The Circle

Busy day, Dan wrote. See me asap.
He was standing in the corner of his o ce, facing the wall. She knocked lightly and,
without turning, he raised his index nger, asking for a moment. Mae watched him,
assuming he was on a call, and stood patiently, silently, until she realized he was using his
retinals and wanted a blank background. She’d been seeing Circlers occasionally doing
this—facing walls, so the images on their retinal displays could be seen more clearly. Now
finished, he swirled to Mae, flashing a friendly and quick-dissolving smile.
“You weren’t able to come yesterday?”
“Sorry. I was with my folks. My dad—”
“Great event. I think you were the only newb absent. But we can talk about it later. For
now I need to ask you a favor. We’ve had to bring on a lot of new help, given how fast
things are expanding now, so I wondered if you could help me with some of the new
arrivals.”
“Of course.”
“I think it’ll be a cinch for you. Let me show you. We’ll head back to your desk.
Renata?”
Renata followed them, carrying a small monitor, about the size of a notebook. She
installed it at Mae’s desk and left.
“Okay. So ideally you’ll be doing what Jared used to do with you, remember?
Whenever there’s a stumper and it needs to be bounced up to a more seasoned person,
you’ll be there. You’re the veteran now. Does that make sense?”
“It does.”
“Now the other thing is that I want the newbies to be able to ask you questions as they
work. The easiest way will be on this screen.” He pointed to the small screen that had
been placed under her main monitor. “You see something appear here you know it’s from
someone in your pod, okay?” He turned on the new screen and typed out a question,
“Mae, help me!” on his tablet, and the words appeared on this new, fourth, screen. “Does
that seem easy enough?”
“It does.”
“Good. So the newbies will be here after Jared trains them. He’s doing it en masse as
we speak. There will be twelve new people here by about eleven a.m., okay?”
Dan thanked her and left.
The load was heavy until eleven, but her rating was 98. There were a handful of sub-
100s, and two lower-90s that she followed up on, and in most cases the customers
corrected their rating to a 100.

---

At eleven she looked up to see Jared leading a group into the room, all of them
seeming very young, all of them stepping carefully, as if afraid to wake some unseen
infant. Jared positioned each of them at a desk and the room, which had been utterly
empty for weeks, was nearly full in a matter of minutes.
Jared stood on a chair. “Okay everyone!” he said. “This is by far our quickest
onboarding process. And our quickest training session. And our most maniacally fast rst
day. But I know you all can handle it. And I especially know you can handle it because I’ll
be here all day to help, and Mae will be here, too. Mae, can you stand up?”
Mae stood. But it was obvious that few of the newbies in the room could see her. “How
about standing on your chair?” Jared asked, and Mae did so, straightening her skirt,
feeling very silly and visible and hoping she would not fall.
“The two of us will be here all day to answer questions and take stumpers. If you have
a stumper just forward it, and it’ll be routed to whichever of us has the lightest load. If
you have a question, same thing. Send it through the channel I showed you in the
orientation, and it’ll go to one of us. Between me and Mae, you’ll be covered. Everyone
feel good?” No one moved or said a word. “Good. I’ll open the chute again and we’ll go
till twelve thirty today. Lunch will be shorter today to account for the training and all,
but we’ll make it up to you on Friday. Everyone ready?” No one seemed ready. “Go!”
And Jared jumped down, and Mae climbed down, arranged herself again, and was
immediately thirty queries behind. She started on her rst, and within a minute she had a
question on her fourth screen, the one for newbies.