The Circle

neighborhood? Inside the house?”
    Belinda and Gareth looked to a well-dressed woman, with very short black hair and
     stylish glasses. “I guess that’s my cue.” She stood and straightened her black skirt.
    “My name is Finnegan, and my issue was violence against children in the home. I myself
     was a victim of domestic violence when I was young,” she said, taking a second to
     let that register. “And this crime, among all others, seems like the most difficult
     thing to prevent, giventhe perpetrators are ostensibly part of the family, right? But then I realized that
     all the necessary tools already exist. First, most people already have one or another
     monitor that can track when their anger rises to a dangerous level. Now, if we couple
     that tool with standard motion sensors, then we can know immediately when something
     bad is happening, or is about to happen. Let me give you an example. Here’s a motion
     sensor installed in the kitchen. These are often used in factories and even restaurant
     kitchens to sense whether the chef or worker is completing a given task in a standard
     way. I understand the Circle uses these to ensure regularity in many departments.”
    “We do indeed,” Bailey said, provoking some distant laughter from the room where he
     was sitting.
    Stenton explained: “We own the patent for that particular technology. Did you know
     that?”
    Finnegan’s face flushed, and she seemed to be deciding whether or not to lie. Could
     she say she
did
know?
    “I was not aware of that,” she said, “but I’m very glad to know that now.”
    Stenton seemed impressed with her composure.
    “As you know,” she continued, “in workplaces, any irregularity of movement or in the
     order of operations, and the computer either reminds you of what you might have forgotten,
     or it logs the mistake for management. So I thought, why not use the same motion sensor
     technology in the home, especially high-risk homes, to record any behavior outside
     the norm?”
    “Like a smoke detector for humans,” Stenton said.
    “Right. A smoke detector will go off if it senses even the slightestincrease in carbon dioxide. So this is the same idea. I’ve installed a sensor here
     in this room, actually, and want to show you how it sees.”
    On the screen behind her, a figure appeared, the size and shape of Finnegan, though
     featureless—a blue-shadow version of herself, mirroring her movements.
    “Okay, this is me. Now watch my motions. If I walk around, then the sensors see that
     as within the norm.”
    Behind her, her form remained blue.
    “If I cut some tomatoes,” Finnegan said, miming the cutting of imaginary tomatoes,
     “same thing. It’s normal.”
    The figure behind her, her blue shadow, mimicked her.
    “But now see what happens if I do something violent.”
    Finnegan raised her arms quickly and brought them down in front of her, as if hitting
     a child beneath her. Immediately, onscreen, her figure turned orange, and a loud alarm
     went off.
    The alarm was a rapid rhythmic screeching. It was, Mae realized, far too loud for
     a demonstration. She looked to Stenton, whose eyes were round and white.
    “Turn it off,” he said, barely controlling his rage.
    Finnegan hadn’t heard him, and was going about her presentation as if this were part
     of it, an acceptable part of it. “That’s the alarm of course and—”
    “Turn it off!” Stenton yelled, and this time, Finnegan heard. She flailed on her tablet,
     looking for the right button.
    Stenton was looking at the ceiling. “Where is that sound coming from? How is it so
     loud?”
    The screeching continued. Half the room was holding their ears.
    “Turn it off or we walk out of here,” Stenton said, standing, his mouth small and
     furious.
    Finally Finnegan found the right button and the alarm went silent.
    “That was a mistake,” Stenton said. “You don’t punish the people you’re pitching.
     Do you understand that?”
    Finnegan’s eyes were wild, vibrating, filling with tears. “Yes, I do.”
    “You could have simply said an alarm goes off. No need to have the alarm go off. That’s
     my business lesson for today.”
    “Thank you sir,” she said, her knuckles white and entwined in front of her. “Should
     I go on?”
    “I don’t know,” Stenton said, still furious.
    “Go ahead, Finnegan,” Bailey said. “Just make it quick.”
    “Okay,” she said, her voice shaking, “the essence is that the sensors would be