The Circle

someone were to strike you down, if the Circle ended tomorrow,
     something worse would probably take its place. There are a thousand more Wise Men
     out there, people with ever-more radical ideas about the criminality of privacy. Every
     time I think it can’t get worse, I see some nineteen-year-old whose ideas make the
     Circle seem like some ACLUtopia. And you people (and I know now that
you
people are
most
people) are impossible to scare. No amount of surveillance causes the least concern
     or provokes any resistance.
    It’s one thing to want to measure yourself, Mae—you and your bracelets. I can accept
     you and yours tracking your own movements, recording everything you do, collecting
     data on yourself in the interest of … Well, whatever it is you’re trying to do. But
     it’s not enough, is it? You don’t want just
your
data, you need
mine
. You’re not complete without it. It’s a sickness.
    So I’m gone. By the time you read this, I’ll be off the grid, and I expect that others
     will join me. In fact, I
know
others will join me. We’ll be living underground, and in the desert, in thewoods. We’ll be like refugees, or hermits, some unfortunate but necessary combination
     of the two. Because this is what we are.
    I expect this is some second great schism, where two humanities will live, apart but
     parallel. There will be those who live under the surveillance dome you’re helping
     to create, and those who live, or try to live, apart from it. I’m scared to death
     for us all.
    Mercer
    She’d read the note on camera, and she knew that her viewers were finding it as bizarre
     and hilarious as she had. The comments were popping, and there were some good ones.
Now the Sasquatch will return to his natural habitat!
and
Good riddance, Bigfoot
. But Mae was so entertained by it that she sought out Francis, who, by the time they
     saw each other, had already seen the note transcribed and posted onto a half-dozen
     sub-sites; one watcher in Missoula had already read it while wearing a powdered wig,
     the background filled with faux-patriotic music. That video had been seen three million
     times. Mae laughed, watching it twice herself, but found she felt for Mercer. He was
     stubborn, but he was not stupid. He was not beyond hope. He was not beyond convincing.
    The next day, Annie left her another paper note, and again they planned to meet in
     their adjoining stalls. Mae only hoped that since the second round of major revelations,
     Annie had found a way to contextualize it. Mae saw the tip of Annie’s shoe under the
     next stall. She turned off her audio.
    Annie’s voice was rough.
    “You heard it got worse, right?”
    “I did hear something. Have you been crying? Annie—”
    “Mae, I don’t think I can handle this. I mean, it was one thing to know about the
     ancestors in jolly Olde. But there was a part of me that was thinking, you know, that’s
     fine, my people came to North America, started anew, put all that in the past. But
     shit, Mae, knowing that they were slave owners
here
, too? I mean, that is fucking stupid. What kind of people am I from? It has to be
     some disease in me, too.”
    “Annie. You can’t think about this.”
    “Of course I can. I can’t think of anything else—”
    “Okay. Fine. But first, calm down. And second, you can’t take it personally. You have
     to separate yourself from it. You have to see it a bit more abstractly.”
    “And I’ve been getting all this crazy hate mail. I got six messages this morning from
     people calling me Massa Annie. Half the people of color I hired over the years are
     now suspicious of me. Like I’m some genetically pure intergenerational slave owner!
     Now I can’t handle having Vickie work for me. I’m letting her go tomorrow.”
    “Annie, you know how crazy this all sounds? I mean, besides, are you sure your ancestors
here
had black slaves? The slaves weren’t Irish here, too?”
    Annie sighed loudly.
    “No. No. My people went from owning Irish people to owning African people. How’s that?
     Couldn’t keep my people from owning people. You also saw that they fought for the
     Confederate side in the Civil War?”
    “I saw that, but there’s millions of people whose ancestors fought for the South.
     The country was at war, half and half.”
    “Not
my
half. I mean, do you
know
the chaos this is wreaking on my family?”
    “But they never took all this family heritage stuff seriously, did they?”
    “Not when