The Circle (9 page)

Live shots from all over the square filled the screen, and the crowd erupted again.
Bailey went on, revealing their coverage of a dozen authoritarian regimes, from Khartoum
to Pyongyang, where the authorities had no idea they were being watched by three thousand
Circlers in California—had no notion that they
could
be watched, that this technology was or would ever be possible.

Now Bailey cleared the screen again, and stepped toward the audience. “You know what
I say, right? In situations like this, I agree with the Hague, with human rights activists
the world over. There needs to be accountability. Tyrants can no longer hide. There
needs to be, and will be, documentation and accountability, and we need to bear witness.
And to this end, I insist that all that happens should be known.”

The words dropped onto the screen:

A
LL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN
.

“Folks, we’re at the dawn of the Second Enlightenment. And I’m not talking about a
new building on campus. I’m talking about an era where we don’t allow the majority
of human thought and action and achievement and learning to escape as if from a leaky
bucket. We did
that once before. It was called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages. If not for the monks,
everything the world had ever learned would have been lost. Well, we live in a similar
time, when we’re losing the vast majority of what we do and see and learn. But it
doesn’t have to be that way. Not with these cameras, and not with the mission of the
Circle.”

He turned again toward the screen and read it, inviting the audience to commit it
to memory.

A
LL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN
.

He turned back to the audience and smiled.

“Okay, now I want to bring it back home. My mother’s eighty-one. She doesn’t get around
as easily as she once did. A year ago she fell and broke her hip, and since then I’ve
been concerned about her. I asked her to have some security cameras installed, so
I could access them on a closed circuit, but she refused. But now I have peace of
mind. Last weekend, while she was napping—”

A wave of laughter rippled through the audience.

“Forgive me! Forgive me!” he said, “I had no choice. She wouldn’t have let me do it
otherwise. So I snuck in, and I installed cameras in every room. They’re so small
she’ll never notice. I’ll show you really quick. Can we show cameras 1 to 5 in my
mom’s house?”

A grid of images popped up, including his mom, padding down a bright hallway in a
towel. A roar of laughter erupted.

“Oops. Let’s drop that one.” The image disappeared. “Anyway. The point is that I know
she’s safe, and that gives me a sense of peace. As we all know here at the Circle,
transparency leads to peace of mind. No longer do I have to wonder, ‘How’s Mom?’ No
longer do I have to wonder, ‘What’s happening in Myanmar?’

“Now, we’re making a million of this model, and my prediction is
that within a year we’ll have a million accessible live streams. Within five years,
fifty million. Within ten years, two billion cameras. There will be very few populated
areas that we won’t be able to access from the screens in our hands.”

The audience roared again. Someone yelled out, “We want it now!”

Bailey continued. “Instead of searching the web, only to find some edited video with
terrible quality, now you go to SeeChange, you type in Myanmar. Or you type in your
high school boyfriend’s name. Chances are there’s someone who’s set up a camera nearby,
right? Why shouldn’t your curiosity about the world be rewarded? You want to see Fiji
but can’t get there? SeeChange. You want to check on your kid at school? SeeChange.
This is ultimate transparency. No filter. See everything. Always.”

Mae leaned toward Annie. “This is incredible.”

“I know, right?” Annie said.

“Now, do these cameras have to be stationary?” Bailey said, raising a scolding finger.
“Of course not. I happen to have a dozen helpers all over the world right now, wearing
the cameras around their necks. Let’s visit them, shall we? Can I get Danny’s camera
up?”

An image of Machu Picchu appeared onscreen. It looked like a postcard, a view perched
high above the ancient ruins. And then it started moving, down toward the site. The
crowd gasped, then cheered.

“That’s a live image, though I guess that’s obvious. Hi Danny. Now let’s get Sarah
on Mount Kenya.” Another image appeared on the great screen, this one of the shale
fields high on the mountain. “Can you point us toward the peak, Sarah?” The camera
panned up,
revealing the peak of the mountain, enshrouded in fog. “See, this opens up the possibility
of visual surrogates. Imagine I’m bedridden, or too frail to explore the mountain
myself. I send someone up with a camera around her neck, and I can experience it all
in real time. Let’s do that in a few more places.” He presented live images of Paris,
Kuala Lumpur, a London pub.

“Now let’s experiment a bit, using all of this together. I’m sitting at home. I log
on and want to get a sense of the world. Show me traffic on 101. Streets of Jakarta.
Surfing at Bolinas. My mom’s house. Show me the webcams of everyone I went to high
school with.”

At every command, new images appeared, until there were at least a hundred live streaming
images on the screen at once.

“We will become all-seeing, all-knowing.”

The audience was standing now. The applause thundered through the room. Mae rested
her head on Annie’s shoulder.

“All that happens will be known,” Annie whispered.

“You have a glow.”

“You do.”

“I do not have a glow.”

“Like you’re with child.”

“I know what you meant. Stop.”

Mae’s father reached across the table and took her hand. It was Saturday, and her
parents were treating her to a celebratory dinner commemorating her first week at
the Circle. This was the kind of sentimental slop they were always doing—at least
recently. When she was younger, the only child of a couple who long considered the
possibility of having none at all, their home was more complicated. During the week,
her father had been scarce. He’d been the building manager at a Fresno office park,
working fourteen-hour days and leaving everything at home to her mother, who worked
three shifts a week at a hotel restaurant and who responded to the pressure of it
all with a hair-trigger temper, primarily directed at Mae. But when Mae was ten, her
parents announced they’d bought a parking lot, two stories near downtown Fresno, and
for a few years, they took turns manning it. It was humiliating to Mae to have her
friends’ parents say, “Hey, saw your mom at the lot,” or “Tell your dad thanks again
for comping me the other day,” but soon their finances stabilized, and they could
hire a couple guys to trade shifts. And when her parents could take a day off, and
could plan more than a few months ahead, they mellowed, becoming a very calm, exasperatingly
sweet older couple. It was as if they went, in the course of a year, from being young
parents in over their heads, to grandparents, slow-moving and warm and clueless about
what exactly their daughter wanted. When she graduated from middle school, they’d
driven her to Disneyland, not quite understanding that she was too old, and that her
going there alone—with two adults, which was effectively alone—was at cross-purposes
with any notion of fun. But they were so well-meaning that she couldn’t refuse, and
in the end they had a mindless kind of fun that she didn’t know was possible with
one’s parents. Any lingering resentment she might direct at them for the emotional
uncertainties of her early life was doused by the constant cool water of their late
middle age.

And now they’d driven to the bay, to spend the weekend at the cheapest bed and breakfast
they could find—which was fifteen miles from the Circle and looked haunted. Now they
were out, at some
fake-fancy restaurant the two of them had heard about, and if anyone was aglow, it
was them. They were beaming.

“So? It’s been great?” her mother asked.

“It has.”

“I knew it.” Her mother sat back, crossing her arms.

“I don’t ever want to work anywhere else,” Mae said.

“What a relief,” her father said. “We don’t want you working anywhere else, either.”

Her mother lunged forward, and took Mae’s arm. “I told Karolina’s mom. You know her.”
She scrunched her nose—the closest she could come to an insult. “She looked like someone
had stuck a sharp stick up her behind. Boiling with envy.”

“Mom.”

“I let your salary slip.”

“Mom.”

“I just said, ‘I hope she can get by with a salary of sixty thousand dollars.’ ”

“I can’t believe you told her that.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“It’s actually sixty-two.”

“Oh jeez. Now I’ll have to call her up.”

“No you won’t.”

“Okay, I won’t. But it’s been very fun,” she said, “I just casually slip it into conversation.
My daughter’s at the hottest company on the planet and has full dental.”

“Please don’t. I just got lucky. And Annie—”

Her father leaned forward. “How
is
Annie?”

“Good.”

“Tell Annie we love her.”

“I will.”

“She couldn’t come tonight?”

“No. She’s busy.”

“But you asked her?”

“I did. She says hi. But she works a lot.”

“What does she do exactly?” her mother asked.

“Everything, really,” Mae said. “She’s in the Gang of 40. She’s part of all the big
decisions. I think she specializes in dealing with regulatory issues in other countries.”

“I’m sure she’s got a lot of responsibility.”

“And stock options!” her father said. “I can’t imagine what she’s worth.”

“Dad. Don’t imagine that.”

“Why is she working with all those stock options? I’d be on a beach. I’d have a harem.”

Mae’s mother put her hand on his. “Vinnie, stop.” Then to Mae she said, “I hope she
has time to enjoy it all.”

“She does,” Mae said. “She’s probably at a campus party as we speak.”

Her father smiled. “I love that you call it a campus. That’s very cool. We used to
call those places
offices
.”

Mae’s mother seemed troubled. “A party, Mae? You didn’t want to go?”

“I did, but I wanted to see you guys. And there are plenty of those parties.”

“But in your first week!” her mother looked pained. “Maybe you should have gone. Now
I feel bad. We took you away from it.”

“Trust me. They have them every other day. They’re very social over there. I’ll be
fine.”

“You’re not taking lunch yet, are you?” her mother asked. She made the same point
when Mae had started at the utility: don’t take lunch your first week. Sends the wrong
message.

“Don’t worry,” Mae said. “I haven’t even used the bathroom.”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “Anyway, let me just say how proud we are. We love you.”

“And Annie,” her father said.

“Right. We love you and Annie.”

They ate quickly, knowing that Mae’s father would soon tire. He’d insisted on going
out to dinner, though back at home, he rarely did anymore. His fatigue was constant,
and could come on suddenly and strong, sending him to near-collapse. It was important,
when out like this, to be ready to make a quick exit, and before dessert, they did
so. Mae followed them back to their room and there, amid the B&B owners’ dozens of
dolls, spread about the room and watching, Mae and her parents were able to relax,
unafraid of eventualities. Mae hadn’t gotten used to her father having multiple sclerosis.
The diagnosis had come down only two years earlier, though the symptoms had been visible
years before that. He’d been slurring his words, had been overshooting when reaching
for things and, finally, had fallen, twice, each time in the foyer of their house,
reaching for the front door. So they’d sold the parking lot, made a decent profit,
and now spent their time managing his care, which meant at least a few hours a day
poring over medical bills and battling with the insurance company.

“Oh, we saw Mercer the other day,” her mother said, and her father smiled. Mercer
had been a boyfriend of Mae’s, one of the four serious ones she’d had in high school
and college. But as far as her parents were concerned, he was the only one who mattered,
or the only one they acknowledged or remembered. It helped that he still lived in
town.

“That’s good,” Mae said, wanting to end the topic. “He still makes chandeliers out
of antlers?”

“Easy there,” her father said, hearing her barbed tone. “He’s got his own business.
And not that he’d brag, but it’s apparently thriving.”

Mae needed to change the subject. “I’ve averaged 97 so far,” she said. “They say that’s
a record for a newbie.”

The look on her parents’ faces was bewilderment. Her father blinked slowly. They had
no idea what she was talking about. “What’s that, hon?” her father said.

Mae let it go. When she’d heard the words leave her mouth, she knew the sentence would
take too long to explain. “How are things with the insurance?” she asked, and instantly
regretted it. Why did she ask questions like this? The answer would swallow the night.

“Not good,” her mother said. “I don’t know. We have the wrong plan. I mean, they don’t
want to insure your dad, plain and simple, and they seem to be doing everything they
can to get us to leave. But how can we leave? We’d have nowhere to go.”

Her father sat up. “Tell her about the prescription.”

“Oh, right. Your dad’s been on Copaxone for two years, for the pain. He needs it.
Without it—”

“The pain gets … ornery,” he said.

“Now the insurance says he doesn’t need it. It’s not on their list of pre-approved
medications. Even though he’s been using it two years!”

“It seems unnecessarily cruel,” Mae’s father said.

“They’ve offered no alternative. Nothing for the pain!”

Mae didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry. Can I look up some alternatives online? I
mean, have you seen if the doctors could find another drug that the insurance will
pay for? Maybe a generic …”