The Circle

Circle.”
    He turned again toward the screen and read it, inviting the audience to commit it
     to memory.
    A LL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN .
    He turned back to the audience and smiled.
    “Okay, now I want to bring it back home. My mother’s eighty-one. She doesn’t get around
     as easily as she once did. A year ago she fell and broke her hip, and since then I’ve
     been concerned about her. I asked her to have some security cameras installed, so
     I could access them on a closed circuit, but she refused. But now I have peace of
     mind. Last weekend, while she was napping—”
    A wave of laughter rippled through the audience.
    “Forgive me! Forgive me!” he said, “I had no choice. She wouldn’t have let me do it
     otherwise. So I snuck in, and I installed cameras in every room. They’re so small
     she’ll never notice. I’ll show you really quick. Can we show cameras 1 to 5 in my
     mom’s house?”
    A grid of images popped up, including his mom, padding down a bright hallway in a
     towel. A roar of laughter erupted.
    “Oops. Let’s drop that one.” The image disappeared. “Anyway. The point is that I know
     she’s safe, and that gives me a sense of peace. As we all know here at the Circle,
     transparency leads to peace of mind. No longer do I have to wonder, ‘How’s Mom?’ No
     longer do I have to wonder, ‘What’s happening in Myanmar?’
    “Now, we’re making a million of this model, and my prediction isthat within a year we’ll have a million accessible live streams. Within five years,
     fifty million. Within ten years, two billion cameras. There will be very few populated
     areas that we won’t be able to access from the screens in our hands.”
    The audience roared again. Someone yelled out, “We want it now!”
    Bailey continued. “Instead of searching the web, only to find some edited video with
     terrible quality, now you go to SeeChange, you type in Myanmar. Or you type in your
     high school boyfriend’s name. Chances are there’s someone who’s set up a camera nearby,
     right? Why shouldn’t your curiosity about the world be rewarded? You want to see Fiji
     but can’t get there? SeeChange. You want to check on your kid at school? SeeChange.
     This is ultimate transparency. No filter. See everything. Always.”
    Mae leaned toward Annie. “This is incredible.”
    “I know, right?” Annie said.
    “Now, do these cameras have to be stationary?” Bailey said, raising a scolding finger.
     “Of course not. I happen to have a dozen helpers all over the world right now, wearing
     the cameras around their necks. Let’s visit them, shall we? Can I get Danny’s camera
     up?”
    An image of Machu Picchu appeared onscreen. It looked like a postcard, a view perched
     high above the ancient ruins. And then it started moving, down toward the site. The
     crowd gasped, then cheered.
    “That’s a live image, though I guess that’s obvious. Hi Danny. Now let’s get Sarah
     on Mount Kenya.” Another image appeared on the great screen, this one of the shale
     fields high on the mountain. “Can you point us toward the peak, Sarah?” The camera
     panned up,revealing the peak of the mountain, enshrouded in fog. “See, this opens up the possibility
     of visual surrogates. Imagine I’m bedridden, or too frail to explore the mountain
     myself. I send someone up with a camera around her neck, and I can experience it all
     in real time. Let’s do that in a few more places.” He presented live images of Paris,
     Kuala Lumpur, a London pub.
    “Now let’s experiment a bit, using all of this together. I’m sitting at home. I log
     on and want to get a sense of the world. Show me traffic on 101. Streets of Jakarta.
     Surfing at Bolinas. My mom’s house. Show me the webcams of everyone I went to high
     school with.”
    At every command, new images appeared, until there were at least a hundred live streaming
     images on the screen at once.
    “We will become all-seeing, all-knowing.”
    The audience was standing now. The applause thundered through the room. Mae rested
     her head on Annie’s shoulder.
    “All that happens will be known,” Annie whispered.
    “You have a glow.”
    “You do.”
    “I do not have a glow.”
    “Like you’re with child.”
    “I know what you meant. Stop.”
    Mae’s father reached across the table and took her hand. It was Saturday, and her
     parents were treating her to a celebratory dinner commemorating her first week at
     the Circle. This was the kind