The Circle

vomiting the shells after digesting the fleshy parts of the reptile. But
     Stenton’s shark had other methods. The shell seemed to dissolve inside the shark’s
     mouth and stomach like a cracker soaked in saliva. And in less than a minute, the
     turtle, all of it, had been turned to ash. It exited the shark as had the lobster,
     in flakes that fell ponderously to the aquarium floor, joining, and indistinguishable
     from, those that had come before.
    Mae was watching this when she saw a figure, nearly a silhouette, on the other side
     of the glass, beyond the aquarium’s far wall. His body was just a shadow, his face
     invisible, but then, for a moment, the light from above reflected on the circling
     shark’s skin, and revealed the figure’s face.
    It was Kalden.
    Mae hadn’t seen him in a month, and since her transparency, hadn’t heard any word
     from him. Annie had been in Amsterdam, then China, then Japan, then back to Geneva,
     and so hadn’t had time to focus on Kalden, but the two of them had traded occasional
     messages about him. How concerned should they be about this unknown man?
    But then he’d disappeared.
    Now he was standing, looking at her, unmoving.
    She wanted to call out, but then worried. Who was he? Would calling to him, capturing
     him on camera, create some scene? Wouldhe flee? She was still in shock from the shark’s digestion of the turtle, from its
     dull-eyed wrath, and she found she had no voice, no strength to say Kalden’s name.
     So she stared at him, and he stared at her, and she had the thought that if she could
     catch him on her camera, perhaps she could show this to Annie, and that might lead
     to some clarity, some identification. But when Mae looked to her wrist, she saw only
     the darkest form, his face obscured. Perhaps her lens couldn’t see him, was watching
     from a different angle. As she tracked his shape on her wrist, he backed away and
     walked off into the shadows.
    Meanwhile, Georgia had been nattering about the shark and what they’d witnessed, and
     Mae hadn’t caught any of it. But now she was standing atop her ladder, waving, hoping
     that Mae was finished, because she had nothing left to feed the animal. The show was
     over.
    “Okay then,” Mae said, thankful for the chance to get away and to follow Kalden. She
     said goodbye and thanks to Georgia, and walked briskly through the dark hallway.
    She caught sight of his silhouette leaving through a faraway door, and she picked
     up her pace, careful not to shake her lens or call out. The door he’d slipped through
     led to the newsroom, which would be a logical enough place for Mae to be visiting
     next. “Let’s see what’s going on in the newsroom,” she said, knowing all within would
     be aware of her approach in the twenty steps it would take her to get there. She also
     knew that the SeeChange cameras in the hallway, over the doorway, would have caught
     Kalden, and she’d know sooner or later if it was actually him. Every movement within
     the Circle was caught on one camera or another, usually three, and reconstructing
     anyone’s movements, after the fact, was only a few minutes’ work.
    As she approached the newsroom door, Mae thought of Kalden’shands upon her. His hands reaching low, pulling himself into her. She heard the low
     rumble of his voice. His taste, like some wet fresh fruit. What if she found him?
     She couldn’t take him to the bathroom. Or could she? She would find a way.
    She opened the door to the newsroom, a wide space Bailey had modeled on old-time newspaper
     offices, with a hundred low cubicles, news tickers and clocks everywhere, each desk
     with a retro analog telephone, a row of white buttons below the numbers, blinking
     arrhythmically. There were old printers, fax machines, telex devices, letterpresses.
     The decor, of course, was for show. All the retro machines were nonfunctional. The
     news gatherers, whose faces were now upon Mae, smiling, saying hello to her and her
     watchers, were able to do most of their reporting via SeeChange. There were now over
     a hundred million cameras functional and accessible around the world, making in-person
     reporting unnecessarily expensive and dangerous, to say nothing of the carbon expenditures.
    As Mae walked through the newsroom, the staff waved to her, unsure if this was an
     official visit. Mae waved back, scanning the room, knowing she appeared distracted.
     Where was Kalden? There was only one other exit, so