The Circle

country, well, it appealed to them. Speaking of parents, how are yours?”
    My god, this was strange, Mae thought. There were so many layers to all this, and
     while her mind was counting them, mapping them and naming them, her face and mouth
     had to carry on this conversation.
    “They’re fine,” Mae said, even though she knew, and Annie knew, that Mae hadn’t been
     in touch with them in weeks. They had sent word, through a cousin, of their health,
     which was fine, but they had left their home, “fleeing” was the only word they used
     in their brief message, telling Mae not to worry about anything.
    Mae wrapped up the conversation with Annie and walked slowly, foggy-headed, back through
     campus, knowing Annie was satisfied in how she’d communicated her news, and trumped
     and thoroughly confused Mae, all in one brief encounter. Annie had been appointed
     the center of PastPerfect and Mae hadn’t been told, and was made to look idiotic.
     Certainly that would have been Annie’s goal. And why
Annie?
It didn’t make sense to go to Annie, when it would have been easier to have Mae do
     it; Mae was already transparent.
    Mae realized that Annie had asked for this. Begged the Wise Men for this. Her proximity
     to them had made it possible. And so Mae was not as close as she’d imagined; Annie
     still held some particular status. Again Annie’s lineage, her head start, the varied
     and ancient advantages she enjoyed, were keeping Mae second. Always second, like she
     was some kind of little sister who never had a chance of succeeding an older, always
     older sibling. Mae was trying to remain calm, but messages were coming through her
     wrist that made clear her viewers were seeing her frustration, her distraction.
    She needed to breathe. She needed to think. But there was too much in her head. There
     was Annie’s ludicrous gamesmanship. There was this ridiculous PastPerfect thing, which
     should have gone to Mae. Was it because Mae’s parents had slipped off the path? And
     where
were
her parents, anyway? Why were they sabotaging everything Mae was working for? But
     what was she working for, anyway, if 368 Circlers didn’t approve of her? Three hundred
     and sixty-eight people who apparently actively hated her, enough to push a button
     at her—to send their loathing directly to her, knowing she would know, immediately,
     their sentiments. And what about this cellular mutation some Scottish scientist was
     worried about? A cancerous mutation that might be happening inside Mae, provoked by
     mistakes in her diet? Had that really happened? And shit, Mae thought, her throat
     tightening, did she really send a frown to a group of heavily armed paramilitaries
     in Guatemala? What if they had contacts here? Certainly there were plenty of Guatemalans
     in California, and certainly they would be more than happy to have a trophy like Mae,
     to punish her for heropprobrium. Fuck, she thought. Fuck. There was a pain in her, a pain that was spreading
     its black wings inside her. And it was coming, primarily, from the 368 people who
     apparently hated her so much they wanted her gone. It was one thing to send a frown
     to Central America, but to send one just across campus? Who would do that? Why was
     there so much animosity in the world? And then it occurred to her, in a brief and
     blasphemous flash: she didn’t
want
to know how they felt. The flash opened up into something larger, an even more blasphemous
     notion that her brain contained too much. That the volume of information, of data,
     of judgments, of measurements, was too much, and there were too many people, and too
     many desires of too many people, and too many opinions of too many people, and too
     much pain from too many people, and having all of it constantly collated, collected,
     added and aggregated, and presented to her as if that all made it tidier and more
     manageable—it was too much. But no. No, it was not, her better brain corrected. No.
     You’re hurt by these 368 people. This was the truth. She was hurt by them, by the
     368 votes to kill her. Every one of them preferred her dead. If only she didn’t know
     about this. If only she could return to life before this 3 percent, when she could
     walk through campus, waving, smiling, chatting idly, eating, sharing human contact,
     without knowing what was deep in the hearts of the 3 percent. To frown at her, to
     stick their fingers at that button, to shoot her that way, it was a kind