The Circle

success, his youth,
     his ability to see ideas into execution, while remaining himself, perfectly aloof
     and yet furiously productive. They wanted that, too, and they wanted the money they
     knew went along with the role.
    This was the assembly Kalden had been talking about, where, he was certain, there
     would be a maximum viewing audience, and where, he insisted, Mae should tell all her
     watchers that the Circle could not complete, that Completion would lead to some kind
     of armageddon. She had not heard from him since that conversation in the bathroom,
     and she was glad for it. Now she was sure, more than ever, that he was some kind of
     hacker-spy, someone from a would-be competitor, trying to turn Mae and whoever else
     against the company, to blow it up from within.
    She shook all thoughts of him from her mind. This forum would be good, she knew. Dozens
     of Circlers had been hired this way: they came to campus as aspirants, presented an
     idea, and that idea was bought on the spot and the aspirant was thereafter employed.
     Jared had been hired this way, Mae knew, and Gina, too. It was one of the more glamorous
     ways to arrive at the company: to pitch an idea, have it acquired, be rewarded with
     employment and stock options and see their idea executed in short order.
    Mae explained all of this to her watchers as the room settled. There were about fifty
     Circlers, the Wise Men, the Gang of 40 and a few assistants in the room, all of them
     facing a row of aspirants, a fewof them still in their teens, each of them sitting, waiting for his or her turn.
    “This will be very exciting,” Mae said to her watchers. “As you know, this is the
     first time we’ve broadcast an Aspirant session.” She almost said “plankton” and was
     happy to have caught the slur before uttering it. She glanced down at her wrist. There
     were 2.1 million watchers, though she expected that to climb quickly.
    The first student, Faisal, looked no more than twenty. His skin glowed like lacquered
     wood, and his proposal was exceedingly simple: instead of having endless mini-battles
     over whether or not a given person’s spending activity could or could not be tracked,
     why not make a deal with them? For highly desirable consumers, if they agreed to use
     CircleMoney for all their purchases, and agreed to make their spending habits and
     preferences accessible to CirclePartners, then the Circle would give them discounts,
     points, and rebates at the end of each month. It would be like getting frequent flyer
     miles for using the same credit card.
    Mae knew she would personally sign up for such a plan, and assumed that, by extension,
     so would millions more.
    “Very intriguing,” Stenton said, and Mae would later learn that when he said “very
     intriguing” he meant that he would purchase that idea and hire its inventor.
    The second notion came from an African-American woman of about twenty-two. Her name
     was Belinda and her idea, she said, would eliminate racial profiling by police and
     airport security officers. Mae began nodding; this was what she loved about her generation—the
     ability to see the social-justice applications to the Circle and address them surgically.
     Belinda brought up a video feedof a busy urban street with a few hundred people visible and walking to and from the
     camera, unaware they were being watched.
    “Every day, police pull over people for what’s known as ‘driving while black’ or ‘driving
     while brown,’ ” Belinda said evenly, “And every day, young African-American men are
     stopped in the street, thrown against a wall, frisked, stripped of their rights and
     dignity.”
    And for a moment Mae thought of Mercer, and wished he could be hearing this. Yes,
     sometimes some of the applications of the internet could be a bit crass and commercial,
     but for every one commercial application, there were three like this, proactive applications
     that used the power of the technology to improve humanity.
    Belinda continued: “These practices only create more animosity between people of color
     and the police. See this crowd? It’s mostly young men of color, right? A police cruiser
     goes by an area like this, and they’re all suspects, right? Every one of these men
     might be stopped, searched, disrespected. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
    Now, on-screen, amid the crowd, three of the men in the picture were glowing orange
     and red. They continued to walk, to act