The Circle

important.’ Do you feel that describes your point of view?”
    Mae was too off-balance to see herself clearly. “Maybe,” she said, buying time, knowing
     she shouldn’t be too pliant. “But sometimes I’m sure that what I say is important.
     And when I have something significant to add, I definitely feel empowered to do it.”
    “But notice you said ‘sometimes I’m sure,’ ” Josiah said, wagging a finger. “The ‘sometimes’
     is interesting to me. Or concerning, I should say. Because I think you’re not finding
     that ‘sometime’ frequently enough.” He sat back, as if resting after the hard work
     of solving her was complete.
    “Mae,” Denise said, “we’d love if you could participate in a special program. Does
     that sound appealing?”
    Mae knew nothing about it, but knew, because she was in trouble, and had already consumed
     so much of their time, she should say yes, so she smiled and said, “Absolutely.”
    “Good. As soon as we can, we’ll hook you up. You’ll meet Pete Ramirez, and he’ll explain
     it. I think it might make you feel sure not just
some
times, but
always
. Does that sound better?”
    After the interview, at her desk, Mae scolded herself. What kind of person was she?
     More than anything, she was ashamed. She’d been doing the bare minimum. She disgusted
     herself and felt for Annie. Surely Annie had been hearing about her deadbeat friend
     Mae, whotook this gift, this coveted job at the Circle—a company that had insured her parents!
     had saved them from familial catastrophe!—and had been skating through.
Goddamnit, Mae, give a shit!
she thought.
Be a person of some value to the world
.
    She wrote to Annie, apologizing, saying she would do better, that she was embarrassed,
     that she didn’t want to abuse this privilege, this gift, and telling her that there
     was no need to write back, that she would simply do better, a thousand times better,
     immediately and from then on. Annie texted back, told her not to worry, that it was
     just a slap on the wrist, a correction, a common thing for newbies.
    Mae looked at the time. It was six o’clock. She had plenty of hours to improve, there
     and then, so she embarked on a flurry of activity, sending four zings and thirty-two
     comments and eighty-eight smiles. In an hour, her PartiRank rose to 7,288. Breaking
     7,000 was more difficult, but by eight o’clock, after joining and posting in eleven
     discussion groups, sending another twelve zings, one of them rated in the top 5,000
     globally for that hour, and signing up for sixty-seven more feeds, she’d done it.
     She was at 6,872, and turned to her InnerCircle social feed. She was a few hundred
     posts behind, and she made her way through, replying to seventy or so messages, RSVPing
     to eleven events on campus, signing nine petitions, and providing comments and constructive
     criticism on four products currently in beta. By 10:16 her rank was 5,342, and again,
     the plateau—this time at 5,000—was hard to overcome. She wrote a series of zings about
     a new Circle service, allowing account holders to know whenever their name was mentioned
     in any messages sent from anyone else, and one of the zings, her seventh on the subject,
     caught fire and was rezinged 2,904 times, and this brought her PartiRank up to 3,887.
    She felt a profound sense of accomplishment and possibility that was accompanied,
     in short order, by a near-complete sense of exhaustion. It was almost midnight and
     she needed sleep. It was too late to go all the way home, so she checked the dorm
     availability, reserved one, got her access code, walked across campus and into HomeTown.
    When she closed the door to her room, she felt like a fool for not taking advantage
     of the dorms sooner. The room was immaculate, awash in silver fixtures and blond woods,
     the floors warm from radiant heat, the sheets and pillowcases so white and crisp they
     crackled when touched. The mattress, explained a card next to the bed, was organic,
     made not with springs or foam but instead a new fiber that Mae found was both firmer
     and more pliant—superior to any bed she’d ever known. She pulled the blanket, cloud-white
     and full of down, around her.
    But she couldn’t sleep. Now, thinking about how much better she could do, she logged
     on again, this time on her tablet, and pledged to work till two in the morning. She
     was determined to break 3,000. And she did so, though it was 3:19 a.m. when it