer and cup and gestured for her to sit down. There were two chairs, both leather and overstuffed.

  Bailey dropped himself into his chair with a loud sigh, and rested his ankle on his knee. “Well, Annie is very important to us here, and thus you are, too. She talks about you like you could end up being very valuable to this community. Do you believe that’s true?”

  “That I could be valuable here?”

  He nodded, then blew on his tea. He looked over his teacup to her, his eyes steady. She met his gaze, then, briefly overwhelmed, she looked away, only to find his face again, this time in a framed photo on a nearby shelf. It was a formal portrait of Bailey’s family in black and white, his three girls standing around their mother and Bailey, who were both sitting. Bailey’s son was on his lap, wearing a tracksuit and holding an Iron Man action figure.

  “Well, I hope so,” Mae said. “I’ve been trying as hard as I can. I love the Circle, and can’t express how much I appreciate the opportunity I’ve been given here.”

  Bailey smiled. “Good, good. So tell me, how are you feeling about what happened last night?” He asked the question as if genuinely curious, as if her answer might go in any number of directions.

  Mae was on firm ground now. No obfuscation was necessary. “Terrible,” she said. “I barely slept. I’m so ashamed I want to puke.” She wouldn’t have used the word when talking to Stenton, but she felt Bailey might appreciate the coarseness.

  He smiled almost imperceptibly and moved on. “Mae, let me ask you a question. Would you have behaved differently if you’d known about the SeeChange cameras at the marina?”

  “Yes.”

  Bailey nodded empathetically. “Okay. How?”

  “I wouldn’t have done what I did.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because I would have been caught.”

  Bailey tilted his head. “Is that all?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want anyone seeing me do that. It wasn’t right. It’s embarrassing.”

  He put his cup on the table next to him and rested his hands on his lap, his palms in a gentle embrace. “So in general, would you say you behave differently when you know you’re being watched?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “And when you’ll be held accountable.”

  “Yes.”

  “And when there will be a historical record. That is, when or if your behavior will be permanently accessible. That a video of your behavior, for example, will exist forever.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. And do you remember my talk from earlier in the summer, about the ultimate goal of SeeChange?”

  “I know it would eliminate most crime, if there was full saturation.”

  Bailey seemed pleased. “Right. Correct. Everyday citizens, like Gary Katz and Walt Lefebvre in this instance, because they took the time to set up their cameras, they help keep us all safe. The crime was minor in this case, and there were no victims, thank god. You’re alive. Marion’s business, and the kayaking industry generally, lives to see another day. But one night of selfishness from you could have risked it all. The individual act has reverberations that can be nearly endless. Do you agree?”

  “I do. I know. It’s unconscionable.” And here Mae again had the feeling that she was a very short-sighted person, who repeatedly jeopardized all she’d been given by the Circle.

  “Mr. Bailey, I can’t believe I did this. And I know you’re wondering if I fit in here. I just want you to know how much I value my position here and your faith in me. And I want to honor that. I’ll do anything to make this up to you. Seriously, I’ll take on any extra work, I’ll do anything. Just tell me.”

  Bailey’s face broke into a highly amused grin. “Mae, your job isn’t in jeopardy. You’re here for good. Annie’s here for good. Sorry if you believed otherwise, for even a second. We don’t want either of you to ever leave.”

  “That’s very good to hear. Thank you,” Mae said, though her heart was hammering harder now.

  He
smiled, nodding, as if happy and relieved to have all that settled. “But this whole episode gives us a very important teachable moment, don’t you think?” The question seemed rhetorical, but Mae nodded anyway. “Mae,” he said, “when is a secret a good thing?”

  Mae took a few seconds on this. “When it can protect someone’s feelings.”

  “For example?”

  “Well,” she fumbled. “Let’s say you know your friend’s boyfriend is cheating on her but—”

  “But what? You don’t tell your friend?”

  “Okay. That’s not a good example.”

  “Mae, are you ever happy when a friend keeps a secret from you?”

  Mae thought about the many small lies she’d told to Annie recently. Lies that she’d not only spoken but typed, lies made permanent and undeniable.

  “No. But I understand when they have to.”

  “That’s interesting. Can you think of a time when you were happy one of your friends kept something from you?”

  Mae could not. “Not at the moment.” She felt sick.

  “Okay,” Bailey said, “for now, we can’t think of good secrets between friends. Let’s move on to families. In a family, is a secret a good thing? Theoretically, do you ever think, You know what would be great to keep from my family? A secret.”

  Mae thought of the many things her parents were likely keeping from her—the various indignities her father’s illness caused them. “No,” she said.

  “No secrets within a family?”

  “Actually,” Mae said. “I don’t know. There are definitely things you don’t want your parents to know.”

  “Would your parents want to know these things?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So you’re depriving your parents of something they want. This is good?”

  “No. But maybe better for all.”

  “Better for you. Better for the keeper of the secret. Some dark secret is better kept from the parents. Is this a secret about some wonderful thing you’ve done? Perhaps knowing about it would bring just too much joy to your parents?”

  Mae laughed. “No. Clearly a secret is something you don’t want them to know about because you’re ashamed or you want to spare them from knowing you screwed up.”

  “But we agree they would like to know.”

  “Yes.”

  “And are they entitled to know?”

  “I guess.”

  “Okay. So can we agree that we’re talking about a situation where, in a perfect world, you’re not doing anything you’d be ashamed of telling your parents?”

  “Sure. But there are other things they might not understand.”

  “Because they weren’t ever sons or daughters themselves?”

  “No. But—”

  “Mae, do you have any gay relatives or friends?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know how different the world was for gays before and after people began coming out?”

  “I have an idea of it.”

  Bailey stood and attended to the tea set. He poured more for himself and for Mae, and sat down again.

  “I don’t know if you do. I was from the generation that struggled greatly with coming out. My brother is gay, and he was twenty-four before he admitted it to my family. And until then, it nearly killed him. It was a tumor festering inside him, and it was growing every day. But why did he think it would be better kept inside? When he told our parents, they barely blinked. He had created all this drama in his mind—all this mystery and weight around his big secret. And part of the problem, historically, was with other people keeping similar things secret. Coming out was so difficult until millions of other men and women came out. Then it got a lot easier, don’t you agree? When millions of men and women came out of the closet, it made homosexuality not some mysterious so-called deviance but a mainstream life path. You follow?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “And I would argue that any place in the world where gays are still persecuted, you could instantly achieve great progress if all the gays and lesbians came out publicly at once. Then whoever is persecuting them, and all those who tacitly support this persecution, would realize that to persecute them would mean persecuting at least ten percent of the population—including their sons, daughters, neighbors and friends—even their own parents. It would be instantly untenable. But the persecution of gays or any minority group is made uniquely possible through secrecy.”

  “Okay. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “That’s fine,” he said, satisfied, and sipped his tea. He ran his finger over his upper lip, drying it. “So we’ve explored the damage of secrets within the family and between friends, and the role of secrecy in persecuting large classes of people. Let’s keep on our quest to find a use for a policy of secrecy. Should we look into politics? Do you think a president should keep secrets from the people she or he governs?”

  “No, but there have to be some things that we can’t know. For national security alone.”

  He smiled, happy, it seemed, that she’d said what he expected her to say. “Really, Mae? Do you recall when a man named Julian Assange leaked several million pages of secret U.S. documents?”

  “I read about it.”

  “Well, first of all, the U.S. government was very upset, as was much of the media. Many people thought this was a serious breach of security and that it presented a clear and present danger to our men and women in uniform here and abroad. But do you remember if any soldiers ever actually were harmed by these documents being released?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “None were. Not a one. Same thing happened in the seventies with the Pentagon Papers. Not one soldier got even a splinter due to the release of these documents. The main effect, I remember, of these documents being made public is that we found out that many of our diplomats are gossipy about the leaders of other countries. Millions of documents, and the main takeaway was that U.S. diplomats thought Gadhafi was a kook, with all his female bodyguards and strange eating habits. If anything, the release of the documents just put these diplomats on better behavior. They were more careful about what they said.”

  “But national defense—”

  “What about it? The only time we’re in danger is when we don’t know the plans or motives of the countries we’re supposedly at odds with. Or when they don’t know our plans but worry about them, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “But what if they did know our plans and we knew theirs? You’d suddenly be free of what they used to call the risk of mutually assured destruction, and instead you’d arrive at mutually assured trust. The U.S. has no purely nefarious motives, right? We’re not planning to wipe some country off the map. Sometimes, though, we take surreptitious steps to get what we want. But what if everyone was, and had to be, open and upfront?”

  “It would be better?”

  Bailey smiled broadly. “Good. I agree.” He put his cup down and again rested his hands in his lap.

  Mae knew she shouldn’t press him, but her mouth got ahead of her. “But you can’t be saying that everyone should know everything.”

  Bailey’s eyes widened, as if pleased she’d led him to an idea he coveted. “Of course not. But I am saying that everyone should have a right to know everything, and should have the tools to know anything. There’s not enough time to know everything, though I certainly wish there was.”

  He paused, lost briefly in thought, then returned his focus to Mae. “I understand you weren’t very happy about being the subject of Gus’s LuvLuv demonstration.”

  “It just caught me by surprise. He hadn’t told me about it beforehand.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Well, it presented a distorted impression of me.”

  “Was the information he presented incorrect? There were factual mistakes?”

  “Well, it wasn’t that. It was just … piecemeal. And maybe that made it seem incorrect. It was taking a few slivers of me and presenting that as the whole me—�
��

  “It seemed incomplete.”

  “Right.”

  “Mae, I’m very glad you put it that way. As you know, the Circle is itself trying to become complete. We’re trying to close the circle at the Circle.” He smiled at his own wordplay. “But you know the overall goals of completion, I assume.”

  She didn’t. “I think so,” she said.

  “Look at our logo,” he said, and pointed to a wallscreen, where, on his cue, the logo appeared. “See how that ‘c’ in the middle is open? For years it’s bothered me, and it’s become symbolic of what’s left to do here, which is to close it.” The ‘c’ on screen closed and became a perfect circle. “See that?” he said. “A circle is the strongest shape in the universe. Nothing can beat it, nothing can improve upon it, nothing can be more perfect. And that’s what we want to be: perfect. So any information that eludes us, anything that’s not accessible, prevents us from being perfect. You see?”

  “I do,” Mae said, though she wasn’t sure she did.

  “This is in line with our goals for how the Circle can help us, individually, feel more complete, and feel that others’ impressions of us are complete—are based on complete information. And to prevent us from feeling, as you did, that some distorted view of ourselves is presented to the world. It’s like a broken mirror. If we look into a broken mirror, a mirror that’s cracked or missing parts, what do we get?”

  Now it made sense to Mae. Any assessment, judgment, or picture utilizing incomplete information would always be wrong. “We get a distorted and broken reflection,” she said.

  “Right,” Bailey said. “And if the mirror is whole?”

  “We see everything.”

  “A mirror is truthful, correct?”

  “Of course. It’s a mirror. It’s reality.”

  “But a mirror can only be truthful when it’s complete. And I think for you, the problem with Gus’s LuvLuv presentation was that it wasn’t complete.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Well, that’s true,” she said. She wasn’t sure why she opened her mouth, but the words tumbled out before she could restrain them. “But I still think there are things, even if just a few, that we want to keep to ourselves. I mean, everyone does things alone, or in the bedroom, that they’re ashamed of.”