The Circle (41 page)

“Your step count could be better,” she said. “You’re averaging only 5,300, when you
should be at 10,000. Someone your age, especially, should be even higher than that.”

“I know,” Mae said. “It’s just been busy lately.”

“Okay. But let’s bring those steps up. As a promise to me? Now,
because we’re talking to all your watchers now, I’d like to tout the overall program
your own data feeds into, Mae. It’s called the Complete Health Data program, or CHAD
for short. Chad was an ex of mine, and Chad, if you’re out there, I didn’t name it
for you.”

Mae’s wrist went wild with messages.
Chad, you fool
.

“Through CHAD, we get real-time data on everyone at the Circle. Mae, you and the newbies
were the first to get the new wristbands, but since then, we’ve equipped everyone
else at the Circle. And this has enabled us to get perfect and complete data on the
eleven thousand people here. Can you imagine? The first boon has been that when the
flu arrived on campus last week, we knew in minutes who brought it. We sent her home
and no one else was infected. If only we could prevent people from bringing germs
onto
campus, right? If they never left, getting dirty out there, then we’d be all set.
But let me get off my soapbox and focus on you, Mae.”

“As long as the news is good,” Mae said, and tried to smile. But she was uneasy and
wanted to move all this along.

“Well, I think it’s good,” the doctor said. “This comes from a watcher in Scotland.
He’d been tracking your vitals, and cross-referencing with your DNA markers, he realized
that the way you’re eating, particularly nitrates, is elevating your propensity for
cancer.”

“Jesus. Really? Is that the bad news I’m here for?”

“No, no! Don’t worry. It’s easily solved. You don’t have cancer and probably won’t
get it. But you know you have a marker for gastrointestinal cancer, just an increased
risk, and this researcher in Glasgow, who’d been following you and your vitals, saw
that you’re eating salami and other meats with nitrates that might be tipping you
toward cellular mutation.”

“You keep scaring me.”

“Oh god I’m sorry! I don’t mean to. But thank god he was watching. I mean, we’re watching,
too, and we’re getting better at watching all the time. But the beauty of having so
many friends out there, as you do, is that one of them, five thousand miles away,
has helped you avert a growing risk.”

“So no more nitrates.”

“Right. Let’s skip the nitrates. I’ve zinged you a list of foods that contain them,
and your watchers can see, too. They should always be eaten in moderation, but should
be avoided altogether if there’s any history of or risk of cancer. I hope you’ll be
sure to convey this to your parents, in case they haven’t been checking their own
Zing feed.”

“Oh, I’m sure they have,” Mae said.

“Okay, and this is the not-so-good news. It’s not about you or your health. It’s your
parents. They’re fine, but I want to show you something.” The doctor brought up the
SeeChange camera feeds in Mae’s parents’ house, set up a month into her father’s treatment.
The medical team at the Circle was taking a strong interest in her father’s case,
and wanted as much data as it could get. “You see anything wrong?”

Mae scanned the screen. Where a grid of sixteen images should have been visible, twelve
were blank. “There are only four working,” she said.

“Correct,” said the doctor.

Mae watched the four feeds for signs of her parents. She saw none. “Has tech been
there to check?”

“No need. We saw them do it. For each one, they reached up and put some kind of cover
over them. Maybe just some sticker or fabric. Did you know about this?”

“I didn’t. I’m so sorry. They shouldn’t have done this.”

Instinctively, Mae checked her current viewership: 1,298,001. It always spiked during
the visits to Dr. Villalobos. Now all these people knew. Mae felt her face flush.

“Have you heard from your folks recently?” Dr. Villalobos asked. “Our records say
you haven’t. But maybe—”

“Not in the last few days,” Mae said. In fact, she hadn’t been in touch for over a
week. She’d tried to call them, to no avail. She’d zinged and received no response.

“Would you be willing to go visit?” the doctor asked. “As you know, good medical care
is hard to provide when we’re in the dark.”

Mae was driving home, having left work at five—something she hadn’t done in weeks—and
was thinking of her parents, what kind of madness had overtaken them, and she was
worried that somehow Mercer’s own madness had infected them. How dare they disconnect
cameras! After all she’d done to help, after all the Circle had done to bend all rules
to come to their aid! And what would Annie say?

Damn her
, Mae thought as she made her way home, the air growing warmer as the distance grew
between her and the Pacific. Mae had set up her lens on the car dash, inserting it
into a special mount created for her time in the car.
That fucking debutante
. This was bad timing. Annie would likely find some way to turn all this to her advantage.
Just when her envy of Mae—and it was that, it was so abundantly obvious—was growing,
she could cut Mae down to size again. Mae and her nothing town, her parking-garage
parents who couldn’t keep their screens operational, who couldn’t keep themselves
healthy. Who took a monumental gift, premium health care, for free, and abused it.
Mae knew what Annie was thinking in her little entitled blond head:
You just can’t help some people
.

Annie’s family line went back to the
Mayflower
, her ancestors having settled this country, and their ancestors having owned some
vast swath of England. Their blood was blue all the way back, it seemed, to the invention
of the wheel. In fact, if anyone’s bloodline
had
invented the wheel, it would have been Annie’s. It would make absolute and perfect
sense and would surprise no one.

Mae had discovered all this one Thanksgiving at Annie’s house, with twenty-odd relatives
there, all with their thin noses, their pink skin, their weak eyes hidden behind forty
lenses, when she became aware, during an appropriately self-effacing conversation—for
Annie’s family was equally unwilling to talk too much or care too much about their
lineage—that some distant relative of theirs had been at the very first Thanksgiving.

“Oh god, who cares?” Annie’s mother had said, when Mae had pressed for more details.
“Some random guy got on a boat. He probably owed money all over the Old Country.”

And they had proceeded with dinner. Afterward, Annie had, at Mae’s insistence, shown
her some documents, ancient yellowed papers detailing their family history, a beautiful
black portfolio of genealogies, scholarly articles, pictures of grave old men with
extravagant sideburns standing near rough-hewn cabins.

In other visits to Annie’s house, her family was equally generous, unassuming and
careless with their name. But when Annie’s sister was married, and the extended family
arrived, Mae saw a different side. She was seated at a table of single men and women,
most of them
Annie’s cousins, and next to Annie’s aunt. She was a wiry woman in her forties, her
features similar to Annie’s but arranged with lesser results. She was recently divorced,
having left a man “beneath my station,” she said with pretend haughtiness.

“And you know Annie from …?” She’d first turned to Mae fully twenty minutes into dinner.

“College. We were roommates.”

“I thought her roommate was Pakistani.”

“That was freshman year.”

“And you saved the day. Where are you from?”

“Middle of the state. Central Valley. A small town no one’s heard of. Sort of near
Fresno.”

Mae drove on, remembering all this, some of it injecting fresh pain into her, something
still wet and raw.

“Wow, Fresno!” the aunt had said, pretending to smile. “I haven’t heard that word
in a long time, thank god.” She’d taken a swallow from her gin and tonic and squinted
out at the wedding party. “The important thing is that you got out. I know good colleges
look for people like you. That’s probably why I didn’t get in where I wanted to. Don’t
let anyone tell you Exeter helps. So many quota spots to fill with people from Pakistan
and Fresno, right?”

The first time she’d gone home transparent had been revelatory and had burnished Mae’s
faith in humanity. She’d had a simple evening with her parents, making and eating
dinner and while doing so, they’d discussed the differences in her father’s treatment
before and after they became insured through the Circle. Viewers could see both
the triumphs of his treatment—her father seemed vibrant and moved with ease through
the house—but they also saw the toll the disease was taking on him. He fell awkwardly
while trying to make his way upstairs, and afterward there was a flood of messages
from concerned viewers, followed by thousands of smiles from all over the world. People
suggesting new drug combinations, new physical therapy regimens, new doctors, experimental
treatments, Eastern medicine, Jesus. Hundreds of churches put him in their weekly
prayers. Mae’s parents felt confident in their doctors, and most viewers could see
that her father’s care was exceptional, so what was more important and plentiful than
the medical comments were those simply cheering him and the family on. Mae cried reading
the messages; it was a flood of love. People sharing their own stories, so many living
with MS themselves. Others spoke of their own struggles—living with osteoporosis,
with Bell’s palsy, with Crohn’s disease. Mae had been forwarding the messages to her
parents, but after a few days decided to make their own email and mailing address
public, so her parents could be emboldened and inspired by the outpouring themselves,
every day.

This, the second time she’d gone home, would, she knew, be even better. After she
addressed the issue with the cameras, which she expected was some sort of misunderstanding,
she planned to give all those who had reached out the chance to see her parents again,
and to give her parents a chance to thank all those who had sent them smiles and help.

She found the two of them in the kitchen, chopping vegetables.

“How are you guys?” she said, while forcing them into a three-way embrace. They both
smelled of onions.

“You’re sure affectionate tonight, Mae!” her father said.

“Ha ha,” Mae said, and tried to indicate, with a rolling back of her eyelids, that
they should not imply that she was ever less affectionate.

As if remembering that they were on camera, and that their daughter was now a more
visible and important person, her parents adjusted their behavior. They made lasagna,
with Mae adding a few ingredients Additional Guidance had asked her to bring and display
to watchers. When dinner was ready, and Mae had given adequate camera time to the
products, they all sat down.

“So there’s a slight concern from the health folks that some of your cameras aren’t
working,” Mae said, keeping it light.

“Really?” her father said, smiling. “Maybe we should check the batteries?” He winked
at her mother.

“You guys,” Mae said, knowing she had to make this statement very clear, knowing this
was a pivotal moment, for their own health and the overall health data-gathering system
the Circle was trying to make possible. “How can anyone provide you with good health
care when you don’t allow them to see how you’re doing? It’s like going to see a doctor
and not allowing her to take your pulse.”

“That’s a very good point,” her father said. “I think we should eat.”

“We’ll get them fixed right away,” her mother said, and that began what was a very
strange night, during which Mae’s parents agreed readily with all of Mae’s arguments
about transparency, nodded their heads vigorously when she talked about the necessity
for everyone to be onboard, the corollary to vaccines, how they only worked with full
participation. They agreed heartily with it all, complimenting Mae repeatedly on her
powers of persuasion and logic. It was odd; they were being far too cooperative.

They sat down to eat, and Mae did something she’d never done
before, and which she hoped her parents wouldn’t ruin by acting like it was unusual:
she gave a toast.

“Here’s a toast to you two,” she said. “And while we’re at it, a toast to all the
thousands of people who reached out to you guys after the last time I was here.”

Her parents smiled stiffly and raised their glasses. They ate for a few moments, and
when her mother had carefully chewed and swallowed her first bite, she smiled and
looked directly into the lens—which Mae had told her repeatedly not to do.

“Well, we sure did get a
lot
of messages,” her mother said.

Mae’s father joined in. “Your mom’s been sorting through them, and we’ve been making
a little dent in the pile every day. But it’s a lot of work, I have to say.”

Her mother rested her hand on Mae’s arm. “Not that we don’t appreciate it, because
we do. We surely do. I just want to go on record as asking everyone’s forgiveness
for our tardiness in answering all the messages.”

“We’ve gotten thousands,” her father noted, poking at his salad.

Her mother smiled stiffly. “And again, we appreciate the outpouring. But even if we
spent one minute on each response, that’s a thousand minutes. Think of it: sixteen
hours just for some basic response to the messages! Oh jeez, now I sound ungrateful.”

Mae was glad her mother said this, because they did sound ungrateful. They were complaining
about people caring about them. And just when Mae thought her mother would reverse
herself, would encourage more good wishes, her father spoke and made it worse. Like
her mother, he spoke directly into the lens.

“But we do ask you, from now on, to just send your best wishes
through the air. Or if you pray, just pray for us. No need to put it into a message.
Just”—and he closed his eyes and squeezed them tight—“send your good wishes, your
good vibes, our way. No need to email or zing or anything. Just good thoughts. Send
’em through the air. That’s all we ask.”