The Circle

again when you get to my door. She turned off her camera and went to him.
The door opened.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“Stop,” Mae said. She stepped in and closed the door.
“You want anything?” he asked. “Water? There’s this new vodka, too, that was here
when I got back tonight. We can try it.”

---

“No thanks,” she said, and sat on a credenza against the wall. Francis had set up his
portables there.
“Oh wait. Don’t sit there,” he said.
She stood up. “I didn’t sit on your devices.”
“No, it’s not that,” he said. “It’s the credenza. They told me it’s fragile,” he said,
smiling. “Sure you don’t want a drink or anything?”
“No. I’m really tired. I just didn’t want to be alone.”
“Listen,” he said. “I know I should have asked your permission rst. I know this. But I
hope you can understand where I was coming from. I couldn’t believe I was with you.
And there was some part of me that assumed it would be the only time. I wanted to
remember it.”
Mae knew the power she had over him, and that power gave her a distinct thrill. She
sat on the bed. “So did you find them?” she asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Last I saw you, you were planning to scan those photos, the ones from your album.”
“Oh yeah. I guess I haven’t talked to you since then. I did scan them. The whole thing
was easy.”
“So you found who they were?”
“Most of them had Circle accounts so I could just face-rec them. I mean, it took about
seven minutes. There were a few I had to use the feds’ database for. We don’t have total
access yet, but we can see DMV photos. That’s most of the adults in the country.”
“And did you contact them?”
“Not yet.”
“But you know where they’re all from?”
“Yeah, yeah. Once I knew their names, I could nd all their addresses. Some had
moved a few times, but I could cross-reference with the years I might have been with
them. I actually did this whole timeline of when I might have been at each place. Most of
them were in Kentucky. A few in Missouri. One was in Tennessee.”
“So that’s it?”
“Well, I don’t know. A couple are dead, so … I don’t know. I might just drive by some
of these houses. Just to ll in some gaps. I don’t know. Oh,” he said, turning over,
brightening, “I did have a couple revelations. I mean, most of the stu was standard
memories of these people. But there was one family who had an older girl, she was about
fteen when I was twelve. I didn’t remember much, but I know she was my rst serious
sexual fantasy.”
Those words, sexual fantasy, had an immediate e ect on Mae. In the past, whenever
they’d been uttered, with or by any man, it led to the discussion of fantasies, and some
degree of enacting one or another fantasy. Which she and Francis did, even if brie y. His
fantasy was to leave the room and knock on the door, pretending to be a lost teenager
knocking on the door of a beautiful suburban house. Her job was to be a lonely housewife
and invite him in, scantily clad and desperate for company.
And so he knocked, and she greeted him at the door, and he told her he was lost, and
she told him he should get out of those old clothes, that he could put on some of her

---

husband’s. Francis liked that so much that things accelerated quickly, and in seconds he
was undressed and she was on top of him. He lay beneath her for a minute or two, letting
Mae rise and fall, looking up at her with the wonderment of a boy at the zoo. Then his
eyes closed, and he went into paroxysms, emitting a brief squeal before grunting his
arrival.
Now, as Francis brushed his teeth, Mae, exhausted and feeling not love but something
close to contentment, arranged herself under the thick comforter and faced the wall. The
clock said 3:11.
Francis emerged from the bathroom.
“I have a second fantasy,” he said, pulling the blanket over him and bringing his face
close to Mae’s neck.
“I’m inches from sleep,” she muttered.
“No, nothing strenuous. No activity required. This is just a verbal thing.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to rate me,” he said.
“What?”
“Just a rating. Like you do at CE.”
“Like from 1 to 100?”
“Exactly.”
“Rate what? Your performance?”
“Yes.”
“C’mon. I don’t want to do that.”
“It’s just for fun.”
“Francis. Please. I don’t want to. It takes the enjoyment out of it for me.”
Francis sat up with a loud sigh. “Well, not knowing takes the enjoyment out of it for
me.”
“Not knowing what?”
“How I did.”
“How you did? You did fine.”
Francis made a loud sound of disgust.
She turned over. “What’s the matter?”
“Fine?” he said. “I’m fine?”
“Oh god. You’re great. You’re perfect. When I say ne, I just mean that you couldn’t do
better.”
“Okay,” he said, moving closer to her. “Then why didn’t you say that before?”
“I thought I did.”
“You think ‘fine’ is the same as ‘perfect’ and ‘couldn’t do better’?”
“No. I know it’s not. I’m just tired. I should have been more precise.”
A self-satisfied smile overtook Francis’s face. “You know you just proved my point.”
“What point?”
“We just argued about all this, about the words you used and what they meant. We
didn’t understand their meaning the same way, and we went around and around about it.
But if you had just used a number I would have understood right away.” He kissed her

---

shoulder.
“Okay. I get it,” she said, and closed her eyes.
“Well?” he said.
She opened her eyes to Francis’s pleading mouth.
“Well what?”
“You’re still not going to give me a number?”
“You really want a number?”
“Mae! Of course I do.”
“Okay, a hundred.”
She turned to the wall again.
“That’s the number?”
“It is. You get a perfect 100.”
Mae felt like she could hear him grinning.
“Thank you,” he said, and kissed the back of her head. “Night.”
The room was grand, on the top oor of the Victorian Era, with its epic views, its glass
ceiling. Mae entered and was greeted by most of the Gang of 40, the group of innovators
who routinely assessed and greenlighted new Circle ventures.
“Hello Mae!” said a voice, and she found its source, Eamon Bailey, arriving and taking
his place at the other end of the long room. Wearing a zippered sweatshirt, his sleeves
rolled above his elbows, he entered theatrically and waved to her and, she knew, to all
those who might be watching. She expected the audience to be large, given she and the
Circle had been zinging about it for days. She checked her bracelet and the current
viewership was 1,982,992. Incredible, she thought, and it would climb. She sat in the
middle of the table, better to grant the viewers access not just to Bailey but to most of the
Gang, their comments and reactions.
After she’d sat, and after it was too late to move, Mae realized she didn’t know where
Annie was. She scanned the forty faces in front of her, on the table’s opposite side, and
didn’t see her. She craned her neck around, careful to keep the camera trained on Bailey,
and nally caught sight of Annie, by the door, behind two rows of Circlers, those standing
by the door, in case they needed to leave unnoticed. Mae knew Annie had seen her, but
she made no acknowledgement.
“Okay,” Bailey said, smiling broadly at the room, “I think we should just dig in, given
we’re all present”—and here his eyes stopped, ever so brie y, on Mae and the camera
around her neck. It was important, Mae had been told, that the entire event seem natural,
and that it appear that Mae, and the audience, were being invited into a very regular sort
of event.
“Hi gang,” Bailey said. “Pun intended.” The forty men and women smiled. “Okay. A
few months ago we all met Olivia Santos, a very courageous and visionary legislator who
is bringing transparency to a new—and I daresay ultimate—level. And you might have
seen that as of today, over twenty thousand other leaders and legislators around the
world have followed her lead and have taken the pledge to make their lives as public
servants completely transparent. We’ve been very encouraged by this.”
Mae checked the view on her wrist. Her camera was trained on Bailey and the screen

---

behind him. Comments were already coming in, thanking her and the Circle for this kind
of access. One watcher compared it to watching the Manhattan Project. Another
mentioned Edison’s Menlo Park lab, circa 1879.
Bailey continued: “Now this new era of transparency dovetails with some other ideas I
have about democracy, and the role that technology can play in making it complete. And I
use the word complete on purpose, because our work toward transparency might actually
achieve a fully accountable government. As you’ve seen, the governor of Arizona has had
her entire sta go transparent, which is the next step. In a few cases, even with a clear
elected o cial, we’ve seen some corruption behind the scenes. The transparent elected
have been used as gureheads, shielding the backroom from view. But that will change
soon, I believe. The o cials, and their entire o ces with nothing to hide, will go
transparent within the year, at least in this country, and Tom and I have seen to it that
they get a steep discount on the necessary hardware and server capacity to make it
happen.”
The 40 clapped heartily.
“But that’s only half the battle. That’s the elected half of things. But what about the
other half—our half as citizens? The half where we’re all supposed to participate?”
Behind Bailey, a picture of an empty polling place appeared, in a desolate high school
gym somewhere. It dissolved into an array of numbers.
“Here are the numbers of participants in the last elections. As you can see, at the
national level, we’re at around 58 percent of those eligible to vote. Incredible, isn’t it?
And then you go down the line, to state and local elections, and the percentages drop o
a cli : 32 percent for state elections, 22 percent for counties, 17 percent for most small-
town elections. How illogical is that, that the closer government is to home, the less we
care about it? It’s absurd, don’t you think?”
Mae checked her watchers; there were over two million. She was adding about a
thousand viewers a second.
“Okay,” Bailey continued, “so we know there are a bunch of ways that technology,
much of it originating here, has helped make it easier to vote. We’re building on a history
of trying to increase access and ease. Back in my day there was the motor voter bill. That
helped. Then some states allowed you to register or update your registration online. Fine.
But how did it impact voter turnout? Not enough. But here’s where it gets interesting.
Here’s how many people voted in the last national election.”
The screen behind him read “140 million.”
“Here’s how many were eligible to vote.”
The screen read “244 million.”
“Meanwhile, there’s us. Here’s how many Americans are registered with the Circle.”
The screen read “241 million.”
“That’s some startling math, right? A hundred million more people are registered with
us than voted for the president. What does that tell you?”
“We’re awesome!” an older man, with a gray ponytail and a frayed T-shirt, yelled from
the second row. Laughter opened up the room.
“Well sure,” Bailey said, “but besides that? It tells you that the Circle has a knack for

---

getting people to participate. And there are a lot of people in Washington who agree.
There are people in DC who see us as the solution to making this a fully participatory
democracy.”
Behind Bailey, the familiar image of Uncle Sam pointing appeared. Then another image,
of Bailey wearing the same out t, in the same pose, appeared next to Uncle Sam. The
room guffawed.
“So now we get to the meat of today’s session, and that is: What if your Circle pro le