The Circle

do?”
    “For my work?”
    “Yeah. Can I watch? I mean, not if it makes you uncomfortable.”
    Mae paused. Everything and everyone else she’d experienced at the Circle hewed to
     a logical model, a rhythm, but Kalden was the anomaly. His rhythm was different, atonal
     and strange, but not unpleasant.His face was so open, his eyes liquid, gentle, unassuming, and he spoke so softly
     that any possibility of threat seemed remote.
    “Sure. I guess,” she said. “It’s not so exciting, though.”
    “Maybe, maybe not.”
    And so he watched Mae answer requests. When she turned to him after every seemingly
     mundane part of her job, the screen danced brightly in his eyes, his face rapt—like
     he’d never seen anything more interesting in his life. At other moments, though, he
     seemed removed, seeing something she couldn’t. He’d look at the screen but his eyes
     were seeing something deep within.
    She continued, and he continued to ask occasional questions. “Now who was that?” “How
     often does that happen?” “Why did you respond in that way?”
    He was close to her, far too close if he was a normal person with everyday ideas of
     personal space, but it was abundantly clear he was not this kind of person, a normal
     kind of person. As he watched the screen, and sometimes Mae’s fingers on the keyboard,
     his chin got ever-closer to her shoulder, his breath light but audible, his smell,
     a simple one of soap and banana shampoo, coming to her on the winds of his tiny exhalations.
     The whole experience was so odd that Mae laughed nervously every few seconds, not
     knowing what else to do. And then it was done. He cleared his throat and stood up.
    “Well, I better head out,” he said. “I’ll just slip away. Don’t want to interrupt
     your pace here. I’ll see you around campus I’m sure.”
    And he was gone.
    Before Mae could unpack any of what just happened, a new face was beside her.
    “Hi. I’m Gina. Dan said I’d be here?”
    Mae nodded, though she didn’t remember anything about this. She looked at Gina, a
     woman a few years older than herself, hoping to remember something about her or this
     meeting. Gina’s eyes, black and heavy with eyeliner and moon-blue mascara, smiled
     at her, though Mae felt no warmth emanating from these eyes, or from Gina at all.
    “Dan said this would be a good moment to set up all your socials. You got time?”
    “Sure,” Mae said, though she had no time at all.
    “I take it last week was too busy for you to set up your company social account? And
     I don’t think you’ve imported your old profile?”
    Mae cursed herself. “I’m sorry. I’ve been pretty overwhelmed so far.”
    Gina frowned.
    Mae backtracked, masking her miscalculation with a laugh. “No, in a good way! But
     I haven’t had time yet to do extracurricular stuff.”
    Gina tilted her head and cleared her throat theatrically. “That’s so interesting you
     put it that way,” she said, smiling, though she didn’t seem happy. “We actually see
     your profile, and the activity on it, as integral to your participation here. This
     is how your coworkers, even those on the other side of campus, know who you are.
Communication
is certainly not extracurricular, right?”
    Now Mae was embarrassed. “Right,” she said. “Of course.”
    “If you visit a coworker’s page and write something on the wall, that’s a
positive
thing. That’s an act of
community
. An act of
reaching out
. And of course I don’t have to tell you that this company exists becauseof the social media you consider
‘extracurricular.’
My understanding was that you used our social media tools before coming here?”
    Mae was unsure what she could say to appease Gina. She’d been so busy at work, and
     didn’t want to seem distracted, so she’d delayed re-activating her social profile.
    “I’m sorry,” Mae managed. “I didn’t mean to imply that it was extracurricular. I actually
     think it’s central. I was just getting acclimated here at work and wanted to focus
     on learning my new responsibilities.”
    But Gina had hit a groove and would not be stopped until she’d finished her thought.
     “You realize that
community
and
communication
come from the same root word,
communis
, Latin for common, public, shared by all or many?”
    Mae’s heart was hammering. “I’m very sorry, Gina. I fought to get a job here. I do
     know all this. I’m here because I believe in everything you said. I was just a