Now the applause came on stronger, though Delaney felt a collective ignorance pervading the room. Delaney had done her homework on the Every, but this company, this acquisition, had escaped her, and, it seemed, had escaped the notice of most Everyones. Given the fact that the Every acquired at least three companies a week, it stood to reason that many would go unnoticed.

  “But lately,” she said, “my take on the utility and morality of travel as we know it has changed. Let me back up. I was born in Nosara, Costa Rica, in 1995.” Footage of a small town emerging from a lush seaside jungle appeared on the screen behind her. Scattered applause and a few whoops emerged from the audience.

  “Yes, some of you know this place,” Ortiz said, her voice lowering. “And the fact that you know this place is a problem. Perhaps even the problem. Let me tell you why. This film you’re seeing was taken in the 1990s, before Nosara was discovered by Americans and Europeans. This is the town now.”

  A montage of crowded streets, gaudy with T-shirt and tourist-oriented shops, overtook the screen. A tour bus waddled through the narrow streets. Dazed visitors in cargo shorts ambled down the sidewalk in front of a Best Western. A shot of an Avis rental car office. A Little Caesars pizza outlet. A mound of tin cans and plastic bottles dumped in the jungle. A series of For Sale signs, all of them presented by multinationals like Sotheby’s and Chavez-Millstein. In one shot, a man in a lizard-print shirt was pointing and yelling at a local woman selling jewelry from a streetside folding table.

  “I saw my country,” Ortiz continued, “and especially my little town, overrun and fundamentally changed by tourism. I saw the land grabs. I saw my family and neighbors priced out and pushed away. We moved again and again, as foreign multimillionaires and developers bought every hectare anywhere near the sea or possessing any view. We went ever-inland until we were living on the third ring of San José—that’s the Costa Rican capital, not the city in the South Bay—next to the Pepsi bottler.

  “If you’ve been to Costa Rica in the last twenty years, you’ve seen that it is essentially Florida—a playground for the American middle class. Every beach is wrecked with cheap trinket shops and pizza places. Any pristine valley they could stretch a zipline across, they did. The country has lost much of its identity, and my fellow Ticos and Ticas run around like obsequious little capitalists, chasing the tourist dollar. My people have, in my opinion, lost their dignity. No offense if you’ve been to Costa Rica,” she added, to a few chuckles. “I don’t blame you individually. But I blame us all, collectively, for our avaricious pursuit of cheap experiences abroad.”

  The offensive scenes of a ruined Costa Rica were replaced by a succession of aspirational shots of travelers alone and in pairs, trekking with seeming respect and humility, through Nepalese and Peruvian scenery.

  “I started Enlightened Traveler,” Ortiz said, “to foster a better way of seeing the world. We booked travelers in small groups. Long before the pandemics, we discouraged cruises—surely the death of the oceans and the very antithesis of meaningful travel or sustainable tourism. We singled out responsible outfitters and guides and encouraged everything from homestays to ecotourism to trips that combined sightseeing with service. I thought we were helping. And maybe we were. Surely the kind of travel we were fostering was better than tour buses and cruise ships. But then I started doing the math. I know many of you are good at math, so chances are you’ll get ahead of me here.”

  Onscreen, a flattened global map appeared, and on it white dots began to sprout. They popped up in hundreds of places, from the Cook Islands to Newfoundland.

  “These are the places I’ve personally been. In twenty years, I’ve seen eighty-eight countries. I’ve been to every continent. I’ve met so many phenomenal people and I feel like my perspective broadened every time I landed in a new place.

  “But it came at a cost. A pretty monumental cost. A few years ago, I realized that as a frequent traveler, an obsessive traveler, really, I’d been responsible for over two hundred and seventy tons of carbon dioxide in my lifetime of globetrotting—and that was from the flights alone. No amount of carbon offsets could reverse the damage I’d done.”

  Delaney had the feeling she would soon see an image of an animal in existential crisis, and she was correct. The screen showed an emaciated penguin wandering into a convenience store in Tierra del Fuego, startling the customers, before collapsing.

  “As you know, they have yet to make a solar-powered airplane built from hemp,” Ortiz said, to polite laughter. “Absolutely all air travel is enormously harmful to the planet, and yet we continue to fly. Why? Because we want to. We want, we want, we want. And even the most enlightened environmentalists close their eyes to the damage they do when they fly around the planet, often in private jets, to warn the public about the dangers of fossil fuels. It is beyond hypocrisy. And I was guilty of it, too. So I had an idea. I had a revelation. It’s called Stop and Look.”

  For a moment, Delaney wondered how the words would be butchered. The “and” would inevitably be a +, but what else?

  Onscreen, the name of the program was rendered as Stop+Lük.

  Sweet lord God, Delaney thought. She hadn’t seen the umlaut coming. Any second, she knew, Ramona Ortiz would be positing that her new initiative would have a hand in saving the planet.

  “This will, I believe, revolutionize the way we see the world,” Ortiz said, “and it might even have a hand in saving the world.”

  Delaney’s mouth opened to laugh. She looked around her. No one was laughing. She sat on her hands.

  “Last year, there were 1.8 billion leisure arrivals worldwide, as the post-pandemic travel orgy continues—and continues to kill the most popular destinations. Let’s start with one of the most tourist-choked places on the planet: Venice. Last year, thirty-four million people came to Venice, a city roughly the size of Manhattan. That itself is madness. Now let’s think about the two to three tons of carbon it took for each of those tourists to get there. That’s about seventy-five, eighty million tons of carbon emissions expended just to send tourists to a tourist-choked city. Add to these costs the sheer misery experienced by the residents of the city, and by the tourists themselves. Last year, there were seven-hour waits just to walk in Piazza San Marco plaza. It’s lunacy. And it has to stop.”

  Hundreds of Every heads were nodding in agreement. It was always good to stop things that needed to be stopped.

  “There’s a better way,” Ortiz said. “You can still see Venice. You can see Venice, and probably even see it more authentically, without ever leaving your house. The future of travel relies on you using your head.”

  Now Victoria de Nord reappeared, waving and smiling effusively, as if the crowd had demanded an encore. She handed Ortiz a standard virtual reality headset, and strode offstage in a fugue state, as if clutching an Oscar she’d just won.

  “Here’s how it works,” Ortiz said, and a grid appeared on the screen behind her, showing dozens of desirable destinations, Capri and Dubai and Vegas and what seemed to be the Swiss Alps.

  “Because we were just talking about Venice, let’s take a tour of that gorgeous city. But this will be a tour with zero carbon emissions.” On the grid she singled out the Venice thumbnail and it grew to overtake half the screen. The other half morphed into a grid of smiling faces with names below.

  “Here’s a sampling of your tour guide choices, each of them certified by the Italian and the Venetian tourism board. They are historians, teachers, even a few gondoliers. And they’re all residents of Venice—most of them born there. Because he’s ready to go, I’m going to choose Paolo Marchessi.”

  One of the smiling faces in the grid overtook the screen, his still photo becoming a live feed of his grinning face. He was a round-faced man of about fifty, with salt-and-pepper hair and small wire-rimmed glasses. “Ciao, Paolo!” Ortiz said.

  “Hello, Ramona!” he said.

  “Ready for a customized tour?” she asked him.

  “I am,” he said.

  She turned from the screen to the auditorium. “Paolo is outfitted with a rotatable camera, much like we’ve been using here for our other VR projects. Let’s get the view from that camera.”

  On the screen, a hyper-crisp view of the Grand Canal, aglow at sunset, emerged. “This is a live feed,” Ortiz said, “so while we do this demonstration, you’ll be able to see the sun setting over the water.” The feed was gorgeous.

  “From the comfort of your home,” she said, “you put on any VR headset, and instantly you see what your guide sees, with a 360-degree range. You want to go see the old Armory district? Tell Paolo to walk you there. He takes you wherever you ask, and all the while he’s introducing you to people and places only locals would know. Guide or be guided, up to you. You control the experience. You pay by the hour or by the day, and you save money and maybe the planet, too.”

  Applause filled the room, and Delaney joined in the noise. Despite herself, she knew she would take one of these tours. A half-dozen places she’d wanted to see occurred to her instantly as prospects. Schools would use this. Retirement homes. And yet somehow this would, Delaney was certain, make things worse. She pondered the unintended consequences of Ramona’s clearly well-intentioned notion. On the one hand, it would mean the collapse of much of the world’s tourism industry and a few hundred million lost jobs. On the other hand, it would be fantastic for agoraphobes, germaphobes, those afraid to fly or leave the house.

  “Let’s talk cost,” Ortiz continued. “Stop+Lük’s costs are so miniscule compared to traditional travel that it makes most of that seem absurd. If I were to fly to Venice from San Francisco tomorrow, between flights and accommodations for a week, it would run me about $6,500. But through Stop+Lük, the cost per day is only what we pay Paolo per hour, which is about $100. You can get a thorough tour of Venice in half a day, which would be about $500. And everyone benefits. Paolo might give two tours a day, so that’s $1,000 for a local historian. Not bad, right, Paolo?”

  There was no answer. He seemed to have left the scene.

  “Paolo?”

  “Yes, Ramona?” Now he was back.

  “I was saying that if you gave two tours a day, that might be $1,000. Not bad, right?”

  “Not bad,” he agreed. “If I get the two tours, yes. Much depends on scheduling. The catch is, do I need a regular job, or is this my regular job? And there is the issue of benefits and pensions, two things we rely on here in Italy.”

  A momentary half-smile of amusement flickered across Ramona’s face. “All good points that we will be working out as we go,” she said, and with a button she muted Paolo, who was not heard from again.

  She turned back to the Every audience.

  “So, as you see, Venice is relieved of a massive chunk of its excess tourist burden. Money goes to locals, not to cruise ships. And best of all, the planet breathes a bit easier. You don’t drive to the airport. You don’t get on that plane. That plane doesn’t fly. The cruise ships don’t sail, polluting the oceans as they go. Planes and ships don’t unload thousands of tourists who all get in separate taxis. All this stops. That’s the ‘Stop’ part of the Stop+Lük name. I should have said that before, I guess.” She laughed charmingly at her omission.

  “Here’s the best part of it all,” she said, and the Grand Canal was replaced by another grid of desirable locations around the world. Now each one had a smaller grid below it, each box featuring a smiling face.

  “We have thirty-two locations ready to go at launch,” she said. “We’ve focused on some of the world’s most overburdened sites—Paris, London, Shanghai, Annapurna, Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, Gizeh. Right now we have an average of eleven guides per location, depending on the size of the city or attraction of course. We foresee this all multiplying rapidly and organically, much in the way rideshare did back in the day.”

  Delaney looked at Winnie’s hands, which had not stopped working throughout the presentation. The result was a sweater for a dog-sized human or poorly shaped dog. It was squat and ragged and the color of burnt butter. Winnie, Delaney was delighted to know, could not knit.

  From the stage, Ramona Ortiz was taking questions. A portly man noted that there would be no risk of malaria, food-borne illness, sea-sickness and what he called “a host of other travel-related ailments.” A tall woman with Newtonian eyeglasses suggested spreading the zone a bit, adding less-known locations to Stop+Lük’s offerings, perhaps at a discount, and Ramona winked and said that was among their Stage 2 notions. The last question was, like the first, more of a suggestion.

  “I hope we’re incentivizing good travel choices,” the woman added. “Travelers who reduce their carbon footprint are given discounts on other products and experiences, for example.”

  Ramona agreed that that would make a lot of sense, and then laughed about how time had gotten away from them while they were Stopping + Lükking, and with that, the lights came up on Delaney’s first Dream Friday. When they left the auditorium they were greeted by a twenty-foot-wide sign, carved from salvaged timber, that said: IF YOU LOVE THE WORLD, LEAVE IT ALONE.

  XIII.

  “I’D USE THAT,” WES SAID. “I’d use it today. I hate planes.”

  It was Saturday and they were sitting in two rickety folding chairs in the small yard between the moms’ house and the Shed. It was one of few outdoor spaces in the neighborhood not seen by any neighbors’ surveillance cams. The smell tumbling from the Doelger Fish Co was strongest Saturday mornings. After an hour in the yard, Delaney felt like she’d gorged on a seafood buffet.

  “I always catch something on planes,” Wes continued. “On the buses to planes. Even before the viruses, I’d get sick every time. Then I’m sick the whole time I’m on vacation and after I get back, too.”

  For a while Delaney debated with him but she realized, with a low-level kind of alarm, that Wes was both her accomplice and the Every’s perfect customer. He was forever trying to find ways to stay inside and avoid engagement with humans in real space. And though he carried a low-intensity outrage about privacy issues, he prized convenience above all, and readily used dozens of Every tools without any security protections—especially if that tool was new. He had tried everything and was both easily delighted and quickly bored.

  Hurricane limped down from the Shed and arranged himself into a furry bundle at Wes’s feet. His wounded paw was raw and swollen.

  “He chews off every bandage,” Wes noted. He’d brought him to Kathy the Vet three times and three times she’d bandaged his wound, only to have Hurricane gnaw it off. “She said we could put him on dog drugs. Anti-depressants.”

  Delaney reached down to stroke his snout. It was cold, clammy.

  “He can’t run,” Wes said. “So he’s stuck here, and he chews on the bandage. You see his back paws? He’s gnawing those, too.”

  Through the moms’ kitchen window Delaney could see Gwen. She waved. Ursula appeared next to Gwen and the two of them stared at Delaney and Wes for an uncomfortably long time.

  “You got a letter today, by the way,” Wes said. “A paper letter.” He jogged inside the Shed to get it. Delaney opened it to find a neat blue sea of undulating cursive. It was unmistakably Professor Agarwal’s. After college, they’d written each other occasionally, and Delaney had sent her a note when she’d moved to California to start with Ol Factory, but it had been at least a year since Delaney had gotten anything back from her.

  “That from your professor?” Wes asked. Delaney had waxed on about Agarwal. Her theories, and just as crucially, her indignation, were the basis of much of what Delaney and Wes talked about—the foundation of all their plans.

  “Don’t mind me,” Wes said, and closed his eyes to the sun.

  Dear Delaney,

  I received some kind of auto-update announcing your job at the Every. I decided to mail you a letter so they don’t read this and put it in some permanent record they surely have on you.

  Delaney, I must say I’m a bit flabbergasted. Not that I’m surprised that someone from my class would have gone to work there—seems like half the people I’ve taught now work there. But not you. You might have been the most technoskeptical student I’ve ever taught. Before your thesis, that is, which, as you know, surprised me a great deal.

  And I admired that about you. You thought about things. You seemed in touch with the ways that humanity was being fundamentally changed—how we were moving from an idiosyncratic species that coveted our independence to one that wanted, more than anything, to shrink and to obey in exchange for free stuff.

  Now you work there—at the factory that manufactures conformity. I’m an old person now so I will speak my mind. I think you’re better than this. My heart hurts to picture you there, to think they’ve swallowed another rebel soul.

  Please leave.

  Yours,

  Agarwal

  Delaney refolded the letter, a raw ache in her throat. Her sadness always lived there, a dry hollow pull that stole her voice. She knew she couldn’t tell Professor Agarwal anything. She couldn’t even write her a paper letter back; the risk was too great.

  Agarwal was a radical, after all, unpredictable and even rash. Delaney remembered Agarwal leading a one-person protest on campus against surveillance. She stood just a hair over five feet tall, and was speaking evenly, with barely controlled venom, into a megaphone almost as big as herself. The demonstration questioned the college’s use of cameras in virtually every public space on campus. Delaney stopped to listen to the diminutive woman, who enlightened her thirty or so listeners that there were eighteen hundred cameras on campus; that the Circle had provided these cameras at a steep discount; that their footage was accessible by local police and owned by the Circle; that it was stored off-campus and was presumably being used in untold ways; that it was coordinated with their on-campus purchases (cash was not permitted) to ensure that at least 23.2 hours of every student’s day could be tracked and recorded. Their grades, scores and attendance were all aggregated into one highly digestible digital dossier, and this dossier was accessible by a startlingly broad swath of university staffers.