The Circle

puke now.”
    “Okay. Don’t puke.”
    Annie hurried to the door and was gone.
    Mae had four minutes to get to Dr. Villalobos. She stood, turned her audio back on,
     and left the bathroom.
    Then she walked back in, silenced her audio, sat down in the same stall, and gave
     herself a minute to get herself together. Let people think she was constipated. She
     didn’t care. She was sure Annie was crying by now, wherever she was. Mae was sobbing,
     and was cursing Annie, cursing every blond inch of her, her smug sense of entitlement.
     So what that she’d been at the Circle longer. They were peers now, but Annie couldn’t
     accept it. Mae would have to make sure she did.
    It was 2:02 when she arrived.
    “Hello Mae,” Dr. Villalobos said, greeting her in the clinic lobby. “I see your heart
     rate is normal, and I imagine with your jog over here, all your viewers are getting
     some interesting data, too. Come in.”
    In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Dr. Villalobos had become a
     viewers’ favorite, too. With her extravagant curves, her sultry eyes and harmonica
     voice, she was volcanic onscreen. She was the doctor everyone, especially straight
     men, wished they’d had. Though TruYou had made lewd comments almost impossible for
     anyone wanting to keep their job or spouse, Dr. Villalobos brought out a genteel,
     but no less demonstrative, brand of appreciation.
So good to see the good doctor!
one man wrote as Mae entered the office.
Let the examination begin
, said another, braver, soul. And Dr. Villalobos, while putting on a show of brisk
     professionalism, seemed to enjoy it, too. Today she was wearing a zippered blouse
     that displayed an amount of her ample chest that at a proper distance was appropriate
     but, seen through Mae’s close camera, was somehow obscene.
    “So your vitals have been looking good,” she said to Mae.
    Mae was sitting on the examination table, the doctor standing before her. Looking
     at her wrist, Mae checked the image her viewers were getting, and she knew the men
     would be pleased. As if realizing the picture might be getting too provocative, Dr.
     Villalobos turned to the wallscreen. On it, a few hundred data points were displayed.
    “Your step count could be better,” she said. “You’re averaging only 5,300, when you
     should be at 10,000. Someone your age, especially, should be even higher than that.”
    “I know,” Mae said. “It’s just been busy lately.”
    “Okay. But let’s bring those steps up. As a promise to me? Now,because we’re talking to all your watchers now, I’d like to tout the overall program
     your own data feeds into, Mae. It’s called the Complete Health Data program, or CHAD
     for short. Chad was an ex of mine, and Chad, if you’re out there, I didn’t name it
     for you.”
    Mae’s wrist went wild with messages.
Chad, you fool
.
    “Through CHAD, we get real-time data on everyone at the Circle. Mae, you and the newbies
     were the first to get the new wristbands, but since then, we’ve equipped everyone
     else at the Circle. And this has enabled us to get perfect and complete data on the
     eleven thousand people here. Can you imagine? The first boon has been that when the
     flu arrived on campus last week, we knew in minutes who brought it. We sent her home
     and no one else was infected. If only we could prevent people from bringing germs
onto
campus, right? If they never left, getting dirty out there, then we’d be all set.
     But let me get off my soapbox and focus on you, Mae.”
    “As long as the news is good,” Mae said, and tried to smile. But she was uneasy and
     wanted to move all this along.
    “Well, I think it’s good,” the doctor said. “This comes from a watcher in Scotland.
     He’d been tracking your vitals, and cross-referencing with your DNA markers, he realized
     that the way you’re eating, particularly nitrates, is elevating your propensity for
     cancer.”
    “Jesus. Really? Is that the bad news I’m here for?”
    “No, no! Don’t worry. It’s easily solved. You don’t have cancer and probably won’t
     get it. But you know you have a marker for gastrointestinal cancer, just an increased
     risk, and this researcher in Glasgow, who’d been following you and your vitals, saw
     that you’re eating salami and other meats with nitrates that might be tipping you
     toward cellular mutation.”
    “You keep scaring me.”
    “Oh god I’m sorry! I don’t mean to. But thank god he was