The Circle

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. Hecan’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?”
    Mae’s throat was dry and she tried not to show her emotion. “It doesn’t. It feels
     very wrong.” Mae thought of Bailey’s son Gunner, and thought of her own father.
    “Do you think they have a right to see things like you saw?”
    “I do.”
    “In this short life,” Bailey said, “why shouldn’t everyone see whatever it is they
     want to see? Why shouldn’t everyone have equal access to the sights of the world?
     The knowledge of the world? All the experiences available in this world?”
    Mae’s voice was just above a whisper. “Everyone should.”
    “But this experience you had, you kept it to yourself. Which is curious, because you
     do share online. You work at the Circle. YourPartiRank is in the T2K. So why do you think this particular hobby of yours, these
     extraordinary explorations, why hide these from the world?”
    “I can’t quite figure out what I was thinking, to be honest,” Mae said.
    The crowd murmured. Bailey nodded.
    “Okay. We just talked about how we, as humans, hide what we’re ashamed of. We do something
     illegal, or unethical, and we hide it from the world because we know it’s wrong. But
     hiding something glorious, a wonderful trip on the water, the moonlight coming down,
     a shooting star …”
    “It was just selfish, Eamon. It was selfish and nothing more. The same way a child
     doesn’t want to share her favorite toy. I understand that secrecy is part of, well,
     an aberrant behavior system. It comes from a bad place, not a place of light and generosity.
     And when you deprive your friends, or someone like your son Gunner, of experiences
     like I had, you’re basically stealing from them. You’re depriving them of something
     they have a right to. Knowledge is a basic human right. Equal access to all possible
     human experiences is a basic human right.”
    Mae surprised herself with her eloquence, and the audience answered with thunderous
     applause. Bailey was looking at her like a proud father. When the applause subsided,
     Bailey spoke