Reaction was swift and decisive. The encampments were gone in hours and did not return. All Everyones rejoiced their departure, though silently, and what had been a flat perimeter was now studded with sharp stones—ostensibly a sea-barrier—that made any future tent-habitation impossible. The San Francisco Police Department, which had been a sporadic and unwelcome presence on the island anyway, arrived to do a cursory investigation, but was overshadowed by the Every’s security detail—four dozen armed guards, chiefly ex-Mossad, imported from a DC-based private security company. Wearing tactical gear, they roamed the outer gates and were stationed on the streets around campus. Airspace around the Every was restricted, and a team of former Kurdish intelligence officers arrived to install a drone-jamming tool they’d perfected in northern Syria. A marine detail circled the island 24-7 by boat and there were rumors of a mini-submarine patrolling San Francisco Bay. The majority of Treasure Island businesses were suddenly shuttered, never reopened, and the chatter of helicopters overhead became constant.

  There was widespread consternation about the inability of investigators, public and private, to find the perpetrator, given the vast powers at their disposal. The vehicle driven through the gate was thirty-two years old, and had no digital tools aboard. Cam shots of the van passing various intersections were unhelpful; the driver was wearing a mask of Tim Berners-Lee. The Widower—the grieving husband who protested daily at the entrance to Treasure Island—was brought in for questioning and released. There was much on-campus speculation about the involvement of a cabal of disgruntled banana-growers, but there was absolutely no chatter anywhere online about the planning of such an attack, and responsibility for it was not claimed by any individual or group.

  Life on campus grew more anxious. The perpetrators—somehow consensus emerged that it had been a group—were still at large, and might have the capacity to make another run at their target. The Everyones living on Treasure Island were terrified but agreed, to the last person, that things were far worse, far more chaotic off-campus.

  In the weeks before and after the bombing, there was a series of ineffective but unsettling attacks on the Every buses that took staffers from the campus to their homes in San Francisco and Walnut Creek and Atherton. Rocks were thrown from rooftops, shattering a few windows and adding a smattering of side-panel divots. The damage was minimal but the psychological impact was significant. Applications for EveryoneIn hausing surged and the available units were quickly filled (and the rapid construction of more dorms was planned). Between the chaos of Nowhere, the sporadic animosity expressed toward Everyones there, and Impact Anxiety, Everyones were now unwilling to leave campus, ever—and conveniently, they never had to.

  XXXIII.

  THE BLIMP WAS BOTH unexpected and inevitable. In all her research, Delaney had not come across the existence of surveillance zeppelins, but two weeks after the bombing, its shadow circled the campus, never stopping. Bailey had bought a Turkish blimp company years earlier but hadn’t done much with it; his interests had migrated to Io. Now, with the blimp flying silently overhead, two hundred feet up, the majority of Everyones couldn’t figure out how they’d ever lived without its soothing shadow. It saw everything, and everything it saw was available to everyone. At any given time, anyone sitting on the Daisy lawn could watch themselves as the blimp watched them, and this delighted all. The lens was so powerful it could read the text on your phone; it could count the hairs on your head. And most important, it could detect any unauthorized thing coming from any direction—land, air or sea.

  Stenton took full ownership of its existence and messaging. A contest to name it was held, with Blimpie McBlimpface a close second to the Eye of Bailey—Wes’s idea, a winking tribute to their departed founder. Stenton released a video celebrating it.

  “Can any of us remember life before the Eye of Bailey was watching over us?” he asked. “Do we want to? Now we know a new kind of security. A sense of relief. The unexpected is no longer possible.”

  Delaney watched the announcement with the Supples.

  “Stenton is fully back, I take it?” Berit said.

  “I feel like my stepdad got out of jail and moved back in with my mom,” Ro said.

  “And then bought a blimp,” Joan said.

  “Anyone notice the blimp is smiling?” Preeti asked.

  The blimp had been humanized with large anime eyes and a toothy smile. The effect was like being watched over by a beluga whale crossed with a slow-moving B-52.

  “Just watch,” Joan said. “Stenton will be running this place in six months. This is the Reichstag moment.”

  The usual shifting and clicking of goods at AYS stopped and the room went quiet. All eyes were on Joan.

  “What?” she said. “You know I’m right. Mae hasn’t had an idea since she took power. Stenton’s making a move.”

  The assembled Supples glanced at each other, and then back at Joan, silently telling her, Enough. After the bombing, even at AYS there was an increase in caution, in attention to every word said. Joan returned their admonishing stares, her own eyes saying Fine. You know I’m right. Activity resumed, and a few of the Supples took an early lunch, as if to flee the damage.

  Joan turned to Delaney. “You sure you want to rotate again? What’s the point? You’ll end up back here anyway.”

  But it was time. She’d been at AYS for three weeks—far longer than she’d intended. She needed to seed ideas elsewhere.

  “People, Del’s leaving,” Joan announced, and the remaining Supples gathered around. “She’s going to HereMe.”

  “It’s just a rotation,” Delaney clarified.

  “HereMe?” Preeti said, and wrinkled her nose. “Why HereMe?”

  After the bombing, Delaney had heard rumblings that Stenton was taking an interest in HereMe, and she felt she had to be there to exacerbate whatever horrors he had in mind.

  “Just curious,” Delaney said.

  “She’ll be back,” Joan said, and then said it to Delaney. “You’ll come back. Everyone comes back.”

  “Delaney!” Kiki squealed. They had planned to meet at the Daisy, and Delaney had duly arrived at the Daisy, but as always, Kiki was thrilled that the Delaney-dot on Kiki’s screen had become a real-Delaney in front of Kiki. “Ready for another rotation?” she asked and smiled, then raised a finger. “Hi Nino honey! And Ms. Jolene, good to see you.” Kiki turned her head away.

  For the next two minutes Kiki engaged in an intense, hushed conversation with the two faces, her son’s and her son’s teacher’s, on her arm-screen. Delaney couldn’t help hearing, and wanted to hear, in case she needed to save Kiki from this latest drama.

  “I didn’t mean to touch her,” Nino said. “I was by the Legos and Mia came over. She and I do this thing where we tap our Legos together. Like it’s a fist-bump. But today I missed and my Lego touched Mia’s arm.”

  “Nino, I’m sure that—” Kiki began.

  “I’m afraid this triggers a mandatory review,” Ms. Jolene said, her voice utterly without warmth.“It’s automatic. You know the school’s policy on interpersonal contact. I couldn’t stop it if I tried. Luckily we have quality video so there won’t be debate about exactly what happened. Check your feed about next steps.”

  “But Ms. Jolene—”

  “I’ll see you at pickup,” Ms. Jolene said, and the screen went dark.

  “You heard any of that?” Kiki said to Delaney.

  “I did,” Delaney said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  Kiki was already back on her screen. The next steps had already appeared; Delaney glanced at what appeared to be a contract of some sort that Kiki had to sign.

  “This isn’t the first issue,” Kiki said. “Look.” She showed Delaney her screen, which was filled with incidents involving Nino. Delaney saw a handful of entries—knee-to-knee contact 3-11 and singing along to inappropriate song 5-23— and looked up to find Kiki breathing through a straw.

  “It helps with my stress,” she said. “You have an EveryStraw?”

  Delaney said she did not.

  “We’re late,” Kiki said. “You’re going to HereMe, right? Where is that?”

  Delaney could see the building, no more than a hundred yards away; its façade bore the word HEREME in four-foot letters. Kiki was looking at her screen.

  “Oh no,” she said. “It’s telling us to get on the highway. That couldn’t be right. Just let me …” She tapped away for a few moments as Delaney tried, gently—for she felt anything could send Kiki over the edge—to tell her that the building was in front of them. Finally, as Kiki waited for her screen to refresh, Delaney managed to lead Kiki’s eyes to rest on the HereMe sign.

  “Okay,” Kiki said, “but I want to be sure.” And again she waited for her screen to confirm what was before her.

  “I can make it from here,” Delaney said, and Kiki gave her an exhausted, grateful, half-mad look, and then tapped her earpiece, through which a new call had arrived.

  The HereMe building was a spiky mess of glass and timber, meant to evoke a seashell, purportedly a conch. Delaney arrived early, just as the shadow of the blimp spidered slowly across the building. Inside, Delaney was greeted by an enormous sign laser-cut into brushed steel.

  HERE YOU ARE HEARD, it read.

  More than any other aspect of the Every, smart speakers fascinated Delaney, and had since she was a child. Delaney’s parents had fiercely resisted having one in the home, until they began working at Folk-Foods, bought one for the home—at a discount—and they soon found it indispensable. In college, Agarwal had spent weeks on the topic, viewing smart speakers as proof, the most convincing proof, that humans will resist no level of intrusion if it saves the trouble of walking across the room.

  Smart speakers had an awkward introduction to the world. They arrived in the 2010s to phenomenal sales, with hundreds of millions of households adopting them within the first few years. Before the Every entered the picture, the makers of the devices—at the beginning there were three main players in the field, including the jungle—assured the buyers that the AI assistants were never activated unless their designated name or code word was spoken. This reassured the users that their private everyday conversations were not being heard, that only brief requests were audible, and even then, never stored. But a few months later, it was revealed that the smart speakers were in fact listening all the time, or could listen all the time. In fact, they could be activated by their manufacturers any time at all. For this, the manufacturers apologized; perhaps there had been some confusion, they said. Were we unclear?

  The users, though momentarily upset at this foundational and central deception, were assuaged when they were told that under no circumstances were their conversations recorded. It would be, both users and manufacturers agreed, an egregious breach of trust to have a machine that a customer brought into their house—a machine, everyone noted, that was purchased primarily to play music and inform them of the current traffic—actually recording the conversations conducted in these private households. That would be unethical. And so it was assumed that no recording was being done by these home assistants, until one day the manufacturers admitted that they had in fact been recording just about every conversation every user had ever had, from the very beginning.

  Again the makers were contrite. When you were asking before about whether we were recording conversations, they said, we didn’t quite understand what you meant. We thought you meant recording and listening to these conversations, and that of course we would never do. We would never. We record the conversations of hundreds of millions of users, yes, but no humans ever listen to any of these conversations. Conversations in the home, between family members, are private, are sacrosanct! they said. We simply record these conversations to improve our software, they said, to optimize our services, to better serve you, the customers, better.

  And for a while the users, though feeling wary and burned by the series of revelations, looked askance at their smart speakers, wondering if the tradeoff was actually worth it. On the one hand, their private family conversations were being recorded and stored offsite for unknown future use by a trillion-dollar private company with a limitless litany of privacy violations. On the other hand, they could find out the weather without having to look out the window.

  Fine, the users said sternly, fists on hips, you can continue to record everything we say, but—but!—if we ever find out that you manufacturers were having actual humans listen to our conversations, that will be one step over the line.

  We would never! the manufacturers said, hurt by the inference, which, they felt, was offensive even to think about, given how open and transparent they had been from the start. Didn’t we reveal, they asked, after we were caught, that our smart speakers were turning themselves off and on at their own behest? And didn’t we admit, after we were caught, that we were listening to and recording anything we wanted at any time, anything that was said in the private homes of hundreds of millions of users? And didn’t we reveal, after we were caught, that we were recording all the private conversations every user had in the privacy of their own homes?

  After all this openness and contrition, they said, it stings to think that customers would wonder aloud if other shoes might drop. No more shoes, said the manufacturers, would be dropping. We stand before you barefoot and humbled.

  When it was revealed that the manufacturers had in fact hired 10,000 humans, whose only purpose was to listen to, transcribe and analyze the private conversations that had been recorded by these smart speakers, the manufacturers were amazed at the outrage, as muted as it was. Yes, they said, we have all along been recording and listening to your conversations, they said to their customers, but none of these 10,000 workers know your names, so what possible difference would it make that we have all of your private conversations recorded, and that we could with one or two keystrokes de-anonymize your conversations at any time? And, given the fact that every database ever created has been hacked, these recordings could be accessed by anyone at any time who had will enough to get them? What, the manufacturers asked, are you getting so worked up about?

  In fact, no one got worked up at all. Lawmakers were mute, regulators invisible, and sales skyrocketed.

  And so when the Every swallowed the jungle and created a next-level smart speaker, privacy was not promised or expected. But a new name was needed. For a decade, since the assistants had been activated by saying names like Alexa or Siri or Bobo, there had been unnecessary problems and even lawsuits from people who had been given those names at birth. The activating phrase, the Every decided, would be “Hear me.” It was a phrase that no one said in daily life, and yet it was clear and to the point. The user simply said “Hear me,” and could begin. The words were then combined to make the device’s name, HearMe, and shortly thereafter, the slight change in spelling, to HereMe, was just one of those unfortunate Every-isms that diminished the dignity of the species and shamed whomever had to type it.

  The blimp’s shadow overtook Delaney again, followed by a woman of about thirty standing above her. The words eye shimmer pulsed in Delaney’s mind in neon letters. Karina’s was cerulean, luminescent. When she blinked, it was like the flutter of a morpho butterfly. Delaney tried not to squint.

  “Delaney,” she said, and looked at the screen strapped to her arm.

  “Yes,” Delaney said.

  “Karina,” Karina said, her hand to heart. “I’ll be your guide today,” Karina said. She wore a loose boho blouse over black leggings—the most demure outfit Delaney had seen in weeks. Karina was oddly unsteady in her heels, though, so when she walked, her earrings, enormous gold hoops, shimmied frantically from her high-piled hair.

  “I’ll show you to your play area later,” Karina said, as she led Delaney into the building. “But we have a sort of an unexpected opportunity if you’re interested. I know this will seem sudden, but we do have a very interesting topic today being discussed in an all-staff. Your NDA covers this, so you’re welcome to come in and listen. Otherwise you can lounge for an hour or so until we’re done.”

  Delaney tried not to seem too anxious. She managed to convey that she’d very much like to sit in if no one objected.

  The room was dominated by a conference table in the shape of an amoeba. There were twenty-two Everyones tucked into the various inward and outward curves of the amoeba, with seven isos on screens, their avatars mostly copyright-free cartoon characters from the early twentieth century. Of all the departments Delaney had visited thus far, the humans in the room seemed the most characteristic of what she’d expected at the Every. The faces she saw were focused, sober, the clothing and haircuts more or less conservative; she assumed a good number of them had come from the jungle via the merger. A door behind her opened and closed and a familiar voice spoke.

  “Greetings,” he said gruffly. It was Stenton. He swept past Delaney and took his place at the head of the amoeba. A woman in a yellow, impossibly snug business suit followed him and took a seat at his side. The presence of a business suit was so incongruous it seemed to alter the chemistry of the room. Finally a third person, a beefy man of about fifty, took Stenton’s other side. He was mustachioed and wore a snug golf shirt. Stenton introduced the woman as an attorney specializing in audio-surveillance law; the man was the former police chief of Miami, credited with quelling the city’s riots during the second pandemic.