The Circle

Damn her, Mae thought as she made her way home, the air growing warmer as the
distance grew between her and the Paci c. Mae had set up her lens on the car dash,
inserting it into a special mount created for her time in the car. That fucking debutante.
This was bad timing. Annie would likely nd some way to turn all this to her advantage.
Just when her envy of Mae—and it was that, it was so abundantly obvious—was growing,
she could cut Mae down to size again. Mae and her nothing town, her parking-garage
parents who couldn’t keep their screens operational, who couldn’t keep themselves
healthy. Who took a monumental gift, premium health care, for free, and abused it. Mae
knew what Annie was thinking in her little entitled blond head: You just can’t help some
people.
Annie’s family line went back to the Mayflower, her ancestors having settled this
country, and their ancestors having owned some vast swath of England. Their blood was
blue all the way back, it seemed, to the invention of the wheel. In fact, if anyone’s
bloodline had invented the wheel, it would have been Annie’s. It would make absolute
and perfect sense and would surprise no one.
Mae had discovered all this one Thanksgiving at Annie’s house, with twenty-odd
relatives there, all with their thin noses, their pink skin, their weak eyes hidden behind
forty lenses, when she became aware, during an appropriately self-e acing conversation
—for Annie’s family was equally unwilling to talk too much or care too much about their
lineage—that some distant relative of theirs had been at the very first Thanksgiving.
“Oh god, who cares?” Annie’s mother had said, when Mae had pressed for more details.
“Some random guy got on a boat. He probably owed money all over the Old Country.”
And they had proceeded with dinner. Afterward, Annie had, at Mae’s insistence, shown
her some documents, ancient yellowed papers detailing their family history, a beautiful
black portfolio of genealogies, scholarly articles, pictures of grave old men with

---

extravagant sideburns standing near rough-hewn cabins.
In other visits to Annie’s house, her family was equally generous, unassuming and
careless with their name. But when Annie’s sister was married, and the extended family
arrived, Mae saw a di erent side. She was seated at a table of single men and women,
most of them Annie’s cousins, and next to Annie’s aunt. She was a wiry woman in her
forties, her features similar to Annie’s but arranged with lesser results. She was recently
divorced, having left a man “beneath my station,” she said with pretend haughtiness.
“And you know Annie from …?” She’d rst turned to Mae fully twenty minutes into
dinner.
“College. We were roommates.”
“I thought her roommate was Pakistani.”
“That was freshman year.”
“And you saved the day. Where are you from?”
“Middle of the state. Central Valley. A small town no one’s heard of. Sort of near
Fresno.”
Mae drove on, remembering all this, some of it injecting fresh pain into her, something
still wet and raw.
“Wow, Fresno!” the aunt had said, pretending to smile. “I haven’t heard that word in a
long time, thank god.” She’d taken a swallow from her gin and tonic and squinted out at
the wedding party. “The important thing is that you got out. I know good colleges look
for people like you. That’s probably why I didn’t get in where I wanted to. Don’t let
anyone tell you Exeter helps. So many quota spots to ll with people from Pakistan and
Fresno, right?”
The rst time she’d gone home transparent had been revelatory and had burnished Mae’s
faith in humanity. She’d had a simple evening with her parents, making and eating dinner
and while doing so, they’d discussed the di erences in her father’s treatment before and
after they became insured through the Circle. Viewers could see both the triumphs of his
treatment—her father seemed vibrant and moved with ease through the house—but they
also saw the toll the disease was taking on him. He fell awkwardly while trying to make
his way upstairs, and afterward there was a ood of messages from concerned viewers,
followed by thousands of smiles from all over the world. People suggesting new drug
combinations, new physical therapy regimens, new doctors, experimental treatments,
Eastern medicine, Jesus. Hundreds of churches put him in their weekly prayers. Mae’s
parents felt con dent in their doctors, and most viewers could see that her father’s care
was exceptional, so what was more important and plentiful than the medical comments
were those simply cheering him and the family on. Mae cried reading the messages; it
was a ood of love. People sharing their own stories, so many living with MS themselves.
Others spoke of their own struggles—living with osteoporosis, with Bell’s palsy, with
Crohn’s disease. Mae had been forwarding the messages to her parents, but after a few
days decided to make their own email and mailing address public, so her parents could be
emboldened and inspired by the outpouring themselves, every day.

---

This, the second time she’d gone home, would, she knew, be even better. After she
addressed the issue with the cameras, which she expected was some sort of
misunderstanding, she planned to give all those who had reached out the chance to see
her parents again, and to give her parents a chance to thank all those who had sent them
smiles and help.
She found the two of them in the kitchen, chopping vegetables.
“How are you guys?” she said, while forcing them into a three-way embrace. They both
smelled of onions.
“You’re sure affectionate tonight, Mae!” her father said.
“Ha ha,” Mae said, and tried to indicate, with a rolling back of her eyelids, that they
should not imply that she was ever less affectionate.
As if remembering that they were on camera, and that their daughter was now a more
visible and important person, her parents adjusted their behavior. They made lasagna,
with Mae adding a few ingredients Additional Guidance had asked her to bring and
display to watchers. When dinner was ready, and Mae had given adequate camera time to
the products, they all sat down.
“So there’s a slight concern from the health folks that some of your cameras aren’t
working,” Mae said, keeping it light.
“Really?” her father said, smiling. “Maybe we should check the batteries?” He winked
at her mother.
“You guys,” Mae said, knowing she had to make this statement very clear, knowing this
was a pivotal moment, for their own health and the overall health data-gathering system
the Circle was trying to make possible. “How can anyone provide you with good health
care when you don’t allow them to see how you’re doing? It’s like going to see a doctor
and not allowing her to take your pulse.”
“That’s a very good point,” her father said. “I think we should eat.”
“We’ll get them xed right away,” her mother said, and that began what was a very
strange night, during which Mae’s parents agreed readily with all of Mae’s arguments
about transparency, nodded their heads vigorously when she talked about the necessity
for everyone to be onboard, the corollary to vaccines, how they only worked with full
participation. They agreed heartily with it all, complimenting Mae repeatedly on her
powers of persuasion and logic. It was odd; they were being far too cooperative.
They sat down to eat, and Mae did something she’d never done before, and which she
hoped her parents wouldn’t ruin by acting like it was unusual: she gave a toast.
“Here’s a toast to you two,” she said. “And while we’re at it, a toast to all the thousands
of people who reached out to you guys after the last time I was here.”
Her parents smiled sti y and raised their glasses. They ate for a few moments, and
when her mother had carefully chewed and swallowed her rst bite, she smiled and
looked directly into the lens—which Mae had told her repeatedly not to do.
“Well, we sure did get a lot of messages,” her mother said.
Mae’s father joined in. “Your mom’s been sorting through them, and we’ve been
making a little dent in the pile every day. But it’s a lot of work, I have to say.”
Her mother rested her hand on Mae’s arm. “Not that we don’t appreciate it, because we

---

do. We surely do. I just want to go on record as asking everyone’s forgiveness for our
tardiness in answering all the messages.”
“We’ve gotten thousands,” her father noted, poking at his salad.
Her mother smiled sti y. “And again, we appreciate the outpouring. But even if we
spent one minute on each response, that’s a thousand minutes. Think of it: sixteen hours
just for some basic response to the messages! Oh jeez, now I sound ungrateful.”
Mae was glad her mother said this, because they did sound ungrateful. They were
complaining about people caring about them. And just when Mae thought her mother
would reverse herself, would encourage more good wishes, her father spoke and made it
worse. Like her mother, he spoke directly into the lens.
“But we do ask you, from now on, to just send your best wishes through the air. Or if
you pray, just pray for us. No need to put it into a message. Just”—and he closed his eyes
and squeezed them tight—“send your good wishes, your good vibes, our way. No need to
email or zing or anything. Just good thoughts. Send ’em through the air. That’s all we
ask.”
“I think you just mean to say,” Mae said, trying to hold her temper, “that it’ll just take
you a little while to answer all of the messages. But you’ll get to them all eventually.”
Her father didn’t hesitate. “Well, I can’t say that, Mae. I don’t want to promise that. It’s
actually very stressful. And we’ve already had many people get angry when they don’t
hear back from us in a given amount of time. They send one message, then they send ten
more in the same day. ‘Did I say something wrong?’ ‘Sorry.’ ‘I was only trying to help.’
‘Up yours.’ They have these neurotic conversations with themselves. So I don’t want to
imply the kind of immediate message turnaround that most of your friends seem to
require.”
“Dad. Stop. You sound terrible.”
Her mother leaned forward. “Mae, your dad’s just trying to say that our lives are
already pretty fraught, and we have our hands full just working, paying bills and taking
care of the health stu . If we have sixteen hours more work to do, then that puts us in an
untenable position. Can you see where we’re coming from? I say that, again, with all due
respect and gratitude to everyone who has wished us well.”
After dinner, her parents wanted to watch a movie, and they did so, Basic Instinct, at
her father’s insistence. He’d seen it more than any other lm, always citing the nods to
Hitchcock, the many witty homages—though he’d never made clear his love of Hitchcock
in the rst place. Mae had long suspected that the movie, with its constant and varied
sexual tensions, made him randy.
As her parents watched the lm, Mae tried to make the time more interesting by
sending a series of zings about it, tracking and commenting on the number of moments
o ensive to the LGBT community. She was getting a great response, but then saw the
time, 9:30, and figured she should get on the road and back to the Circle.
“Well, I’m gonna head out,” she said.
Mae thought she caught something in her father’s eye, some quick look to her mother
that might have said at last, but she could have been mistaken. She put on her coat and
her mother met her at the door, an envelope in her hand.

---

“Mercer asked us to give this to you.”
Mae took it, a simple business-sized envelope. It wasn’t even addressed to her. No
name, nothing.
She kissed her mother’s cheek, left the house, the air outside still warm. She pulled out
and drove toward the highway. But the letter was on her lap, and her curiosity overtook
her. She pulled over and opened it.
Dear Mae,
Yes, you can and should read this on camera. I expected that you would, so I’m
writing this letter not only to you, but to your “audience.” Hello, audience.
She could almost hear his introductory intake of breath, his settling in before an
important speech.
I can’t see you anymore, Mae. Not that we had such a constant or perfect
friendship anyway, but I can’t be your friend and also part of your experiment. I’ll
be sad to lose you, as you have been important in my life. But we’ve taken very
different evolutionary paths and very soon we’ll be too far apart to communicate.
If you saw your parents, and your mom gave you this note, then you saw the
e ect all your stu has had on them. I wrote this note after seeing them, both of
them strung out, exhausted by the deluge you unleashed on them. It’s too much,
Mae. And it’s not right. I helped them cover some of the cameras. I even bought the
fabric. I was happy to do it. They don’t want to be smiled upon, or frowned upon, or
zinged. They want to be alone. And not watched. Surveillance shouldn’t be the
tradeoff for any goddamn service we get.
If things continue this way, there will be two societies—or at least I hope there
will be two—the one you’re helping create, and an alternative to it. You and your ilk
will live, willingly, joyfully, under constant surveillance, watching each other
always, commenting on each other, voting and liking and disliking each other,
smiling and frowning, and otherwise doing nothing much else.
Already there were comments pouring through her wrist. Mae, were you ever so young