The Circle (33 page)

“Because they weren’t ever sons or daughters themselves?”

“No. But—”

“Mae, do you have any gay relatives or friends?”

“Sure.”

“Do you know how different the world was for gays before and after people began coming
out?”

“I have an idea of it.”

Bailey stood and attended to the tea set. He poured more for himself and for Mae,
and sat down again.

“I don’t know if you do. I was from the generation that struggled greatly with coming
out. My brother is gay, and he was twenty-four before he admitted it to my family.
And until then, it nearly killed him. It was a tumor festering inside him, and it
was growing every
day. But why did he think it would be better kept inside? When he told our parents,
they barely blinked. He had created all this drama in his mind—all this mystery and
weight around his big secret. And part of the problem, historically, was with other
people keeping similar things secret. Coming out was so difficult until millions of
other men and women came out. Then it got a lot easier, don’t you agree? When millions
of men and women came out of the closet, it made homosexuality not some mysterious
so-called deviance but a mainstream life path. You follow?”

“Yes. But—”

“And I would argue that any place in the world where gays are still persecuted, you
could instantly achieve great progress if all the gays and lesbians came out publicly
at once. Then whoever is persecuting them, and all those who tacitly support this
persecution, would realize that to persecute them would mean persecuting at least
ten percent of the population—including their sons, daughters, neighbors and friends—even
their own parents. It would be instantly untenable. But the persecution of gays or
any minority group is made uniquely possible through secrecy.”

“Okay. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“That’s fine,” he said, satisfied, and sipped his tea. He ran his finger over his
upper lip, drying it. “So we’ve explored the damage of secrets within the family and
between friends, and the role of secrecy in persecuting large classes of people. Let’s
keep on our quest to find a use for a policy of secrecy. Should we look into politics?
Do you think a president should keep secrets from the people she or he governs?”

“No, but there have to be some things that we can’t know. For national security alone.”

He smiled, happy, it seemed, that she’d said what he expected her to say. “Really,
Mae? Do you recall when a man named Julian Assange leaked several million pages of
secret U.S. documents?”

“I read about it.”

“Well, first of all, the U.S. government was very upset, as was much of the media.
Many people thought this was a serious breach of security and that it presented a
clear and present danger to our men and women in uniform here and abroad. But do you
remember if any soldiers ever actually were harmed by these documents being released?”

“I don’t know.”

“None were. Not a one. Same thing happened in the seventies with the Pentagon Papers.
Not one soldier got even a splinter due to the release of these documents. The main
effect, I remember, of these documents being made public is that we found out that
many of our diplomats are gossipy about the leaders of other countries. Millions of
documents, and the main takeaway was that U.S. diplomats thought Gadhafi was a kook,
with all his female bodyguards and strange eating habits. If anything, the release
of the documents just put these diplomats on better behavior. They were more careful
about what they said.”

“But national defense—”

“What about it? The only time we’re in danger is when we don’t know the plans or motives
of the countries we’re supposedly at odds with. Or when they don’t know our plans
but worry about them, right?”

“Sure.”

“But what if they
did
know our plans and we knew theirs? You’d
suddenly be free of what they used to call the risk of mutually assured destruction,
and instead you’d arrive at mutually assured
trust
. The U.S. has no purely nefarious motives, right? We’re not planning to wipe some
country off the map. Sometimes, though, we take surreptitious steps to get what we
want. But what if everyone was, and had to be, open and upfront?”

“It would be better?”

Bailey smiled broadly. “Good. I agree.” He put his cup down and again rested his hands
in his lap.

Mae knew she shouldn’t press him, but her mouth got ahead of her. “But you can’t be
saying that everyone should know everything.”

Bailey’s eyes widened, as if pleased she’d led him to an idea he coveted. “Of course
not. But I am saying that everyone should have a
right
to know everything, and should have the
tools
to know anything. There’s not enough time to know everything, though I certainly
wish there was.”

He paused, lost briefly in thought, then returned his focus to Mae. “I understand
you weren’t very happy about being the subject of Gus’s LuvLuv demonstration.”

“It just caught me by surprise. He hadn’t told me about it beforehand.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, it presented a distorted impression of me.”

“Was the information he presented incorrect? There were factual mistakes?”

“Well, it wasn’t that. It was just … piecemeal. And maybe that made it
seem
incorrect. It was taking a few slivers of me and presenting that as the whole me—”

“It seemed incomplete.”

“Right.”

“Mae, I’m very glad you put it that way. As you know, the Circle is itself trying
to become complete. We’re trying to close the circle at the Circle.” He smiled at
his own wordplay. “But you know the overall goals of completion, I assume.”

She didn’t. “I think so,” she said.

“Look at our logo,” he said, and pointed to a wallscreen, where, on his cue, the logo
appeared. “See how that ‘c’ in the middle is open? For years it’s bothered me, and
it’s become symbolic of what’s left to do here, which is to close it.” The ‘c’ on
screen closed and became a perfect circle. “See that?” he said. “A circle is the strongest
shape in the universe. Nothing can beat it, nothing can improve upon it, nothing can
be more perfect. And that’s what we want to be: perfect. So any information that eludes
us, anything that’s not accessible, prevents us from being perfect. You see?”

“I do,” Mae said, though she wasn’t sure she did.

“This is in line with our goals for how the Circle can help us, individually, feel
more complete, and feel that others’ impressions of us are complete—are based on complete
information. And to prevent us from feeling, as you did, that some distorted view
of ourselves is presented to the world. It’s like a broken mirror. If we look into
a broken mirror, a mirror that’s cracked or missing parts, what do we get?”

Now it made sense to Mae. Any assessment, judgment, or picture utilizing incomplete
information would always be wrong. “We get a distorted and broken reflection,” she
said.

“Right,” Bailey said. “And if the mirror is whole?”

“We see everything.”

“A mirror is truthful, correct?”

“Of course. It’s a mirror. It’s reality.”

“But a mirror can only be truthful when it’s complete. And I think for you, the problem
with Gus’s LuvLuv presentation was that it wasn’t complete.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Well, that’s true,” she said. She wasn’t sure why she opened her mouth, but the words
tumbled out before she could restrain them. “But I still think there are things, even
if just a few, that we want to keep to ourselves. I mean, everyone does things alone,
or in the bedroom, that they’re ashamed of.”

“But why should they be ashamed?”

“Maybe not always ashamed. But things they don’t want to share. That maybe they don’t
think people will understand. Or will change the perception of them.”

“Okay, with that kind of thing, one of two things will eventually happen. First, we’ll
realize that whatever behavior we’re talking about is so widespread and harmless that
it needn’t be secret. If we demystify it, if we admit that it’s something we all do,
then it loses its power to shock. We move toward honesty, and we move away from shame.
Or second, and even better, if we all, as a society, decide that this is behavior
we’d rather not engage in, the fact that everyone knows, or has the power to know
who’s doing it, this would prevent the behavior from being engaged in. This is just
as you said—you wouldn’t have stolen if you knew you were being watched.”

“Right.”

“Would the guy down the hall view porn at work if he knew he was being watched?”

“No. I guess not.”

“So, problem solved, right?”

“Right. I guess.”

“Mae, have you ever had a secret that festered within you, and once that secret was
out, you felt better?”

“Sure.”

“Me too. That’s the nature of secrets. They’re cancerous when kept within us, but
harmless when they’re out in the world.”

“So you’re saying there should be no secrets.”

“I have thought on this for years, and I have yet to conjure a scenario where a secret
does more good than harm. Secrets are the enablers of antisocial, immoral and destructive
behavior. Do you see how this is?”

“I think so. But—”

“You know what my spouse said to me years ago when we got married? She said that whenever
we were apart, for instance when I might go on a business trip, I should behave as
if there were a camera on me. As if she were watching. Way back when, she was saying
this in a purely conceptual way, and she was half-kidding, but the mental picture
helped me. If I found myself alone in a room with a woman colleague, I would wonder,
What would Karen think of this if she were watching from a closed-circuit camera?
This would gently guide my behavior, and it would prevent me from even approaching
behavior she wouldn’t like, and of which I wouldn’t be proud. It kept me honest. You
see what I mean?”

“I do,” Mae said.

“I mean, the trackability of self-driving cars is solving a lot of this, of course.
Spouses increasingly know where the other has been, given the car logs where it’s
been driven. But my point is, what if we
all
behaved as if we were being watched? It would lead to a more moral way of life. Who
would do something unethical or immoral or illegal if they were being watched? If
their illegal money transfer was being tracked? If their blackmailing phone call was
being recorded? If their stick-up at the gas station was being filmed by a dozen cameras,
and even their retinas identified during the robbery? If their philandering was being
documented in a dozen ways?”

“I don’t know. I’m imagining all that would be greatly reduced.”

“Mae, we would finally be compelled to be our best selves. And I think people would
be relieved. There would be this phenomenal global sigh of relief. Finally, finally,
we can be good. In a world where bad choices are no longer an option, we have no choice
but
to be good. Can you imagine?”

Mae nodded.

“Now, speaking of relief, is there anything you’d like to tell me before we wrap up?”

“I don’t know. So many things, I guess,” Mae said. “But you’ve been so nice to spend
all this time with me, so—”

“Mae, is there something specific that you’ve kept hidden from me as we’ve been together
here in this library?”

Mae knew, instantly, that lying was not an option.

“That I’ve been here before?” she said.

“Have you?”

“Yes.”

“But you implied when you entered that you hadn’t.”

“Annie brought me. She said it was some kind of secret. I don’t know. I didn’t know
what to do. I didn’t see either way as being ideal. I get in trouble either way.”

Bailey smiled extravagantly. “See, that’s not true. Only lies get us in trouble. Only
the things we hide. Of
course
I knew you’d been here. Give me some credit! But I was curious that you hid this
from me. It made me feel distant from you. A secret between two friends, Mae, is an
ocean. It’s wide and deep and we lose ourselves in it. And now that I know your secret,
do you feel better or worse?”

“Better.”

“Relief?”

“Yes, relief.”

Mae did feel relief, a surge of it that felt like love. Because she still had her
job, and she would not have to go back to Longfield, and because her father would
stay strong and her mother unburdened, she wanted to be held by Bailey, to be subsumed
by his wisdom and generosity.

“Mae,” he said, “I truly believe that if we have no path but the right path, the best
path, then that would present a kind of ultimate and all-encompassing relief. We don’t
have to be tempted by darkness anymore. Forgive me for putting it in moral terms.
That’s the Midwestern church-goer in me. But I’m a believer in the perfectibility
of human beings. I think we can be better. I think we can be perfect or near to it.
And when we become our best selves, the possibilities are endless. We can solve any
problem. We can cure any disease, end hunger,
everything, because we won’t be dragged down by all our weaknesses, our petty secrets,
our hoarding of information and knowledge. We will finally realize our potential.”

Mae had been dizzy from the conversation with Bailey for days, and now it was Friday,
and the thought of going onstage at lunch made concentration almost impossible. But
she knew she had to work, to set an example for her pod, at the very least, given
this would likely be her last full day at CE.

The flow was steady but not overwhelming, and she got through 77 customer queries
that morning. Her score was 98 and the pod aggregate was 97. All respectable numbers.
Her PartiRank was 1,921, another fine figure, and one she felt comfortable taking
into the Enlightenment.

At 11:38, she left her desk and walked to the side door of the auditorium, arriving
ten minutes before noon. She knocked and the door opened. Mae met the stage manager,
an older, almost spectral man named Jules, who brought her into a simple dressing
room of white walls and bamboo floors. A brisk woman named Teresa, enormous eyes outlined
in blue, sat Mae down, looked over her hair and blushed her face with a feathery brush,
and applied a lavalier microphone to her blouse. “No need to touch anything,” she
said. “It’ll be activated once you go out onstage.”