by Dave Eggers
“Okay, I’m going to feed the shark something new today. As you know, he’s been fed all kinds of stuff, from salmon to herring to jellyfish. He’s devoured everything with equal enthusiasm. Yesterday we tried a manta, which we didn’t expect him to enjoy, but he didn’t hesitate, and ate with gusto. So today we’re again experimenting with a new food. As you can see,” she said, and Mae noticed that the bucket she carried was made of lucite, and inside she saw something blue and brown, with too many legs. She heard it ticking against the bucket walls: a lobster. Mae had never thought of sharks eating lobsters, but she couldn’t see why they wouldn’t.
“Here we have a regular Maine lobster, which we’re not sure if this shark is equipped to eat.”
Georgia was perhaps trying to put on a good show, but even Mae was nervous about how long she was holding the lobster over the water. Drop it, Mae thought to herself. Please drop it.
But Georgia was holding it over the water, presumably for the benefit of Mae and her viewers. The shark, meanwhile, had sensed the lobster, had no doubt mapped its shape with whatever sensors it possessed, and was circling quicker, still obedient but at the end of its patience.
“Some sharks can process the shells of crustaceans like this, some can’t,” Georgia said, now dangling the lobster such that its claw was lazily touching the surface. Drop it, please, Mae thought. Please drop it now.
“So I’ll just drop this little guy into—”
But before she could finish her sentence the shark had risen up and snatched the lobster from the caretaker’s hand. By the time Georgia let out a squeal and grabbed her fingers, as if to count them, the shark was already back in the middle of the tank, the lobster engulfed in its jaws, the crustacean’s white flesh spraying from the shark’s wide mouth.
“Did he get you?” Mae asked.
Georgia shook her head, holding back tears. “Almost.” She rubbed her hand as if it had been burned.
The lobster had been consumed, and Mae saw something gruesome and wonderful: the lobster was being processed, inside the shark, in front of her, with lightning speed and incredible clarity. Mae saw the lobster broken into dozens, then hundreds of pieces, in the shark’s mouth, then saw those pieces make their way through the shark’s gullet, its stomach, its intestines. In minutes the lobster had been reduced to a grainy, particulate substance. The waste left the shark and fell like snow to the aquarium floor.
“Looks like he’s still hungry,” Georgia said. She was atop the ladder again, but now with a different lucite container. While Mae had been watching the digestion of the lobster, Georgia had retrieved a second meal.
“Is that what I think it is?” Mae asked.
“This is a Pacific sea turtle,” Georgia said, holding up the container that held the reptile. It was about as big as Georgia’s torso, painted in a patchwork of green and blue and brown, a beautiful animal unable to move in the tight space. Georgia opened the door at one end of the container, as if inviting the turtle to exit if he so chose. He chose to stay where he was.
“There’s little chance our shark has encountered one of these, given the difference in their habitats,” Georgia said. “This turtle would have no reason to spend time where Stenton’s shark dwells, and the shark surely has never seen the light-dappled areas where the turtles live.”
Mae wanted to ask if Georgia were truly about to feed that turtle to the shark. Its eyes had beheld the predator below, and was now, with the slow energy it could harness, pushing its way to the back of the container. Feeding this kindly creature to the shark, no matter the necessity or scientific benefit, would not please many of Mae’s watchers. Already zings were coming through her wrist. Please don’t kill that turtle. It looks like my granddad! There was a second thread, though, that insisted the shark, which was not much bigger than the turtle, would not be able to swallow or digest the reptile, with its impenetrable shell. But just when Mae was about to question the imminent feeding, an AG voice came through Mae’s earpiece. “Hold tight. Stenton wants to see this happen.”
In the tank, the shark was circling again, looking every bit as lean and ravenous as before. The lobster had been nothing to it, a meaningless snack. Now it rose closer to Georgia, knowing the main course was approaching.
“Here we go,” Georgia said, and tilted the container until the turtle began sliding, slowly, toward the neon water, which was swirling beneath him—the shark’s turning had created a vortex. When the container was vertical, and the turtle’s head had cleared the lucite threshold, the shark could wait no longer. It rose up, grabbed the turtle’s head in its jaws, and pulled it under. And like the lobster, the turtle was consumed in seconds, but this time it took a shape-shifting that the crustacean hadn’t required. The shark seemed to unhook its jaw, doubling the size of its mouth, enabling it to easily subsume the whole of the turtle in one swallow. Georgia was narrating, saying something about how many sharks, when eating turtles, will turn their stomachs inside out, vomiting the shells after digesting the fleshy parts of the reptile. But Stenton’s shark had other methods. The shell seemed to dissolve inside the shark’s mouth and stomach like a cracker soaked in saliva. And in less than a minute, the turtle, all of it, had been turned to ash. It exited the shark as had the lobster, in flakes that fell ponderously to the aquarium floor, joining, and indistinguishable from, those that had come before.
Mae was watching this when she saw a figure, nearly a silhouette, on the other side of the glass, beyond the aquarium’s far wall. His body was just a shadow, his face invisible, but then, for a moment, the light from above reflected on the circling shark’s skin, and revealed the figure’s face.
It was Kalden.
Mae hadn’t seen him in a month, and since her transparency, hadn’t heard any word from him. Annie had been in Amsterdam, then China, then Japan, then back to Geneva, and so hadn’t had time to focus on Kalden, but the two of them had traded occasional messages about him. How concerned should they be about this unknown man?
But then he’d disappeared.
Now he was standing, looking at her, unmoving.
She wanted to call out, but then worried. Who was he? Would calling to him, capturing him on camera, create some scene? Would he flee? She was still in shock from the shark’s digestion of the turtle, from its dull-eyed wrath, and she found she had no voice, no strength to say Kalden’s name. So she stared at him, and he stared at her, and she had the thought that if she could catch him on her camera, perhaps she could show this to Annie, and that might lead to some clarity, some identification. But when Mae looked to her wrist, she saw only the darkest form, his face obscured. Perhaps her lens couldn’t see him, was watching from a different angle. As she tracked his shape on her wrist, he backed away and walked off into the shadows.
Meanwhile, Georgia had been nattering about the shark and what they’d witnessed, and Mae hadn’t caught any of it. But now she was standing atop her ladder, waving, hoping that Mae was finished, because she had nothing left to feed the animal. The show was over.
“Okay then,” Mae said, thankful for the chance to get away and to follow Kalden. She said goodbye and thanks to Georgia, and walked briskly through the dark hallway.
She caught sight of his silhouette leaving through a faraway door, and she picked up her pace, careful not to shake her lens or call out. The door he’d slipped through led to the newsroom, which would be a logical enough place for Mae to be visiting next. “Let’s see what’s going on in the newsroom,” she said, knowing all within would be aware of her approach in the twenty steps it would take her to get there. She also knew that the SeeChange cameras in the hallway, over the doorway, would have caught Kalden, and she’d know sooner or later if it was actually him. Every movement within the Circle was caught on one camera or another, usually three, and reconstructing anyone’s movements, after the fact, was only a few minutes’ work.
As she approached the newsroom door, Mae thought of Kalden’s hands upon her. His hands reaching low, pulling himself into her. Sh
e heard the low rumble of his voice. His taste, like some wet fresh fruit. What if she found him? She couldn’t take him to the bathroom. Or could she? She would find a way.
She opened the door to the newsroom, a wide space Bailey had modeled on old-time newspaper offices, with a hundred low cubicles, news tickers and clocks everywhere, each desk with a retro analog telephone, a row of white buttons below the numbers, blinking arrhythmically. There were old printers, fax machines, telex devices, letterpresses. The decor, of course, was for show. All the retro machines were nonfunctional. The news gatherers, whose faces were now upon Mae, smiling, saying hello to her and her watchers, were able to do most of their reporting via SeeChange. There were now over a hundred million cameras functional and accessible around the world, making in-person reporting unnecessarily expensive and dangerous, to say nothing of the carbon expenditures.
As Mae walked through the newsroom, the staff waved to her, unsure if this was an official visit. Mae waved back, scanning the room, knowing she appeared distracted. Where was Kalden? There was only one other exit, so Mae rushed through the room, nodding and greeting, until she came to the door on the far end. She opened it, flinching at the bright light of day, and saw him. He was crossing the wide green lawn, passing the new sculpture by that Chinese dissident—she remembered she should highlight it soon, maybe even today—and just then he turned briefly, as if checking to see if Mae was still following. Her eyes met his, provoking a tiny smile before he turned again and walked quickly around the Period of Five Dynasties.
“Where are you headed?” the voice in her ear asked.
“Sorry. No place. I was just. Never mind.”
Mae was allowed, of course, to go where she pleased—her meanderings were what so many watchers appreciated most—but the Additional Guidance office still liked to check in from time to time. As she stood in the sunlight, Circlers all around, she heard her phone ring. She checked her wrist; there was no caller identified. She knew it could only be Kalden.
“Hello?” she said.
“We have to meet,” he said.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“Your watchers can’t hear me. They only hear you. Right now your engineers are wondering why the incoming audio isn’t working. They’ll fix it in a few minutes.” His voice was tense, shaky. “So listen. Most of what’s happening must stop. I’m serious. The Circle is almost complete and Mae, you have to believe me that this will be bad for you, for me, for humanity. When can we meet? If it has to be in the bathroom that’s fine with me—”
Mae hung up.
“Sorry about that,” said AG through her earpiece. “Somehow the incoming audio wasn’t working. We’re working on it. Who was it?”
Mae knew she couldn’t lie. She wasn’t sure if anyone had indeed heard Kalden. “Some lunatic,” Mae improvised, proud of herself. “Babbling about the end of the world.”
Mae checked her wrist. Already people were wondering what had happened and how. The most popular zing: Tech problems at Circle HQ? Next: Santa forgets Christmas?
“Tell them the truth, as always,” AG said.
“Okay, I have no idea what just happened,” Mae said aloud. “When I do, I’ll let you all know.”
But she was shaken. She was still standing, in the sunlight, waving occasionally to Circlers noticing her. She knew her watchers might wonder what was happening next, where she was going. She didn’t want to check her wrist, knowing that the comments would be perplexed and even concerned. Off in the distance, she saw what looked like a game of croquet, and alighting on an idea, she made her way to it.
“Now, as you all know,” she said when she was close enough to see and wave to the four players, who she realized were two Circlers and a pair of visitors from Russia, “we do not always play here at the Circle. Sometimes we have to work, which this group is demonstrating. I don’t want to disturb them, but I can assure you that what they’re doing involves problem-solving and complex algorithms and will result in the improving of the products and services we can provide to you. Let’s soak this in.”
That would give her a few minutes to think. Periodically, she would focus her lens on something like this, a game or demonstration or speech, and this might allow her mind to wander, while the watchers watched. She checked the view on her wrist, and saw that her watchers, 432,028, were within the average, and there were no urgent comments, so she permitted herself three minutes before she had to retake control of the feed. With a wide smile—for she was surely visible on three or four outdoor SeeChanges—she took a breath. This was a new skill she’d acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos. She wanted to call Annie. But she couldn’t call Annie. She wanted Kalden. She wanted to be alone with Kalden. She wanted to be back in that bathroom sitting on him, feeling the crown of him push through. But he was not normal. He was some kind of spy here. Some kind of anarchist, doomsayer. What had he meant when he warned of the completion of the Circle? She didn’t even know what Completion meant. No one did. The Wise Men had recently begun to hint about it, though. One day, in new tiles all over campus, cryptic messages had appeared: THINK COMPLETION and COMPLETE THE CIRCLE and THE CIRCLE MUST BE WHOLE, and these slogans had stirred up the desired intrigue. But no one knew what it meant, and the Wise Men weren’t telling.
Mae checked the time. She’d been watching the croquet match for ninety seconds. She could only reasonably hold this pose for another minute or two. So what was her responsibility to report this call? Had anyone actually heard what Kalden had said? What if they had? What if this was some kind of test, to see if she’d report a rogue call? Maybe this was part of Completion—a test like this to measure her loyalty, to thwart anyone or anything that would impede Completion? Oh shit, she thought. She wanted to talk to Annie, but she knew she couldn’t. She thought of her parents, who would give good counsel, but their house was transparent, too, full of SeeChange cameras—a condition of her father’s treatment. Maybe she could go there, meet them in the bathroom? No. She hadn’t, actually, been in touch with them for a few days. They had warned her they were having some technical difficulties, would be back in touch soon, that they loved her, and then hadn’t answered any of her messages for the last forty-eight hours. And in that time, she hadn’t checked the cameras in their house. She had to do that. She made a mental note. Maybe she could call them? Make sure they were okay, and then hint, somehow, that she wanted to talk to them about something very unsettling and personal?
No, no. This was all mad. She’d gotten a random call from a man she now knew to be nuts. Oh shit, she thought, hoping no one could guess at the chaos in her mind. She relished being where she was, visible like this, a conduit like this, a guide to her watchers, but this responsibility, this unnecessary intrigue, it crippled her. And when she felt this paralysis, caught between entirely too many possibilities and unknowns, there was only one place she felt right.
At 1:44 Mae entered the Renaissance, felt, above her, the greeting of the slowly turning Calder, and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Just rising through the building calmed her. Walking down the catwalk, the atrium visible below, brought her great peace. This, Customer Experience, was home, where there were no unknowns.
At first, Mae had been surprised when they’d asked her to continue working, at least a few hours a week, at CE. She’d enjoyed her time there, yes, but she assumed transparency would mean she’d leave that far behind. “That’s exactly the point,” Bailey had explained. “I think Number One, it’ll keep you connected with the ground-level work you did here. Number Two, I think your followers and viewers will appreciate you continuing to do this essential work. It’ll be a very moving act of humility, don’t you think?”
Mae was at once aware of the power she wielded—instantly, she became one of the three most visible Circlers—and determined to wear it lightly. So Mae had found time in each week to return to her old pod, and to her old desk, which they’d
left vacant. There had been changes made—there were now nine screens, and the CEs were encouraged to be delving far deeper with their clients, to reciprocate in far-reaching ways—but the work was essentially the same, and Mae found that she appreciated the rhythm of it, the almost meditative quality of doing something she knew in her bones, and she found herself being drawn to CE at times of stress or calamity.
And so, in her third week of transparency, on a sunny Wednesday, she planned on putting in ninety minutes at CE before the rest of the day overtook her. At three she had to give a tour of the Napoleonic Era, where they were modeling the elimination of physical money—the trackability of internet currency would eliminate huge swaths of crime overnight—and at four, she was supposed to highlight the new musicians’ residences on campus—twenty-two fully equipped apartments where musicians, especially those who couldn’t count on making a living through sales of their music, could live for free and play regularly for the Circlers. That would take her through the afternoon. At five, she was supposed to attend an announcement from the latest politician to go clear. Why they continued to make these proclamations with fanfare—they were now calling them Clarifications—was a mystery to her and many of her watchers. There were tens of thousands of clear elected officials all over the country and world, and the movement was less a novelty and more of an inevitability; most observers predicted full governmental transparency, at least in democracies—and with SeeChange there would soon be no other kind—within eighteen months. After the Clarification, there was an improv comedy battle on campus, a fundraiser for a school in rural Pakistan, a wine tasting, and finally an all-campus barbecue, with music by a Peruvian trance choir.
Mae walked into her old pod room, where her own words—SECRETS ARE LIES; SHARING IS CARING; PRIVACY IS THEFT—had been cast in steel and dominated an entire wall. The place was bursting with newbies, all of whom looked up, alarmed and happy to see her there among them. She waved to them, gave them a theatrical faux-curtsey, saw Jared standing in the doorway to his office, and waved at him, too. Then, determined to do her work without fanfare, Mae sat down, logged on and opened the chute. She answered three queries in rapid succession, with an average of 99. Her fourth client was the first to notice that it was Mae, Transparent Mae, handling her query.