The Circle

to the cave-within-a-cave they’d shared and returned
     with a pair of glasses. “See?” he said. “Now it’s obvious, right?” As if answering
     Mae’s next question, he said, “I’ve always been a very average-looking guy. You know
     this. And then I get rid of the glasses, the hoodies. I change my look, the way I
     move. But most importantly, my hair went grey. And why do you think that happened?”
    “I have no idea,” Mae said.
    Ty swept his arms around, encompassing everything around them,the vast campus above. “All this. The fucking shark that eats the world.”
    “Do Bailey and Stenton know you’re going around with some other name?” Mae asked.
    “Of course. Yes. They expect me to be here. I’m not technically allowed to leave campus.
     As long as I’m here, they’re happy.”
    “Does Annie know?”
    “No.”
    “So I’m—”
    “You’re the third person who knows.”
    “And you’re telling me why?”
    “Because you have great influence here, and because you have to help. You’re the only
     one who can slow all this down.”
    “Slow what down? The company you created?”
    “Mae, I didn’t intend any of this to happen. And it’s moving too fast. This idea of
     Completion, it’s far beyond what I had in mind when I started all this, and it’s far
     beyond what’s right. It has to be brought back into some kind of balance.”
    “First of all, I don’t agree. Secondly, I can’t help.”
    “Mae, the Circle can’t close.”
    “What are you talking about? How can you say this now? If you’re Ty, most of this
     was your idea.”
    “No. No. I was trying to make the web more civil. I was trying to make it more elegant.
     I got rid of anonymity. I combined a thousand disparate elements into one unified
     system. But I didn’t picture a world where Circle membership was mandatory, where
     all government and all life was channeled through one network—”
    “I’m leaving,” Mae said, and turned. “And I don’t see why you justdon’t leave, too. Leave everything. If you don’t believe in all this, then leave.
     Go to the woods.”
    “That didn’t work for Mercer, did it?”
    “Fuck you.”
    “Sorry. I’m sorry. But he’s why I contacted you now. Don’t you see that’s just one
     of the consequences of all this? There will be more Mercers. So many more. So many
     people who don’t want to be found but who will be. So many people who wanted no part
     of all this. That’s what’s new. There used to be the option of opting out. But now
     that’s over. Completion is the end. We’re closing the circle around everyone—it’s
     a totalitarian nightmare.”
    “And it’s my fault?”
    “No, no. Not at all. But you’re now the ambassador. You’re the face of it. The benign,
     friendly face of it all. And the closing of the Circle—it’s what you and your friend
     Francis made possible. Your mandatory Circle account idea, and his chip. TruYouth?
     It’s sick, Mae. Don’t you see? All the kids get a chip embedded in them, for safety,
     when they’re infants. And yes, it’ll save lives. But then, what, you think they suddenly
     remove them when they’re eighteen? No. In the interest of education and safety, everything
     they’ve done will be recorded, tracked, logged, analyzed—it’s permanent. Then, when
     they’re old enough to vote, to participate, their membership is mandatory. That’s
     where the Circle closes. Everyone will be tracked, cradle to grave, with no possibility
     of escape.”
    “You really sound like Mercer now. This kind of paranoia—”
    “But I know more than Mercer. Don’t you think if someone like me, someone who invented
     most of this shit, is scared, don’t you think you should be scared, too?”
    “No. I think you lost a step.”
    “Mae, so many of the things I invented I honestly did for fun, out of some perverse
     game of whether or not they’d work, whether people would use them. I mean, it was
     like setting up a guillotine in the public square. You don’t expect a thousand people
     to line up to put their heads in it.”
    “Is that how you see this?”
    “No, sorry. That’s a bad comparison. But some of the things we did, I just—I did just
     to see if anyone would actually use them, would acquiesce. When they did buy in, half
     the time I couldn’t believe it. And then it was too late. There was Bailey and Stenton
     and the IPO. And then it was just too fast, and there was enough money to make any
     dumb