The Every

by Dave Eggers

Like a growing majority of tech innovations, the invention and proliferation of Samaritan, an app standard on Everyphones, was driven by a mixture of benign utopianism and pseudofascist behavioral compliance.

“You’re disobedient, and we strive to be, too.” Disobedient was a recently favored word, replacing mutinous, which had replaced insurgent, which had replaced disruption/disruptor.

had the unexpected effect of rendering wide swaths of the English language nearly obsolete. When a word like amorphous was used, the ear of an Everyone was surprised, as if hearing an almost-familiar song from a largely lost time.

The ambitious rarely had ideas, and the talented were often lazy or impossible to be near.

There was no longer local news. Starved of advertising and attacked as inherently exploitive and predatory—people no longer trusted filters, curators, observers and intermediaries—journalism had died quietly and alone.

the two of them engaged in the tragic everyday byproduct of the time—watching a fellow human tap on a screen, waiting for the result.

right?” “And they’re so heavy sometimes,” Delaney said, gesturing as if someone had handed her an anvil. “But the data e-books give us is so clear,” Kiki continued, “and what we found was that while, overall, millions of fictional books were being bought every year, a much smaller percentage were being read all the way through. This was a relief to Bailey, and to people like me, because I find it almost impossible to sit through a whole movie, let alone stay still for however long it takes to read a novel. But you’ve read a bunch? Like all the way to the end?” “A few, yes,” Delaney said. “Kudos!” Kiki said, and heard a happy ding from her oval. She looked up and her face eased into a tired smile. “Here’s Alessandro. Alo, you should take it from here. This is Delaney.” She turned to Delaney and her eyes welled again. “Sorry. All the emotion from this week. But it’s been wonderful

“It’s a reprehensible idea that seems, on the surface, virtuous.” “That describes almost everything the Every does.” Wes looked down the shore. “I think the company will love it, and regular people will, too. But overall it’ll bring a new kind of self-hatred and personal ruination upon all humans.”

“First,” Syl continued, “let’s assume the undeniable truth of all that Ramona proposed. Elective air travel is immoral and does violence to the earth. That is impossible to deny.” The room was silent with what Delaney assumed was the shock of a principle that would never again be challenged.

The second wave was the recognition that they, as Everyones devoted to eternal innovation and boundary-pushing, could not, outright or ever, reject any new notion, no matter how preposterous. The third wave was an earnest head-nodding that conveyed that they recognized the bold anomalation at hand, and that they would never deign to stand in the way of progress—and any new notion was inherently progressive.

we were kids, it was people. That constant erasure of people. Now it’s customs and practices, traditions, history. Or like your Thoughts Not Things work. That urge to wipe something off the earth. It’s like my zombie theory.”

Carbon dioxides are at

Extant is exlent, she’d been taught in high school.

“You have to give up a bit of choice for the sake of the planet,” said Berit.

This idea that anything concealed hurts humanity and the bottom line at the same time. The two are just inextricably linked.

The subjective was being hunted to oblivion.

shame was the internet’s currency and lever for change.

“All through human history,” she said, “people have wanted to know two things: What should I do? and Am I good? Religion has taken stabs at both, but their answers are never conclusive. Ask any question, and a dozen religious leaders will tell you a dozen different things.”