The Every

by Dave Eggers

The Every is the same. There is too much money and too little regulation. Move fast and break things indeed. They have broken three generations now.

The threats against the USPS had been growing for years, fueled by Mae Holland herself, who declared open war on paper mail in the name of safety and decency. “This is the last safe haven for terrorists and white supremacists,” she declared. Since the beginning, the Every had done the very minimum to thwart the efforts of the far right, and yet Mae found in this segment a useful bogeyman.

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.