The Circle

from her mouth. She looked wonderfully peaceful, sleeping a restful
     sleep, and for a brief moment Mae felt a twinge of envy. She wondered what Annie was
     thinking. Doctors had said that she was likely dreaming; they’d been measuring steady
     brain activity during the coma, but what precisely was happening in her mind was unknown
     to all, and Mae couldn’t help feeling some annoyance about this. There was a monitor
     visible from where Mae sat, a real-time picture of Annie’s mind, bursts of color appearing
     periodically, implying that extraordinary things were happening in there. But what
     was she thinking?
    A knock startled her. She looked beyond Annie’s prone form to find Francis behind
     the glass, in the viewing area. He raised a tentative hand, and Mae waved. She would
     see him later, at an all-campus event to celebrate the latest Clarification milestone.
     Ten million people were now transparent worldwide, the movement irreversible.
    Annie’s role in making it possible could not be overstated, and Mae wished she could
     witness it. There was so much Mae wanted to tell Annie. With a duty that felt holy,
     she’d told the world about Kalden being Ty, about his bizarre claims and misguided
     efforts to derail the completion of the Circle. Remembering it now, it seemed like
     some kind of nightmare, being so far under the earth with that madman, disconnected
     from her watchers and the rest of the world. But Mae had feigned her cooperation and
     had escaped, and immediatelytold Bailey and Stenton about it all. With their customary compassion and vision,
     they’d allowed Ty to stay on campus, in an advisory role, with a secluded office and
     no specific duties. Mae hadn’t seen him since their subterranean encounter, and did
     not care to.
    Mae had not reached her parents in a few months now, but it would be only a matter
     of time. They would find each other, soon enough, in a world where everyone could
     know each other truly and wholly, without secrets, without shame and without the need
     for permission to see or to know, without the selfish hoarding of life—any corner
     of it, any moment of it. All of that would be, so soon, replaced by a new and glorious
     openness, a world of perpetual light. Completion was imminent, and it would bring
     peace, and it would bring unity, and all that messiness of humanity until now, all
     those uncertainties that accompanied the world before the Circle, would be only a
     memory.
    Another burst of color appeared on the screen monitoring the workings of Annie’s mind.
     Mae reached out to touch her forehead, marveling at the distance this flesh put between
     them. What was going on in that head of hers? It was exasperating, really, Mae thought,
     not knowing. It was an affront, a deprivation, to herself and to the world. She would
     bring this up with Stenton and Bailey, with the Gang of 40, at the earliest opportunity.
     They needed to talk about Annie, the thoughts she was thinking. Why shouldn’t they
     know them? The world deserved nothing less and would not wait.

A Note About the Author
    Dave Eggers grew up near Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois at
     Urbana-Champaign. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house
     in San Francisco that produces books, a quarterly journal of new writing (
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern
), and a monthly magazine,
The Believer
. McSweeney’s publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history
     to illuminate human rights crises around the world. In 2002, he cofounded 826 Valencia,
     a nonprofit youth writing and tutoring center in San Francisco’s Mission District.
     Sister centers have since opened in seven other American cities under the umbrella
     of 826 National, and like-minded centers have opened in Dublin, London, Copenhagen,
     Stockholm, and Birmingham, Alabama, among other locations. His work has been nominated
     for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle
     Award, and has won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, France’s Prix Médicis, Germany’s
     Albatross Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the American Book Award. Eggers
     lives in Northern California with his family.
    Other titles by Dave Eggers available in eBook format
A Hologram for the King •
978-1-938073-31-1
How We Are Hungry •
978-0-307-42630-7
What Is the What •
978-0-307-39036-3
The Wild Things •
978-0-307-47756-9
You Shall