The Circle

Jared, Josiah, and Denise arrange for Mae to start answering CircleSurveys. Through this new aspect of her job, she will become “one of the Circlers asked about her tastes, her preferences, her buying habits and plans, for use by the Circle’s clients” (228). Mae is expected to answer 500 survey questions per day. When she goes too long without responding to a survey question, a voice comes on in her headset that says, “Mae.” She successfully integrates the surveys into her shifts and receives compliments from her bosses. She appreciates that this additional work is helping keep her mind off Kalden, who still is not answering her calls. In her mind, his unavailability has gone from intriguing to disappointing. She decides that she needs to dismiss her lust for Kalden and instead find someone who is “available, familiar, locatable” (236).

Mae is answering well over 1,000 CircleSurvey questions per day. This helps her PartiRank, which is now within T2K, hovering in the 1,900s. On a Tuesday afternoon, Kalden appears in her office doorway. She waves and he waves back, but then he is gone. She gets up and tries to find him but has no luck. Upon returning to her desk, Francis is sitting in her chair. He apologizes, but she still finds him disgusting. He once again asserts that he cannot delete the video and that she shouldn’t worry because it is one of a billion clips in the cloud, meaning the chance of someone viewing it is incredibly remote.

More elected leaders are choosing to go transparent, and non-transparent politicians are facing backlash from constituents and pundits. While some concerned citizens argue the need for privacy, their voices are drowned out by the overwhelming societal push for full transparency. Those advocating for transparency ask: “If you [aren’t] operating in the light of day, what [are] you doing in the shadows?” (241). Now, whenever anyone publicly criticizes The Circle for being a monopoly or being a detriment to society, that person is outed as a disreputable deviant.

Following the success of making politicians go transparent, The Circle must now lead by example. It starts implementing measures to increase transparency on campus. Thousands of SeeChange cameras are installed across The Circle. When these cameras are activated, Mae realizes she is being watched by people from all over the world and is contacted by old friends from high school and college. She starts to adjust her behavior and appearance. Instead of feeling like the cameras are a violation of her privacy, she sees them as an opportunity “to influence global events, to save lives even, halfway across the world” (243).

A college friend contacts Mae asking her to join an initiative to support a Guatemalan woman who has been terrorized by paramilitary forces. Mae decides to add her name to the list of supporters despite her fear of potentially making enemies with the paramilitary members. She feels empowered knowing that thousands of SeeChange viewers are watching her take action for this cause.

Mae gets a call from Kalden. She meets him in the bathroom, and they have passionate sex, during which he repeatedly says her name. He exits, and she grabs her phone to take a picture of him before he disappears but only captures his arm. Gina trains Mae on a new “layer” of Circle duties, Conversation Rate and Retail Raw, which are used to measure a Circler’s influence on customers’ purchases. Gina makes comments that suggest she is jealous of Mae’s friendship with Annie.

A few nights later, Mae goes home to visit her parents. While preparing for dinner, her parents discuss all the ways that her father’s health has improved since they got on The Circle’s insurance. Above the dining room table, there is a chandelier that Mercer gave them for free. Mae then learns that her parents have invited Mercer to dinner, which disappoints her. He arrives, and Mae strongly praises the chandelier. She takes a picture of it and—without Mercer’s knowledge—posts it along with his contact information to numerous home design feeds.

At the dinner table, Mae’s phone buzzes constantly with zings that compliment Mercer’s chandelier. She shares this news, which upsets Mercer. He tells her to stop. However, Mae realizes that this kind of activity will greatly boost her PartiRank, and her attention becomes locked on her phone. By the time she looks up, Mercer has left. Mae stops him in the driveway, and Mercer expresses his anger toward Mae and The Circle. He considers her naïve for assuming the high-ups at The Circle have good intentions and thinks that her obsession with social media is destroying her humanity. Before leaving, he asks Mae if she’s aware of how boring she has become.

Mae, still incensed at Mercer’s insults, drives back home. On a whim, she decides to stop at Maiden’s Voyages to see if she can get a kayak, even though it is 10 pm. She finds that nobody is there. Outside the shop’s fenced-off area, she sees a kayak that has been left unreturned. After wavering, she decides to take it out. She paddles to a seldom-visited island, far out in the Bay, and climbs a short peak. Above her, there is a heavily trafficked bridge. She notes that no one on the bridge would have “the faintest idea of her existence” (271). She considers the geologic history of her surroundings, which millions of years ago were entirely underwater, “barely registered as ridges on the ocean floor” (272). While wondering what lives in the water below her, she manages to “take comfort in knowing she would not, and really could not, know much at all” (272).