The Circle

that Fiona Highbridge was
     trapped against a wall, surrounded by a dozenpeople, most of them holding their phones to her, aiming them at her. There was no
     possibility of escape. Her face was wild, at once terrified and defiant. She seemed
     to be looking for gaps in the throng, some hole she could slip through. “Gotcha, kid-killer,”
     someone in the crowd said, and Fiona Highbridge collapsed, sliding to the ground,
     covering her face.
    In seconds, most of the crowd’s video feeds were available on the Great Room screen,
     and the audience could see a mosaic of Fiona Highbridge, her cold hard face from ten
     angles, all of them confirming her guilt.
    “Lynch her!” someone outside the laundry yelled.
    “She must be kept safe,” Stenton hissed into Mae’s ear.
    “Keep her safe,” Mae pleaded with the mob. “Has someone called the police—the constables?”
    In a few seconds, sirens could be heard, and when Mae saw the two cars race across
     the parking lot, she checked the time again. When the four officers reached Fiona
     Highbridge and applied handcuffs to her, the clock on the Great Room screen read 10
     minutes, 26 seconds.
    “I guess that’s it,” Mae said, and stopped the clock.
    The audience exploded with cheers, and the participants who had trapped Fiona Highbridge
     were congratulated worldwide in seconds.
    “Let’s cut the video feed,” Stenton said to Mae, “in the interest of allowing her
     some dignity.”
    Mae repeated the directive to the techs. The feeds showing Highbridge dropped out,
     and the screen went black again.
    “Well,” Mae said to the audience. “That was actually a lot easier than even I thought
     it would be. And we only needed a few of the tools now at the world’s disposal.”
    “Let’s do another!” someone yelled.
    Mae smiled. “Well, we
could
,” she said, and looked to Bailey, standing in the wings. He shrugged.
    “Maybe not another fugitive,” Stenton said into her earpiece. “Let’s try a regular
     civilian.”
    A smile overtook Mae’s face.
    “Okay everyone,” she said, as she quickly found a photo on her tablet and transferred
     it to the screen behind her. It was a snapshot of Mercer taken three years earlier,
     just after they’d stopped dating, when they were still close, the two of them standing
     at the entrance to a coastal trail they were about to hike.
    She had not, before just then, once thought of using the Circle to find Mercer, but
     now it seemed to make perfect sense. How better to prove to him the reach and power
     of the network and the people on it? His skepticism would fall away.
    “Okay,” Mae said to the audience. “Our second target today is not a fugitive from
     justice, but you might say he’s a fugitive from, well, friendship.”
    She smiled, acknowledging the laughter in the room.
    “This is Mercer Medeiros. I haven’t seen him in a few months, and would love to see
     him again. Like Fiona Highbridge, though, he’s someone who is trying not to be found.
     So let’s see if we can break our previous record. Everyone ready? Let’s start the
     clock.” And the clock started.
    Within ninety seconds there were hundreds of posts from people who knew him—from grade
     school, high school, college, work. There were even a few pictures featuring Mae,
     which entertained all involved. Then, though, much to Mae’s horror, there was a yawninggap, of four and a half minutes, when no one offered any valuable information on where
     he was now. An ex-girlfriend said she, too, would like to know his whereabouts, given
     he had a whole scuba apparatus that belonged to her. That was the most relevant message
     for a time, but then a zing appeared from Jasper, Oregon, and was immediately voted
     to the top of the scroll.
    I’ve seen this guy at our local grocery. Let me check
.
    And that poster, Adam Frankenthaler, got in touch with his neighbors, and quickly
     there was agreement that they had all seen Mercer—in the liquor store, in the grocery,
     at the library. But then there was another excruciating pause, almost two minutes,
     where no one could figure out quite where he lived. The clock said 7:31.
    “Okay,” Mae said. “This is where the more powerful tools come into play. Let’s check
     local real estate sites for rental histories. Let’s check credit card records, phone
     records, library memberships, anything he would have signed up for. Oh wait.” Mae
     looked up to see two addresses had been found, both