The Circle

was looking at Mae but was seeing something else. Retinal
     interface, Mae assumed. Another innovation born here.
    “She’s in the Old West,” Renata said, focusing on Mae again, “but she’ll be here soon.”
    Mae smiled. “I hope she’s got some hardtack and a sturdy horse.”
    Renata smiled politely but did not laugh. Mae knew the company’s practice of naming
     each portion of the campus after an historical era; it was a way to make an enormous
     place less impersonal, less corporate. It beat Building 3B-East, where Mae had last
     worked. Her last day at the public utility in her hometown had been only three weeks
     ago—they’d been stupefied when she gave notice—but already it seemed impossible she’d
     wasted so much of her life there. Good riddance, Mae thought, to that gulag and all
     it represented.
    Renata was still getting signals from her earpiece. “Oh wait,” she said, “now she’s
     saying she’s still tied up over there.” Renata looked at Mae with a radiant smile.
     “Why don’t I take you to your desk? She says she’ll meet you there in an hour or so.”
    Mae thrilled a bit at those words,
your desk
, and immediately she thought of her dad. He was proud.
So proud
, he’d said on her voicemail; he must have left the message at four a.m. She’d gotten
     it when she’d woken up.
So very proud
, he’d said, choking up. Mae was two years out of college and here she was, gainfully
     employed by the Circle, with her own health insurance, her own apartment in the city,
     being no burden to her parents, who had plenty else to worry about.
    Mae followed Renata out of the atrium. On the lawn, under dappled light, a pair of
     young people were sitting on a manmade hill, holding some kind of clear tablet, talking
     with great intensity.
    “You’ll be in the Renaissance, over here,” Renata said, pointing across the lawn,
     to a building of glass and oxidized copper. “This is where all the Customer Experience
     people are. You’ve visited before?”
    Mae nodded. “I have. A few times, but not this building.”
    “So you’ve seen the pool, the sports area.” Renata waved her handoff toward a blue parallelogram and an angular building, the gym, rising behind it.
     “Over there there’s the yoga studio, crossfit, Pilates, massages, spinning. I heard
     you spin? Behind that there’s the bocce courts, and the new tetherball setup. The
     cafeteria’s just across the grass …” Renata pointed to the lush rolling green, with
     a handful of young people, dressed professionally and splayed about like sunbathers.
     “And here we are.”
    They stood before the Renaissance, another building with a forty-foot atrium, a Calder
     mobile turning slowly above.
    “Oh, I love Calder,” Mae said.
    Renata smiled. “I know you do.” They looked up at it together. “This one used to hang
     in the French parliament. Something like that.”
    The wind that had followed them in now turned the mobile such that an arm pointed
     to Mae, as if welcoming her personally. Renata took her elbow. “Ready? Up this way.”
    They entered an elevator of glass, tinted faintly orange. Lights flickered on and
     Mae saw her name appear on the walls, along with her high school yearbook photo. W ELCOME M AE H OLLAND . A sound, something like a gasp, left Mae’s throat. She hadn’t seen that photo in
     years, and had been happy for its absence. This must have been Annie’s doing, assaulting
     her with it again. The picture was indeed Mae—her wide mouth, her thin lips, her olive
     skin, her black hair, but in this photo, more so than in life, her high cheekbones
     gave her a look of severity, her brown eyes not smiling, only small and cold, ready
     for war. Since the photo—she was eighteen then, angry and unsure—Mae had gained much-needed
     weight, her face had softened and curves appeared, curves that brought the attention
     of men of myriadages and motives. She’d tried, since high school, to be more open, more accepting,
     and seeing it here, this document of a long-ago era when she assumed the worst of
     the world, rattled her. Just when she couldn’t stand it anymore, the photo disappeared.
    “Yeah, everything’s on sensors,” Renata said. “The elevator reads your ID, and then
     says hello. Annie gave us that photo. You guys must be tight if she’s got high school
     pictures of you. Anyway, hope you don’t mind. We do that for visitors, mostly. They’re
     usually impressed.”
    As the