The Circle

bull … shite.
     LuvLuv breaks it down for you. Any time she’s posted, any time she’s liked or disliked
     a restaurant, any time she’s
mentioned
food—it all gets ranked and sorted and I end up with a list like this.”
    He clicked on the food icon, which revealed a number of subset lists, with rankings
     of type of food, names of restaurants, restaurantsby city and by neighborhood. The lists were uncanny in their accuracy. They even featured
     the place she and Francis had eaten earlier that week.
    “Now I click on the place I like, and if she paid through TruYou, I know what she
     ordered last time she ate there. Click here and see the specials for those restaurants
     on Friday, when our date will happen. Here’s the average wait for a table that day.
     Uncertainty eliminated.”
    Gus went on and on throughout the presentation, into Mae’s preferences for films,
     for outdoor spaces to walk on and jog through, to favorite sports, favorite vistas.
     It was accurate, most of it, and while Gus and Francis hammed it up onstage, and the
     audience grew ever-more impressed with the software, Mae had first hidden behind her
     hands, then sunk to the lowest-possible place in her seat, and finally, when she felt
     that any moment she’d be asked to get onstage to confirm the great power of this new
     tool, she slipped out of her seat, across the aisle, out the auditorium’s side door
     and into the flat white light of an overcast afternoon.
    “I’m sorry.”
    Mae couldn’t look at him.
    “Mae. Sorry. I don’t understand why you’re so mad.”
    She did not want him near her. She was back at her desk, and he’d followed her there,
     standing over her like some carrion bird. She didn’t glance at him, because besides
     loathing him and finding his face weak and his eyes shifty, besides being sure she’d
     never need to see that wretched face again, she had work to do. The afternoon chute
     had been opened and the flow was heavy. “We can talk later,” she saidto him, but she had no intention of talking to him again, that day or any day. There
     was relief in that certainty.
    Eventually he left, at least his corporeal self left, but he appeared in minutes,
     on her third screen, pleading for forgiveness. He told her he knew he shouldn’t have
     sprung it on her, but that Gus had insisted on it being a surprise. He sent forty
     or fifty messages throughout the afternoon, apologizing, telling her what a big hit
     she was, how it would have been even better if she’d gotten onstage, because people
     were clapping for her. He assured her that everything that had been onscreen was publicly
     available, none of it embarrassing, all of it culled from things she’d posted herself,
     after all.
    And Mae knew all this to be true. She wasn’t angry at the revelation of her allergies.
     Or her favorite foods. She had openly offered this information for many years, and
     she felt that offering her preferences, and reading about others’, was one of the
     things she loved about her life online.
    So what had so mortified her during Gus’s presentation? She couldn’t put her finger
     on it. Was it only the surprise of it? Was it the pinpoint accuracy of the algorithms?
     Maybe. But then again, it wasn’t entirely accurate, so was
that
the problem? Having a matrix of preferences presented as your essence, as the whole
     you? Maybe that was it. It was some kind of mirror, but it was incomplete, distorted.
     And if Francis wanted any or all of that information, why couldn’t he just
ask
her? Her third screen, though, all afternoon was filled with congratulatory messages.
    You’re awesome, Mae
.
    Good job, newbie
.
    No horseback rides for you. Maybe a llama?
    She pushed through the afternoon and didn’t notice her blinking phone till after five.
     She’d missed three messages from her mother. When she listened to them, they all said
     the same thing: “Come home.”
    As she drove over the hills and through the tunnel, heading east, she called her mom
     and got the details. Her father had had a seizure, had gone to the hospital, was asked
     to spend the night for observation. Mae was told to drive directly there, but when
     she arrived, he was gone. She called her mother.
    “Where is he?”
    “Home. Sorry. We just got here. I didn’t think you’d get out here so soon. He’s fine.”
    So Mae drove home, and when she arrived, breathless and angry and scared, she saw
     Mercer’s Toyota pickup in the