The Circle

from the drones still hovering above, expecting
     to see Mercer on the bridge, looking down at the truck below. But there was no one
     on the bridge.
    “You doing okay today?” Bailey asked.
    They were in his library, alone but for her watchers. Since Mercer’s death, now a
     full week ago, the numbers had remained steady, near twenty-eight million.
    “I am, thanks,” Mae said, measuring her words, imagining the way the president, no
     matter the situation, has to find a medium between raw emotion, and quiet dignity,
     practiced composure. She’d been thinking of herself as a president. She shared much
     with them—the responsibility to so many, the power to influence global events.And with her position came new, president-level crises. There was Mercer’s passing.
     There was Annie’s collapse. She thought of the Kennedys. “I’m not sure it’s hit me
     yet,” she said.
    “And it might not, not for a while,” Bailey said. “Grief doesn’t arrive on schedule,
     as much as we’d like it to. But I don’t want you to be blaming yourself. You’re not
     doing that, I hope.”
    “Well, it’s sort of hard not to,” Mae said, and then winced. Those words were not
     presidential, and Bailey leapt on them.
    “Mae, you were trying to help a very disturbed, antisocial young man. You and the
     other participants were reaching out, trying to bring him into the embrace of humanity,
     and he rejected that. I think it’s self-evident that you were, if anything, his only
     hope.”
    “Thank you for saying so,” she said.
    “It’s like you were a doctor, coming to help a sick patient, and the patient, upon
     seeing this doctor, jumps out of the window. You can hardly be blamed.”
    “Thank you,” Mae said.
    “And your parents? They’re okay?”
    “They’re fine. Thank you.”
    “It must have been good to see them at the service.”
    “It was,” Mae said, though they’d barely spoken then, and hadn’t spoken since.
    “I know there’s still some distance between you all, but it will collapse with time.
     Distance always collapses.”
    Mae felt thankful for Bailey, for his strength and his calm. He was, at that moment,
     her best friend, and something like a father, too. She loved her own parents, but
     they were not wise like this, not stronglike this. She was thankful for Bailey, and Stenton, and especially for Francis, who
     had been with her most of every day since.
    “It frustrates me to see something like that happen,” Bailey continued. “It’s exasperating,
     really. I know this is tangential, and I know it’s a pet issue of mine, but really:
     there’d be no chance of that happening if Mercer was in a self-driving vehicle. Their
     programming would have precluded this. Vehicles like the one he was driving should
     frankly be illegal.”
    “Right,” Mae said. “That stupid truck.”
    “And not that it’s about money, but do you know how much it’ll cost to repair that
     bridge? And what it already cost to clean up the whole mess down below? You put him
     in a self-driving car, and there’s no option for self-destruction. The car would have
     shut down. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t get on my soapbox about something so unrelated to
     your grief.”
    “It’s okay.”
    “And there he was, alone in some cabin. Of
course
he’s going to get depressed, and work himself into a state of madness and paranoia.
     When the participants arrived, I mean, that guy was far past gone. He’s up there,
     alone, unreachable by the thousands, millions even, who would have helped in any way
     they could if they’d known.”
    Mae looked up to Bailey’s stained-glass ceiling—all those angels—thinking how much
     Mercer would like to be considered a martyr. “So many people loved him,” she said.
    “
So
many people. Have you seen the comments and tributes? People wanted to help. They
tried
to help.
You
did. And certainly there would have been thousands more, if he’d let them. If you
     rejecthumanity, if you reject all the tools available to you, all the help available to
     you, then bad things will happen. You reject the technology that prevents cars from
     going over cliffs, and you’ll go over a cliff—physically. You reject the help and
     love of the world’s compassionate billions, and you go over a cliff—emotionally. Right?”
     Bailey paused, as if to allow the two of them to soak in the apt and tidy metaphor
     he’d conjured. “You reject the groups, the people, the listeners