The Circle

The Circle Read Online Free PDF

Book: The Circle Read Online Free PDF
Author: Dave Eggers
know. He goes to these distressed estates, these people who are about
     to have to sell their treasures at some terrible loss, and he pays market rates for
     all this, gives the original owners unlimited access to the stuff he’s bought. That’s
     who’s here a lot, these grey-hairs who come in to read or touch their stuff. Oh you
     have to see
this
. It’ll blow your head off.”
    Annie led Mae up the three flights of stairs, all of them tiled with intricate mosaics—reproductions,
     Mae assumed, of something from the Byzantine era. She held the brass rail going up,
     noting the lack of fingerprints, of any blemish whatsoever. She saw accountants’ green
     reading lamps, telescopes crisscrossed and gleaming in copper and gold, pointing out
     the many beveled-glass windows—“Oh look up,” Annie told her, and she did, to find
     the ceiling was stained glass, a fevered rendering of countless angels arranged in
     rings. “That’s from some church in Rome.”
    They arrived at the library’s top floor, and Annie led Mae through narrow corridors
     of round-spined books, some of them as tall asher—Bibles and atlases, illustrated histories of wars and upheavals, long-gone nations
     and peoples.
    “All right. Check this out,” Annie said. “Wait. Before I show you this, you have to
     give me a verbal non-disclosure agreement, okay?”
    “Fine.”
    “Seriously.”
    “I’m serious. I take this seriously.”
    “Good. Now when I move this book …” Annie said, removing a large volume titled
The Best Years of Our Lives
. “Watch this,” she said, and backed up. Slowly, the wall, bearing a hundred books,
     began to move inward, revealing a secret chamber within. “That’s High Nerd, right?”
     Annie said, and they walked through. Inside, the room was round and lined with books,
     but the main focus was a hole in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a copper barrier;
     a pole extended down, through the floor and to unknown regions below.
    “Does he fight fires?” Mae asked.
    “Hell if I know,” Annie said.
    “Where does it go?”
    “As far as I can tell, it goes to Bailey’s parking space.”
    Mae mustered no adjectives. “You ever go down?”
    “Nah, even showing me this was a risk. He shouldn’t have. He told me that. And now
     I’m showing you, which is silly. But it shows you the kind of mind this guy has. He
     can have anything, and what he wants is a fireman’s pole that drops seven stories
     to the garage.”
    The sound of a droplet emitted from Annie’s earpiece, and she said “Okay” to whomever
     was on the other end. It was time to go.
    “So,” Annie said in the elevator—they were dropping back to the main staff floors—“I
     have to go and do some work. It’s plankton-inspection time.”
    “It’s what time?” Mae asked.
    “You know, little startups hoping the big whale—that’s us—will find them tasty enough
     to eat. Once a week we take a series of meetings with these guys, Ty-wannabes, and
     they try to convince us that we need to acquire them. It’s a little bit sad, given
     they don’t even pretend to have any revenue, or even potential for it, anymore. Listen,
     though, I’m going to hand you off to two company ambassadors. They’re both very serious
     about their jobs. Actually, beware of just
how
into their jobs they are. They’ll give you a tour of the rest of the campus, and
     I’ll pick you up for the solstice party afterward, okay? Starts at seven.”
    The doors opened on the second floor, near the Glass Eatery, and Annie introduced
     her to Denise and Josiah, both in their late-middle-twenties, both with the same level-eyed
     sincerity, both wearing simple button-down shirts in tasteful colors. Each shook Mae’s
     hand in two of theirs, and almost seemed to bow.
    “Make sure she doesn’t work today,” were Annie’s last words before she disappeared
     back into the elevator.
    Josiah, a thin and heavily freckled man, turned his blue unblinking eyes
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