The Circle by Dave Eggers
In seconds, most of the crowd’s video feeds were available on the Great Room screen, and the audience could see a mosaic of Fiona Highbridge, her cold hard face from ten angles, all of them confirming her guilt.
“Lynch her!” someone outside the laundry yelled.
“She must be kept safe,” Stenton hissed into Mae’s ear.
“Keep her safe,” Mae pleaded with the mob. “Has someone called the police—the constables?”
In a few seconds, sirens could be heard, and when Mae saw the two cars race across the parking lot, she checked the time again. When the four officers reached Fiona Highbridge and applied handcuffs to her, the clock on the Great Room screen read 10 minutes, 26 seconds.
“I guess that’s it,” Mae said, and stopped the clock.
The audience exploded with cheers, and the participants who had trapped Fiona Highbridge were congratulated worldwide in seconds.
“Let’s cut the video feed,” Stenton said to Mae, “in the interest of allowing her some dignity.”
Mae repeated the directive to the techs. The feeds showing Highbridge dropped out, and the screen went black again.
“Well,” Mae said to the audience. “That was actually a lot easier than even I thought it would be. And we only needed a few of the tools now at the world’s disposal.”
“Let’s do another!” someone yelled.
Mae smiled. “Well, we could,” she said, and looked to Bailey, standing in the wings. He shrugged.
“Maybe not another fugitive,” Stenton said into her earpiece. “Let’s try a regular civilian.”
A smile overtook Mae’s face.
“Okay everyone,” she said, as she quickly found a photo on her tablet and transferred it to the screen behind her. It was a snapshot of Mercer taken three years earlier, just after they’d stopped dating, when they were still close, the two of them standing at the entrance to a coastal trail they were about to hike.
She had not, before just then, once thought of using the Circle to find Mercer, but now it seemed to make perfect sense. How better to prove to him the reach and power of the network and the people on it? His skepticism would fall away.
“Okay,” Mae said to the audience. “Our second target today is not a fugitive from justice, but you might say he’s a fugitive from, well, friendship.”
She smiled, acknowledging the laughter in the room.
“This is Mercer Medeiros. I haven’t seen him in a few months, and would love to see him again. Like Fiona Highbridge, though, he’s someone who is trying not to be found. So let’s see if we can break our previous record. Everyone ready? Let’s start the clock.” And the clock started.
Within ninety seconds there were hundreds of posts from people who knew him—from grade school, high school, college, work. There were even a few pictures featuring Mae, which entertained all involved. Then, though, much to Mae’s horror, there was a yawning gap, of four and a half minutes, when no one offered any valuable information on where he was now. An ex-girlfriend said she, too, would like to know his whereabouts, given he had a whole scuba apparatus that belonged to her. That was the most relevant message for a time, but then a zing appeared from Jasper, Oregon, and was immediately voted to the top of the scroll.
I’ve seen this guy at our local grocery. Let me check.
And that poster, Adam Frankenthaler, got in touch with his neighbors, and quickly there was agreement that they had all seen Mercer—in the liquor store, in the grocery, at the library. But then there was another excruciating pause, almost two minutes, where no one could figure out quite where he lived. The clock said 7:31.
“Okay,” Mae said. “This is where the more powerful tools come into play. Let’s check local real estate sites for rental histories. Let’s check credit card records, phone records, library memberships, anything he would have signed up for. Oh wait.” Mae looked up to see two addresses had been found, both in the same tiny Oregon town. “Do we know how we got those?” she asked, but it hardly seemed to matter. Things were moving too quickly now.
In the next few minutes, cars converged on both addresses, their passengers filming their arrival. One address was above a homeopathic medicine outlet in town, great redwoods rising high above. A camera showed a hand knocking on the door, and then peering into the window. There was no answer at first, but finally the door opened, and the camera panned down to find a tiny boy, about five, seeing a crowd at his doorstep, looking terrified.
“Is Mercer Medeiros here?” said a voice.
The boy turned, disappearing into the dark house. “Dad!”
For a moment Mae panicked, thinking that this boy was Mercer’s—it was happening too quickly for her to do the math properly. He already has a son? No, she realized, this couldn’t be his biological child. Maybe he’d moved in with a woman who had kids already?
But when the shadow of a man emerged into the light of the doorway, it was not Mercer. It was a goateed man of about forty, in a flannel shirt and sweatpants. Dead end. Just over eight minutes had elapsed.
The second address was found. It was in the woods, high up a mountain slope. The main video feed behind Mae switched to this view, as a car raced up a winding driveway to stop at a large grey cabin.
This time the camerawork was more professional and clear. Someone was filming a participant, a grinning young woman, knocking on the door, her eyebrows dancing up and down with mischief.
“Mercer?” she said to the door. “Mercer, you in there?” The familiarity in her voice was momentarily unnerving to Mae. “You in there making some chandeliers?”
Mae’s stomach turned. She had a sense that Mercer would not like that question, the dismissive tone of it. She wanted his face to appear as soon as possible, so she could speak to him directly. But no one answered the door.
“Mercer!” the young woman said. “I know you’re in there. We see your car.” The camera panned to the driveway, where Mae saw, with a thrill, that it was indeed Mercer’s pickup. When the camera panned back, it revealed a crowd of ten or twelve people, most of them looking like locals, in baseball hats and at least one in camouflage gear. By the time the camera arrived back at the front door, the crowd had begun to chant. “Mercer! Mercer! Mercer!”
Mae looked at the clock. Nine minutes, 24 seconds. They would break the Fiona Highbridge record by at least a minute. But first he had to come to the door.
“Go around,” the young woman said, and now the feed followed a second camera, peering around the porch and into the windows. Inside, no figures were visible. There were fishing poles, and a stack of antlers, and books and papers in piles by dusty couches and chairs. On the mantel, Mae was sure she could see a photo she recognized, of Mercer with his brothers and parents, on a trip they’d taken to Yosemite. She remembered the photo, and was sure of the figures in it, because it had always struck her as strange and wonderful, the fact that Mercer, who was sixteen at the time, was leaning his head on his mother’s shoulder, in an unguarded expression of filial love.
“Mercer! Mercer! Mercer!” the voices chanted.
But it was very possible, Mae realized, that he was on a hike or, like some caveman, out collecting firewood and might not return for hours. She was ready to turn back to the audience, call the search a success, and cut the demonstration short—they had, after all, found him, beyond the shadow of a doubt—when she heard a shrieking voice.
“There he is! Driveway!”
And both cameras began to move and shake as they ran from the porch to the Toyota. There was a figure getting into the truck, and Mae knew it was Mercer, as the cameras descended upon him. But as they got close—close enough for Mae to be heard—he was already backing down the driveway.
A figure was running alongside the truck, a young man, who could be seen attaching something to the passenger-side window. Mercer backed into the main road and sped off. There was a chaos of running and laughter, as all the participants assembled at Mercer’s house got into their cars to follow him.
Mae knew this camera had only one-way audio, so she couldn’t speak to Mercer. But she knew she had to. He wouldn’t know, yet, that it was she who was behind this. She needed to assure him this wasn’t some creepy stalking expedition. That it was his friend Mae, simply demonstrating their SoulSearch program, and all she wanted was to talk to him for a second, to laugh about this together.
But as the woods raced past his window, a blur of brown and white and green, Mercer’s mouth was a terrible slash of anger and fear. He was turning the truck frequently, recklessly, and seemed to be rising through the mountains. Mae worried about the ability of the participants to catch up to him, but knew they had the SeeChange camera, which was offering a view so clear and cinematic that it was wildly entertaining. He looked like his hero, Steve McQueen, furious but controlled while operating his heaving truck. Mae briefly had the thought of some kind of streaming show they could create, where people simply broadcast themselves driving through interesting landscapes at high velocity. Drive, She Said, they could call it. Mae’s reverie was interrupted by Mercer’s voice, filled with venom: “Fuck!” he yelled. “Fuck you!”
He was looking at the camera. He’d found it. And then the camera’s view was descending. He was rolling down the window. Mae wondered if it would hold, if its adhesive would trump the strength of the automatic window, but the answer arrived in seconds, as the camera was shaved off the window, its eye swinging wildly as it descended and fell, showing woods, then pavement, then, as it settled on the road, sky.
The clock read 11:51.
For a long few minutes, there were no views of Mercer at all. Mae assumed that at any moment, one of the cars in pursuit would find him, but the views from all four cars showed no sign of him at all. They were all on different roads, and their audio made clear they had no idea where he was.
“Okay,” Mae said, knowing she was about to wow the audience. “Release the drones!” she roared in a voice meant to invoke and mock some witchy villain.
It took agonizingly long—three minutes or so—but soon all the available private drones in the area, eleven of them, were in the air, each operated by its owner, and all were on the mountain where, it had been surmised, Mercer was driving. Their own GPS systems kept them from colliding, and, coordinating with the satellite view, they found his powder-blue truck in sixty-seven seconds. The clock was at 15:04.
The drones’ camera views were now brought onscreen, giving the audience an incredible grid of images, all of the drones well-spaced, providing a kaleidoscopic look at the truck racing up the mountain road through heavy pines. A few of the smaller drones were able to swoop down and get close, while most of them, too large to weave between the trees, followed from above. One of the smaller drones, called ReconMan10, had dropped through the tree canopy and seemed to attach itself to Mercer’s driver-side window. The view was steady and clear. Mercer turned to it, realizing its presence and tenacity, and a look of unmitigated horror transformed his face. Mae had never seen him look like this before.
“Can someone get me on audio for the drone called ReconMan10?” Mae asked. She knew his window was still open. If she spoke through the drone’s speaker, he’d hear her, know it was her. She received the signal that the audio was activated.
“Mercer. It’s me, Mae! Can you hear me?”
There was some faint sign of recognition on his face. He squinted, and looked toward the drone again, disbelieving.
“Mercer. Stop driving. It’s just me. Mae.” And then, almost laughing, she said, “I just wanted to say hi.”
The audience roared.
Mae was warmed by the laughter in the room, and expected that Mercer would laugh, too, and would stop, and would shake his head, in admiration for the wonderful power of the tools at her disposal. What she wanted him to say was, “Okay, you got me. I surrender. You win.”
But he wasn’t smiling, and he wasn’t stopping. He wasn’t even looking at the drone anymore. It was as if he’d decided on a new path, and was locked into it.
“Mercer!” she said, in mock-authoritative voice. “Mercer, stop the car and surrender. You’re surrounded.” Then she thought of something that made her smile again. “You’re surrounded …” she said, lowering her voice, and then, in a chirpy alto, “by friends!” As she’d known they would, a burst of laughter and cheers thundered through the auditorium.
But still he didn’t stop. He hadn’t looked at the drone in minutes. Mae checked the clock: 19 minutes, 57 seconds. She couldn’t decide whether or not it mattered if he stopped, or acknowledged the cameras. He’d been found, after all, hadn’t he? They’d probably beaten the Fiona Highbridge record when they’d caught him running to his car. That was the moment they’d verified his corporeal identity. Mae had the brief thought that they should call off the drones, and shut down the cameras, because Mercer was in one of his moods, and wouldn’t be cooperating—and anyway, she’d proven what she intended to prove.
But something about his inability to give in, to admit defeat, or to at least acknowledge the incredible power of the technology at Mae’s command … she knew she couldn’t give up until she had received some sense of his acquiescence. What would that be, though? She didn’t know, but she knew she’d know it when she saw it.
And then the landscape passing beside the car opened up. It was no longer woods, dense and moving quickly. Now there was all blue, and treetops, and bright white clouds.
She looked to another camera-view, and saw the view from an overhead drone. Mercer was driving on a bridge, a narrow bridge connecting the mountain to another, the span rising hundreds of feet over a gorge.
“Can we turn the microphone up at all?” she asked.
An icon appeared, indicating that the volume had been at half-power, and was now at full.
“Mercer!” she said, using a voice as ominous as she could muster. His head jerked toward the drone, shocked by the volume. Maybe he hadn’t heard her before?
“Mercer! It’s me, Mae!” she said, now holding out hope that he hadn’t known, until then, that it was her that was behind all this. But he didn’t smile. He only shook his head, slowly, as if in disappointment most profound.
Now she could see another two drones on the passenger-side window. A new voice, male, boomed from one of them: “Mercer, you motherfucker! Stop driving, you fucking asshole!”
Mercer’s head swung to this voice, and when he turned back to the road, his face showed real panic.
On the screen behind her, Mae saw that two SeeChange cameras, positioned on the bridge, had been added to the grid. A third came alive seconds later, offering a view of the span from the riverbank far below.
Now another voice, this one a woman’s and laughing, boomed from the third drone: “Mercer, submit to us! Submit to our will! Be our friend!”
Mercer turned his truck toward the drone, as if intending to ram it, but it adjusted its trajectory automatically and mimicked his movement, staying directly in sync. “You can’t escape, Mercer!” the woman’s voice bellowed. “Never, ever, ever. It’s over. Now give up. Be our friend!” This last entreaty was rendered in a child’s whine, and the woman transmitting through the electronic speaker laughed at its strangeness, this nasal entreaty emanating from a dull black drone.
The audience was cheering, and the comments were piling up, a number of watchers saying this was the greatest viewing experience of their lives.
And while the cheers were growing louder, Mae saw something come over Mercer’s face, something like determination, something like serenity. His right arm spun the steering wheel, and he disappeared from the view of drones, temporarily at least, and when they regained their lock on him, his truck was crossing the highway, speeding toward its concrete barrier, so fast that it was impossible that it could hold him back. The t
Mae’s eyes turned, instinctively, to the camera on the riverbed, and she saw, clearly, a tiny object dropping from the bridge overhead and landing, like a tin toy, on the rocks below. Though she knew this object was Mercer’s truck, and she knew, in some recess of her mind, that there could be no survivors of such a fall, she looked back to the other cameras, to the views 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.”