The Circle

of shit.”
    “What do you mean? How do you know this?”
    Annie looked at Mae, then turned to face the back of the room. Tom Stenton stood,
     chatting with a few Circlers, his arms crossed, a posture that in someone else might
     convey concern or even anger. But more than anything, he seemed amused.
    “Let’s go,” Annie said, and they walked across campus, hoping to get lunch from a
     taco truck hired to feed Circlers that day. “How’s your gentleman caller? Don’t tell
     me he died during sex.”
    “I still haven’t seen him since last week.”
    “No contact at all?” Annie asked. “What a shit.”
    “I think he’s just from some other era.”
    “Some other era? And grey hair? Mae, you know that moment in
The Shining
when Nicholson is having some kind of sexy encounter with the woman in the bathroom?
     And then the lady turns out to be some elderly undead corpse?”
    Mae had no idea what Annie was talking about.
    “Actually—” Annie said, and her eyes lost focus.
    “What?”
    “You know, with this Williamson investigation thing, it worries me to have some shadowy
     guy skulking around campus. Can you tell me the next time you see him?”
    Mae looked at Annie, and saw, for the first time she could remember, something like
     real worry.
    At four thiry Dan sent a message:
Great day so far! Meet at five?
    Mae arrived at Dan’s door. He stood, guided her to a chair, and closed the door. He
     sat behind his desk and tapped the glass of his tablet.
    “97. 98. 98. 98. Wonderful aggregates this week.”
    “Thank you,” Mae said.
    “Really spectacular. Especially considering the increased workload with the newbs.
     Has that been difficult?”
    “Maybe the first couple days, but now they’re all trained and don’t need me as much.
     They’re all excellent, so if anything, it’s slightly easier, having more people on
     the job.”
    “Good. Good to hear.” Now Dan looked up, and probed into her eyes. “Mae, have you
     had a good experience so far here at the Circle?”
    “Absolutely,” she said.
    His face brightened. “Good. Good. That’s very good news. I asked you to come in just
     to, well, to square that with your social behavior here, and the message it’s sending.
     And I think I might have failed to communicate everything about this job properly.
     So I blame myself if I haven’t done that well enough.”
    “No. No. I know you did a good job. I’m sure you did.”
    “Well, thank you, Mae. I appreciate that. But what we need to talk about is the, well … Let
     me put it another way. You know this isn’t what you might call a clock-in, clock-out
     type of company. Does that make sense?”
    “Oh, I know. I wouldn’t … Did I imply that I thought …”
    “No, no. You didn’t imply anything. We just haven’t seen you around so much after
     five o’clock, so we wondered if you were, you know, anxious to leave.”
    “No, no. Do you need me to stay later?”
    Dan winced. “No, it’s not that. You handle your workload just fine. But we missed
     you at the Old West party last Thursday night, which was a pretty crucial team-building
     event, centered around a product we’re all very proud of. You missed at least two
     newbie events, and at the circus, it looked like you couldn’t wait to leave. I think
     you were out of there in twenty minutes. And those things would be understandable
     if your Participation Rank wasn’t so low. Do you know what it is?”
    Mae guessed it was in the 8,000-range. “I think so.”
    “You think so,” Dan said, checked his screen. “It’s 9,101. Does that sound right?”
     It had dropped in the last hour, since she’d last checked.
    Dan clucked and nodded, as if trying to figure out how a certain spot had appeared
     on his shirt. “So it’s been sort of adding up and, well, we started worrying that
     we were somehow driving you away.”
    “No, no! It’s nothing like that.”
    “Okay, let’s focus on Thursday at five fifteen. We had a gathering in the Old West,
     where your friend Annie works. It was asemi-mandatory welcome party for a group of potential partners. You were off-campus,
     which really confuses me. It’s as if you were fleeing.”
    Mae’s mind raced. Why hadn’t she gone? Where was she? She didn’t know about this event.
     It was across campus, in the Old West—how had she missed a semi-mandatory event? The
     notice must have been buried deep in her third screen.
    “God, I’m sorry,” she said, remembering