The Circle

by Dave Eggers

  Mae and Francis found themselves at a quieter place down the Embarcadero, where they ordered another round and found themselves joined by a man in his fifties. Uninvited, he sat down with them, holding a large drink in both hands. In seconds he’d told them he was once a divinity student, was living in Ohio and heading for the priesthood, when he discovered computers. He’d dropped it all and moved to Palo Alto, but had felt removed, for twenty years, he said, from the spiritual. Until now.

  “I saw your talk today,” he said. “You connected it all. You found a way to save all the souls. This is what we were doing in the church—we tried to get them all. How to save them all? This has been the work of missionaries for millennia.” He was slurring, but took another long swallow from his drink. “You and yours at the Circle”—and here he drew a circle in the air, horizontally, and Mae thought of a halo—“you’re gonna save all the souls. You’re gonna get everyone in one place, you’re gonna teach them all the same things. There can be one morality, one set of rules. Imagine!” And here he slammed his open palm upon the iron table, rattling his glass. “Now all humans will have the eyes of God. You know this passage? ‘All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of God.’ Something like that. You know your Bible?” Seeing the blank looks on the faces of Mae and Francis, he scoffed and took a long pull from his drink. “Now we’re all God. Every one of us will soon be able to see, and cast judgment upon, every other. We’ll see what He sees. We’ll articulate His judgment. We’ll channel His wrath and deliver His forgiveness. On a constant and global level. All religion has been waiting for this, when every human is a direct and immediate messenger of God’s will. Do you see what I’m saying?” Mae looked at Francis, who was having little success holding back a laugh. He burst first, and she followed, and they cackled, trying to apologize to him, holding their hands up, begging his forgiveness. But he was having none of it. He stepped away from the table, then swirled back to get his drink, and, now complete, he rambled crookedly down the waterfront.

  Mae awoke next to Francis. It was seven a.m. They’d passed out in her dorm room shortly after two. She checked her phone, finding 322 new messages. As she was holding it, her eyes bleary, it rang. The caller ID was blocked, and she knew it could only be Kalden. She let it go to voicemail. He called a dozen more times throughout the morning. He called while Francis got up, kissed her, and returned to his own room. He called while she was in the shower, while she was dressing. She brushed her hair, adjusted her bracelets, and lifted the lens over her head, and he called again. She ignored the call and opened her messages.

  There was an array of congratulatory threads, from inside and outside the Circle, the most intriguing of which was spurred by Bailey himself, who alerted Mae that Circle developers had begun to act on her ideas already. They’d been working through the night, in a fever of inspiration, and within a week hoped to prototype a version of Mae’s notions, to be used first in the Circle, polished there and later rolled out for use in any nation where Circle membership was strong enough to make it practical.

  We’re calling it Demoxie, Bailey zinged. It’s democracy with your voice, and your moxie. And it’s coming soon.

  That morning Mae was invited to the developers’ pod, where she found twenty or so exhausted but inspired engineers and designers, who apparently already had a beta version of Demoxie ready. When Mae entered, cheers erupted, the lights dimmed, and a single light shone on a woman with long black hair and a face of barely contained joy.

  “Hello Mae, hello Mae’s watchers,” she said, bowing briefly. “My name is Sharma, and I’m so glad, and so honored, to be with you today. Today we’ll be demonstrating the very earliest form of Demoxie. Normally we wouldn’t move so quickly, and so, well, transparently, but given the Circle’s fervent belief in Demoxie, and our confidence that it will be adopted quickly and globally, we couldn’t see any reason to delay.”

  The wallscreen came to life. The word Demoxie appeared, rendered in a spirited font and set inside a blue-and-white striped flag.

  “The goal is to make sure that everyone who works at the Circle can weigh in on issues that affect their lives—mostly on campus, but in the larger world, too. So throughout any given day, when the Circle needs to take the company’s temperature on any given issue, Circlers will get a pop-up notice, and they’ll be asked to answer the question or questions. The expected turnaround will be speedy, and will be essential. And because we care so much about everyone’s input, your other messaging systems will freeze temporarily until you answer. Let me show you.”

  On the screen, below the Demoxie logo, the question Should we have more veggie options at lunch? was bookended by buttons on either side, Yes and No.

  Mae nodded. “Very impressive, guys!”

  “Thank you,” Sharma said. “Now, if you’ll indulge us. You have to answer, too.” And she invited Mae to touch either Yes or No on the screen.

  “Oh,” Mae said. She walked up to the screen and pushed Yes. The engineers cheered, the developers cheered. On the screen, a happy face appeared, with the words You are heard! arcing above. The question disappeared, replaced by the words Demoxie result: 75% of respondents want more veggie options. More veggie options will be provided.

  Sharma was beaming. “See? That’s a simulated result, of course. We don’t have everyone on Demoxie yet, but you get the gist. The question appears, everyone stops briefly what they’re doing, responds, and instantly, the Circle can take appropriate action knowing the full and complete will of the people. Incredible, right?”

  “It is,” Mae said.

  “Imagine this rolled out nationwide. Worldwide!”

  “It’s beyond my capability to imagine.”

  “But you came up with this!” Sharma said.

  Mae didn’t know what to say. Had she invented this? She wasn’t sure. She’d connected a few dots: the efficiency and utility of the CircleSurveys, the constant Circle goal of total saturation, the universal hope for real and unfiltered—and, most crucially, complete—democracy. Now it was in the hands of the developers, hundreds of them at the Circle, the best in the world. Mae told them this, that she was just one person who connected a few ideas that stood inches apart, and Sharma, and her team, beamed, and shook her hand, and they all agreed that what had already been done was setting the Circle, and possibly all of humanity, on a significant new path.

  Mae left the Renaissance and was greeted, just outside the door, by a group of young Circlers, all of whom wanted to tell her—all of them on their tiptoes, bursting—that they had never voted before, that they had been utterly uninterested in politics, had felt disconnected entirely from their government, feeling they had no real voice. They told her that by the time their vote, or their name on some petition, was filtered through their local government, and then their state officials, and finally their representatives in Washington, it felt like sending a message in a bottle across a vast and troubled sea. But now, the young Circlers said, they felt involved. If Demoxie worked, they said, then laughed—when Demoxie is implemented, of course it will work, they said—and when it does, you’ll finally have a fully engaged populace, and when you do, the country and the world will hear from the youth, and their inherent idealism and progressivism will upend the planet. This is what Mae heard all day, as she wandered through the campus. She could barely get from one building to another without being accosted. We’re on the verge of actual change, they said. Change at the speed that our hearts demand.

  But throughout the morning, the calls from the blocked number continued. She knew it was Kalden, and she knew she wanted no part of him. Talking to him, much less seeing him, would be a significant step back now. By noon, Sharma and her team announced that they were ready for the first actual all-campus Demoxie tryout. At 12:45 everyone would receive five questions, and the results would not only be tabulated immediately, but, the Wise Men promised, the will of the people would be enacted within the day.

  Mae was standing in the center of the c
ampus, amid a few hundred Circlers eating lunch, all of them buzzing about the imminent Demoxie demonstration, and she thought of that painting of the Constitutional Convention, all those men in powdered wigs and waistcoats, standing stiffly, all of them wealthy white men who were only passably interested in representing their fellow humans. They were purveyors of an innately flawed kind of democracy, where only the wealthy were elected, where their voices were heard loudest, where they passed their seats in Congress to whatever similarly entitled person they deemed appropriate. There had been some incremental improvements in the system since then, maybe, but Demoxie would explode it all. Demoxie was purer, was the only chance at direct democracy the world had ever known.

  It was twelve thirty, and because Mae was feeling strong, and feeling so confident, she finally succumbed and answered her phone, knowing it would be Kalden.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Mae,” he said, his voice terse, “this is Kalden. Don’t say my name. I’ve rigged it so the incoming audio isn’t working.”

  “No.”

  “Mae. Please. This is life or death.”

  Kalden held a power over her that shamed her. It made her feel weak and pliable. In every other facet of her life she was in control, but his voice alone disassembled her, and opened her to an array of bad decisions. A minute later she was in the stall, her audio was off, and her phone rang again.

  “I’m sure someone is tracing this,” she said.

  “No one is. I bought us time.”

  “Kalden, what do you want?”

  “You can’t do this. Your mandatory thing, and the positive reaction it’s gotten—this is the last step toward closing the Circle, and that can’t happen.”

  “What are you talking about? This is the whole point. If you’ve been here so long, you know more than anyone that that’s been the goal of the Circle since the beginning. I mean, it’s a circle, stupid. It has to close. It has to be complete.”

  “Mae, all along, for me at least, this kind of thing was the fear, not the goal. Once it’s mandatory to have an account, and once all government services are channeled through the Circle, you’ll have helped create the world’s first tyrannical monopoly. Does it seem like a good idea to you that a private company would control the flow of all information? That participation, at their beck and call, is mandatory?”

  “You know what Ty said, right?”

  Mae heard a loud sigh. “Maybe. What did he say?”

  “He said the soul of the Circle is democratic. That until everyone has equal access, and that access is free, no one is free. It’s on at least a few tiles around campus.”

  “Mae. Fine. The Circle’s good. And whoever invented TruYou is some kind of evil genius. But now it has to be reined in. Or broken up.”

  “Why do you care? If you don’t like it, why don’t you leave? I know you’re some spy for some other company. Or Williamson. Some loony anarchist politician.”

  “Mae, this is it. You know this affects everyone. When were you last able to meaningfully contact your parents? Obviously things are messed up, and you’re in a unique position to influence very crucial historical events here. This is it. This is the moment where history pivots. Imagine if you could have been there before Hitler became chancellor. Before Stalin annexed Eastern Europe. We’re on the verge of having another very hungry, very evil empire on our hands, Mae. Do you understand?”

  “Do you know how crazy you sound?”

  “Mae, I know you’re doing that big plankton meeting in a couple days. The one where the kids pitch their ideas, hoping the Circle buys them and devours them.”

  “So?”

  “The audience will be big. We need to reach the young, and the plankton pitching is when your watchers will be young and vast. It’s perfect. The Wise Men will be there. I need you to take that opportunity to warn everyone. I need you to say, ‘Let’s think about what closing the Circle means.’ ”

  “You mean completing?”

  “Same thing. What it means for personal liberties, for the freedom to move, do whatever one wants to do, to be free.”

  “You’re a lunatic. I can’t believe I—” Mae meant to finish that sentence with “slept with you” but now, even the thought of it seemed sick.

  “Mae, no entity should have the power those guys have.”

  “I’m hanging up.”

  “Mae. Think about it. They’ll write songs about you.”

  She hung up.

  By the time she made it to the Great Hall, it was raucous with a few thousand Circlers. The rest of the campus had been asked to stay at their workspaces, to demonstrate to the world how Demoxie would work across the whole company, with Circlers voting from their desks, from their tablets and phones and even retinally. On the screen in the Great Room, a vast grid of SeeChange cameras showed Circlers at the ready in every corner of every building. Sharma had explained, in one of a series of zings, that once the Demoxie questions were sent, each Circler’s ability to do anything else—any zing, any keystroke—would be suspended until they voted. Democracy is mandatory here! she said, and added, much to Mae’s delight, Sharing is caring. Mae planned to vote on her wrist, and had promised her watchers that she would take into account their input, too, if they were quick enough. The voting, Sharma suggested, shouldn’t take longer than sixty seconds.

  And then the Demoxie logo appeared on the screen, and the first question arrived below it.

  1. Should the Circle offer more veggie options at lunch?

  The crowd in the Great Hall laughed. Sharma’s team had chosen to start with the question they’d been testing. Mae checked her wrist, seeing that a few hundred watchers had sent smiles, and so she chose that option and pushed “send.” She looked up to the screen, watching Circlers vote, and within eleven seconds the whole campus had done so, and the results were tabulated. Eighty-eight percent of the campus wanted more veggie options at lunch.

  A zing came through from Bailey: It shall be done.

  The Great Hall shook with applause.

  The next question appeared: 2. Should Take Your Daughter to Work Day happen twice a year, instead of just once?

  The answer was known within 12 seconds. Forty-five percent said yes. Bailey zinged: Looks like once is enough for now.

  The demonstration so far was a clear success, and Mae was basking in the congratulations of Circlers in the room, and on her wrist, and from watchers worldwide. The third question appeared, and the room broke up with laughter.

  3. John or Paul or … Ringo?

  The answer, which took 16 seconds, provoked a riot of surprised cheers: Ringo had won, with 64 percent of the vote. John and Paul were nearly tied, at 20 and 16.

  The fourth question was preceded by a sober instruction: Imagine the White House wanted the unfiltered opinion of its constituents. And imagine you had the direct and immediate ability to influence U.S. foreign policy. Take your time on this one. There might come a day—there should come a day—when all Americans are heard in such matters.

  The instructions disappeared, and the question arrived:

  4. Intelligence agencies have located terrorist mastermind Mohammed Khalil al-Hamed in a lightly populated area of rural Pakistan. Should we send a drone to kill him, considering the likelihood of moderate collateral damage?

  Mae caught her breath. She knew this was a demonstration only, but the power felt real. And it felt right. Why wouldn’t the wisdom of three hundred million Americans be taken into account when making a decision that affected them all? Mae paused, thinking, weighing the pros and cons. The Circlers in the room seemed to be taking the responsibility as seriously as Mae. How many lives would be saved by killing al-Hamed? It could be thousands, and the world would be rid of an evil man. The risk seemed worth it. She voted yes. The full tally arrived after one minute, eleven seconds: 71 percent of Circlers favored a drone strike. A hush fell over the room.

  Then the last question appeared:

  5. Is Mae Holland awesome or what?<
br />
  Mae laughed, and the room laughed, and Mae blushed, thinking this was all a bit much. She decided she couldn’t vote on this one, given how absurd it would be to cast a vote either way, and she simply watched her wrist, which, she soon realized, had been frozen. Soon the question on her wristscreen was blinking urgently. All Circlers must vote, the screen said, and she remembered that the survey couldn’t be complete until every Circler had registered their opinion. Because she felt silly calling herself awesome, she pushed “frown,” guessing it would be the only one, and would get a laugh.

  But when the votes were tallied, seconds later, she was not the only one to have sent a frown. The vote was 97 percent to 3, smiles to frowns, indicating that overwhelmingly, her fellow Circlers found her awesome. When the numbers appeared, the Great Room erupted in whoops, and she was patted on the back as everyone filed out, feeling the experiment a monumental success. And Mae felt this way, too. She knew Demoxie was working, and its potential unlimited. And she knew she should feel good about 97 percent of the campus finding her awesome. But as she left the hall, and made her way across campus, she could only think of the 3 percent who did not find her awesome. She did the math. If there were now 12,318 Circlers—they’d just subsumed a Philadelphia startup specializing in the gamification of affordable housing—and every one of them had voted, that meant that 369 people had frowned at her, thought she was something other than awesome. No, 368. She’d frowned at herself, assuming she’d be the only one.

  She felt numb. She felt naked. She walked through the health club, glancing at the bodies sweating, stepping on and off machines, and she wondered who among them had frowned at her. Three hundred and sixty-eight people loathed her. She was devastated. She left the health club and looked for a quiet place to collect her thoughts. She made her way to the rooftop near her old pod, where Dan had first told her of the Circle’s commitment to community. It was a half-mile walk from where she was, and she wasn’t sure she could make it. She was being stabbed. She had been stabbed. Who were these people? What had she done to them? They didn’t know her. Or did they? And what kind of community members would send a frown to someone like Mae, who was working tirelessly with them, for them, in full view?