The Circle

about it?”
    “Sure, Mae. Thank you for asking,” Annie said, looking briefly at her shoes before
     raising her eyes back to Mae, with a professional smile. “I can say that the basic
     idea is to take the power of the Circle community and to map not just the present
     but the past, too. We’re right now digitizing every photo, every newsreel, every amateur
     video in every archive in this country and Europe—I mean, we’re doing our best at
     least. The task is herculean, but once we have a critical mass,and with facial recognition advances, we can, we hope, identify pretty much everyone
     in every photo and every video. You want to find every picture of your great-grandparents,
     we can make the archive searchable, and you can—we expect, we bet—then gain a greater
     understanding of them. Maybe you catch them in a crowd at the 1912 World’s Fair. Maybe
     you find video of your parents at a baseball game in 1974. The hope, in the end, is
     to fill in your memory and the historical record. And with the help of DNA and far
     better genealogical software, within the year we’re hoping that anyone can quickly
     access every available piece of information about their family lineage, all images,
     all video and film, with one search request.”
    “And I imagine that when everyone else joins in, the Circle participants that is,
     the gaps will quickly be filled.” Mae smiled, her eyes telling Annie she was doing
     great.
    “That’s right, Mae,” Annie said, her voice stabbing at the space between them, “like
     any project online, most of the completion will be done by the digital community.
     We’re gathering our own millions of photos and videos, but the rest of the world will
     provide billions more. We expect that with even partial participation, we’ll be able
     to fill in most historical holes easily. If you’re looking for all the residents of
     a certain building in Poland, circa 1913, and you’re missing one, it won’t take long
     to triangulate that last person by cross-referencing from all the other data we’ll
     get.”
    “Very exciting.”
    “Yes, it is,” Annie said, and flashed the whites of her eyes, urging Mae to wrap all
     this up.
    “But you don’t have the guinea pig yet?” Mae asked.
    “Not yet. For the first person, we’re looking for someone whose family goes back pretty
     far in the United States. Just because we know we’ll have more complete access to
     records here than in some other countries.”
    “And this is part of the Circle’s plan to complete everything this year? It’s still
     on schedule?”
    “It is. PastPerfect is just about ready to use now. And with all the other aspects
     of Completion, it looks like the beginning of next year. Eight months and we’ll be
     done. But you never know: the way things are going, with the help of so many Circlers
     out there, we could finish ahead of time.”
    Mae smiled, nodded, and she and Annie shared a long, strained moment, when Annie’s
     eyes again asked how long they needed to go on with this semiperformative dialogue.
    Outside, the sun broke through the clouds, and the light through the window shone
     down on Annie’s face. Mae saw, then, for the first time, how old she looked. Her face
     was drawn, her skin pale. Annie was not yet twenty-seven but there were bags under
     her eyes. In this light, she seemed to have aged five years in the last two months.
    Annie took Mae’s hand, and dug her fingernails into her palm just enough to get her
     attention. “I actually have to use the bathroom. Come with?”
    “Sure. I have to go, too.”
    Though Mae’s transparency was complete, in that she could not turn off the visual
     or audio feeds at any time, there were a few exceptions, insisted upon by Bailey.
     One was during bathroom usage, or at least time spent on the toilet. The video feed
     was to remain on,because, Bailey insisted, the camera would be trained on the back of the stall door,
     so it hardly mattered. But the audio would be turned off, sparing Mae, and the audience,
     the sounds.
    Mae entered the stall, Annie entered the one next to her, and Mae deactivated her
     audio. The rule was that she had up to three minutes of silence; more than that would
     provoke concern from viewers and Circlers alike.
    “So how are you?” Mae asked. She couldn’t see Annie, but her toes, looking crooked
     and in need of a pedicure attention, were visible under the door.
    “Great. Great.