The Circle

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 to Mae. “We’re
     so glad to meet you.”
    Denise, tall, slim, Asian-American, smiled at Mae and closed her eyes, as if savoring
     the moment. “Annie told us all about you two, how far back you go. Annie’s the heart
     and soul of this place, so we’re very lucky to have you here.”
    “Everyone loves Annie,” Josiah added.
    Their deference to Mae felt awkward. They were surely older than her, but they behaved
     as if she were a visiting eminence.
    “So I know some of this might be redundant,” Josiah said, “but if it’s okay we’d like
     to give you the full newcomer tour. Would that be okay? We promise not to make it
     lame.”
    Mae laughed, urged them on, and followed.
    The rest of the day was a blur of glass rooms and brief, impossibly warm introductions.
     Everyone she met was busy, just short of overworked, but nevertheless thrilled to
     meet her, so happy she was there, any friend of Annie’s … There was a tour of the
     health center, and an introduction to the dreadlocked Dr. Hampton who ran it. There
     was a tour of the emergency clinic and the Scottish nurse who did the admitting. A
     tour of the organic gardens, a hundred yards square, where there were two full-time
     farmers giving a talk to a large group of Circlers while they sampled the latest harvest
     of carrots and tomatoes and kale. There was a tour of the mini-golf area, the movie
     theater, the bowling alleys, the grocery store. Finally, deep in what Mae assumed
     was the corner of the campus—she could see