The Circle

by Dave Eggers

  “But why should they be ashamed?”

  “Maybe not always ashamed. But things they don’t want to share. That maybe they don’t think people will understand. Or will change the perception of them.”

  “Okay, with that kind of thing, one of two things will eventually happen. First, we’ll realize that whatever behavior we’re talking about is so widespread and harmless that it needn’t be secret. If we demystify it, if we admit that it’s something we all do, then it loses its power to shock. We move toward honesty, and we move away from shame. Or second, and even better, if we all, as a society, decide that this is behavior we’d rather not engage in, the fact that everyone knows, or has the power to know who’s doing it, this would prevent the behavior from being engaged in. This is just as you said—you wouldn’t have stolen if you knew you were being watched.”

  “Right.”

  “Would the guy down the hall view porn at work if he knew he was being watched?”

  “No. I guess not.”

  “So, problem solved, right?”

  “Right. I guess.”

  “Mae, have you ever had a secret that festered within you, and once that secret was out, you felt better?”

  “Sure.”

  “Me too. That’s the nature of secrets. They’re cancerous when kept within us, but harmless when they’re out in the world.”

  “So you’re saying there should be no secrets.”

  “I have thought on this for years, and I have yet to conjure a scenario where a secret does more good than harm. Secrets are the enablers of antisocial, immoral and destructive behavior. Do you see how this is?”

  “I think so. But—”

  “You know what my spouse said to me years ago when we got married? She said that whenever we were apart, for instance when I might go on a business trip, I should behave as if there were a camera on me. As if she were watching. Way back when, she was saying this in a purely conceptual way, and she was half-kidding, but the mental picture helped me. If I found myself alone in a room with a woman colleague, I would wonder, What would Karen think of this if she were watching from a closed-circuit camera? This would gently guide my behavior, and it would prevent me from even approaching behavior she wouldn’t like, and of which I wouldn’t be proud. It kept me honest. You see what I mean?”

  “I do,” Mae said.

  “I mean, the trackability of self-driving cars is solving a lot of this, of course. Spouses increasingly know where the other has been, given the car logs where it’s been driven. But my point is, what if we all behaved as if we were being watched? It would lead to a more moral way of life. Who would do something unethical or immoral or illegal if they were being watched? If their illegal money transfer was being tracked? If their blackmailing phone call was being recorded? If their stick-up at the gas station was being filmed by a dozen cameras, and even their retinas identified during the robbery? If their philandering was being documented in a dozen ways?”

  “I don’t know. I’m imagining all that would be greatly reduced.”

  “Mae, we would finally be compelled to be our best selves. And I think people would be relieved. There would be this phenomenal global sigh of relief. Finally, finally, we can be good. In a world where bad choices are no longer an option, we have no choice but to be good. Can you imagine?”

  Mae nodded.

  “Now, speaking of relief, is there anything you’d like to tell me before we wrap up?”

  “I don’t know. So many things, I guess,” Mae said. “But you’ve been so nice to spend all this time with me, so—”

  “Mae, is there something specific that you’ve kept hidden from me as we’ve been together here in this library?”

  Mae knew, instantly, that lying was not an option.

  “That I’ve been here before?” she said.

  “Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you implied when you entered that you hadn’t.”

  “Annie brought me. She said it was some kind of secret. I don’t know. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t see either way as being ideal. I get in trouble either way.”

  Bailey smiled extravagantly. “See, that’s not true. Only lies get us in trouble. Only the things we hide. Of course I knew you’d been here. Give me some credit! But I was curious that you hid this from me. It made me feel distant from you. A secret between two friends, Mae, is an ocean. It’s wide and deep and we lose ourselves in it. And now that I know your secret, do you feel better or worse?”

  “Better.”

  “Relief?”

  “Yes, relief.”

  Mae did feel relief, a surge of it that felt like love. Because she still had her job, and she would not have to go back to Longfield, and because her father would stay strong and her mother unburdened, she wanted to be held by Bailey, to be subsumed by his wisdom and generosity.

  “Mae,” he said, “I truly believe that if we have no path but the right path, the best path, then that would present a kind of ultimate and all-encompassing relief. We don’t have to be tempted by darkness anymore. Forgive me for putting it in moral terms. That’s the Midwestern church-goer in me. But I’m a believer in the perfectibility of human beings. I think we can be better. I think we can be perfect or near to it. And when we become our best selves, the possibilities are endless. We can solve any problem. We can cure any disease, end hunger, everything, because we won’t be dragged down by all our weaknesses, our petty secrets, our hoarding of information and knowledge. We will finally realize our potential.”

  Mae had been dizzy from the conversation with Bailey for days, and now it was Friday, and the thought of going onstage at lunch made concentration almost impossible. But she knew she had to work, to set an example for her pod, at the very least, given this would likely be her last full day at CE.

  The flow was steady but not overwhelming, and she got through 77 customer queries that morning. Her score was 98 and the pod aggregate was 97. All respectable numbers. Her PartiRank was 1,921, another fine figure, and one she felt comfortable taking into the Enlightenment.

  At 11:38, she left her desk and walked to the side door of the auditorium, arriving ten minutes before noon. She knocked and the door opened. Mae met the stage manager, an older, almost spectral man named Jules, who brought her into a simple dressing room of white walls and bamboo floors. A brisk woman named Teresa, enormous eyes outlined in blue, sat Mae down, looked over her hair and blushed her face with a feathery brush, and applied a lavalier microphone to her blouse. “No need to touch anything,” she said. “It’ll be activated once you go out onstage.”

  It was happening very quickly, but Mae felt this was best. If she had more time she would only get more nervous. So she listened to Jules and Teresa, and in minutes she was in the wings of the stage, listening to a thousand Circlers enter the auditorium, talking and laughing and dropping themselves into their seats with happy thumps. She wondered, briefly, if Kalden was anywhere out there.

  “Mae.”

  She turned to find Eamon Bailey behind her, wearing a sky-blue shirt, smiling warmly at her. “Are you ready?”

  “I think so.”

  “You’ll be great,” he said. “Don’t worry. Just be natural. We’re just re-creating the conversation we had last week. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  And then he was onstage, waving to the crowd, everyone clapping with abandon. There were two burgundy-colored chairs on the stage, facing each other, and Bailey sat down in one and spoke into the darkness.

  “Hello, Circlers,” he said.

  “Hello Eamon!” they roared back.

  “Thank you for being here today, on a very special Dream Friday. I thought we’d change it up a bit today and have not a speech, but an interview. As some of you know, we do these from time to time to shed light on members of the Circle and their thoughts, their hopes, and in this case, their evolutions.”

  He sat in one of the chairs and smiled into the wings. “I had a conversation with a yo
ung Circler the other day that I wanted to share with you. So I’ve asked Mae Holland, who some of you might know as one of our newbies in Customer Experience, to join me today. Mae?”

  Mae stepped into the light. The feeling was of instant weightlessness, of floating in black space, with two distant but bright suns blinding her. She couldn’t see anyone in the audience, and could barely orient herself to the stage. But she managed to direct her body, her legs made of straw, her feet leaden, toward Bailey. She found her chair, and with two hands, feeling numb and blind, lowered herself into it.

  “Hello Mae. How are you?”

  “Terrified.”

  The audience laughed.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Bailey said, smiling to the audience and giving her the slightest look of concern.

  “Easy for you to say,” she said, and there was laughter throughout the room. This laughter felt good and calmed her. She breathed in, and looked in the front row, finding five or six shadowy faces, all smiling. She was, she realized and now felt in her bones, among friends. She was safe. She took a sip of water, felt it cool everything inside her, and put her hands in her lap. She felt ready.

  “Mae, in one word how would you describe the awakening you had this past week?”

  This part they had rehearsed. She knew Bailey wanted to start with this idea of an awakening. “It was just that, Eamon”—she’d been instructed to call him Eamon—“it was an awakening.”

  “Oops. I guess I just stole your thunder,” he said. The audience laughed. “I should have said, ‘What did you have this week?’ But tell us, why that word?”

  “Well, ‘awakening’ seems right to me …” Mae said, and then added “… now.”

  The word “now” appeared a split-second later than it should have, and Bailey’s eye twitched. “Let’s talk about this awakening,” he said. “It started on Sunday night. Many of the people in the room already know the broad outlines of the events, with SeeChange and all. But give us a summary.”

  Mae looked at her hands, in what she realized was a theatrical gesture. She had never before looked at her hands to indicate some level of shame.

  “I committed a crime, basically,” she said. “I borrowed a kayak without the knowledge of the owner, and I paddled to an island in the middle of the bay.”

  “That was Blue Island, I understand?”

  “It was.”

  “And did you tell anyone you were doing this?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Now Mae, did you have the intention of telling anyone about this trip afterward?”

  “No.”

  “And did you document it at all? Pictures, video?”

  “No, nothing.”

  There were some murmurs from the audience. Mae and Eamon had expected a reaction to this revelation, and they both paused to allow the crowd to assimilate this information.

  “Did you know you were doing something wrong, in borrowing this kayak without the owner’s knowledge?”

  “I did.”

  “But you did it anyway. Why?”

  “Because I thought no one would know.”

  Another low murmur from the audience.

  “So this is an interesting point. The very fact that you thought this action would remain secret enabled you to commit this crime, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Would you have done it had you known people were watching?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “So in a way, doing all this in darkness, unobserved and unaccountable, it facilitated impulses that you regret?”

  “Absolutely. The fact that I thought I was alone, unwatched, enabled me to commit a crime. And I risked my life. I wasn’t wearing a life preserver.”

  Again, a loud murmur rippled through the audience.

  “So you not only committed a crime against the owner of this property, but you risked your own life. All because you were being enabled by some, what, some cloak of invisibility?”

  The audience rumbled with laughter. Bailey’s eyes stayed on Mae, telling her Things are going well.

  “Right,” she said.

  “I have a question, Mae. Do you behave better or worse when you’re being watched?”

  “Better. Without a doubt.”

  “When you’re alone, unwatched, unaccountable, what happens?”

  “Well, for one thing, I steal kayaks.”

  The audience laughed in a sudden bright burst.

  “Seriously. I do things I don’t want to do. I lie.”

  “The other day, when we spoke, you had a way of putting it that I thought was very interesting and succinct. Can you tell us all what you said?”

  “I said that secrets are lies.”

  “Secrets are lies. It’s very memorable. Can you walk us through your logic with that phrase, Mae?”

  “Well, when there’s something kept secret, two things happen. One is that it makes crimes possible. We behave worse when we’re not accountable. That goes without saying. And second, secrets inspire speculation. When we don’t know what’s being hidden, we guess, we make up answers.”

  “Well that’s interesting, isn’t it?” Bailey turned to the audience. “When we can’t reach a loved one, we speculate. We panic. We make up stories about where they are or what’s happened to them. And if we’re feeling ungenerous, or jealous, we make up lies. Sometimes some very damaging lies. We assume they’re doing something nefarious. All because we don’t know something.”

  “It’s like when we see two people whispering,” Mae said. “We worry, we feel insecure, we make up terrible things they might be saying. We assume it’s about us and that it’s catastrophic.”

  “When they’re probably asking where the bathroom is.” Bailey got a big laugh and enjoyed it.

  “Right,” Mae said. She knew she was approaching a few phrases she needed to get right. She’d said them in Bailey’s library, and she just needed to say them again the way she’d first said them. “For example, if there’s a locked door, I start to make up all kinds of stories about what might be behind it. I feel like it’s some kind of secret, and it leads to me making up lies. But if all the doors are open, physically and metaphorically, there’s only the one truth.”

  Bailey smiled. She’d nailed it.

  “I like that, Mae. When the doors are open, there’s only one truth. So let’s recap that first statement of Mae’s. Can we get that on the screen?”

  The words SECRETS ARE LIES appeared on the screen behind Mae. Seeing the words four feet tall gave her a complicated feeling—something between thrill and dread. Bailey was all smiles, shaking his head, admiring the words.

  “Okay, we’ve resolved that had you known that you’d be held accountable for your actions, you wouldn’t have committed this crime. Your access to the shadows, in this case illusory shadows, facilitates bad behavior. And when you know you’re being watched, you are your better self. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Now let’s talk about the second revelation you made after this episode. You mentioned that you didn’t document this trip to Blue Island in any way. Why not?”

  “Well, first of all, I knew I was doing something illegal.”

  “Sure. But you’ve said that you often kayak in the bay, and you’d never documented these trips. You hadn’t joined any Circle clubs devoted to kayaking, and you hadn’t posted accounts, photos, video, or comments. Have you been doing these kayak trips under the auspices of the CIA?”

  Mae, and the audience, laughed. “No.”

  “Then why these secret trips? You haven’t told anyone about them before or after, you haven’t mentioned them anywhere. No accounts exist of any of these excursions, am I right?”

  “You are right.”

  Mae heard loud clucks spread through the auditorium.

  “What did you see on this last trip, Mae? I understand it was quite beautiful.”

  “It was, Eamon. There was an almost-full moon, and the water was very calm, and I felt like
I was paddling through liquid silver.”

  “Sounds incredible.”

  “It was.”

  “Animals? Wildlife?”

  “I was followed for a while by a sole harbor seal, and he dipped above and below the surface, as if he was curious, and also urging me on. I’d never been to this island. Very few people have. And once I got to the island, I climbed to the top, and the view from the peak was incredible. I saw the golden lights of the city, and the black foothills toward the Pacific, and even saw a shooting star.”

  “A shooting star! Lucky you.”

  “I was very lucky.”

  “But you didn’t take a picture.”

  “No.”

  “Not any video.”

  “No.”

  “So there’s no record of any of this.”

  “No. Not outside my own memory.”

  There were audible groans from the audience. Bailey turned to the audience, shaking his head, indulging them.

  “Okay,” he said, sounding as if he were bracing himself, “now this is where we get into something personal. As you all know, I have a son, Gunner, who was born with CP, cerebral palsy. Though he’s living a very full life, and we’re trying, always, to improve his opportunities, he is confined to a wheelchair. He can’t walk. He can’t run. He can’t go kayaking. So what does he do if he wants to experience something like this? Well, he watches video. He looks at pictures. Much of his experiences of the world come through the experiences of others. And of course so many of you Circlers have been so generous, providing him with video and photos of your own travels. When he experiences the SeeChange view of a Circler climbing Mount Kenya, he feels like he’s climbed Mount Kenya. When he sees firsthand video from an America’s Cup crew member, Gunner feels, in some way, that he’s sailed in the America’s Cup, too. These experiences were facilitated by generous humans who have shared what they saw with the world, my son included. And we can only extrapolate how many others there are out there like Gunner. Maybe they’re disabled. Maybe they’re elderly, homebound. Maybe a thousand things. But the point is that there are millions of people who can’t see what you saw, Mae. Does it feel right to have deprived them of seeing what you saw?”