The Circle

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 urry 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 di cult, 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 xtures and blond woods,
the oors warm from radiant heat, the sheets and pillowcases so white and crisp they

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crackled when touched. The mattress, explained a card next to the bed, was organic,
made not with springs or foam but instead a new ber that Mae found was both rmer
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 happened.
Finally, not quite exhausted but knowing she needed rest, she tucked herself in and
turned off the lights.
In the morning, Mae looked through the closets and dressers, knowing that the dorms
were stocked with an array of clothes, all new, available to be borrowed or kept. She
chose a cotton T-shirt and a pair of capri pants, both pristine. On the sink there were new
bottles of moisturizer and mouthwash, both organic and local, and she sampled each. She
showered, dressed, and was back at her desk by 8:20.
And immediately the fruits of her labors were evident. There was a river of
congratulatory messages on her third screen, from Dan, Jared, Josiah, Denise, ve or so
messages from each of them, and at least a dozen from Annie, who seemed so proud and
excited she might burst. Word spread through the InnerCircle, and Mae was sent 7,716
smiles by noon. Everyone had known she could do it. Everyone saw great things for her
at the Circle, everyone was certain she would graduate from CE in no time, as soon as
September, because rarely had anyone risen so quickly through the PartiRank and with
such laser-like focus.
Mae’s new feeling of competence and con dence carried her through the week, and
given how close she was to the top 2,000, she stayed at her desk late through the
weekend and early the next week, determined to crack through, sleeping in the same
dorm room every night. She knew the upper 2,000, nicknamed T2K, was a group of
Circlers almost maniacal in their social activity and elite in their corresponding followers.
The members of the T2K had been more or less locked in place, with few additions or
movements within their ranks, for almost eighteen months.
But Mae knew she needed to try. By Thursday night, she’d gotten to 2,219, and knew
she was among a group of similar strivers who were, like her, working feverishly to rise.
She worked for an hour and saw herself climb only two spots, to 2,217. This would be
di cult, she knew, but the challenge was delicious. And every time she’d risen to a new
thousand, she received so many accolades, and felt she was repaying Annie in particular,
that it drove her on.
By ten o’clock, just when she was tiring, and when she’d gotten as high as 2,188, she
had the revelation that she was young, and she was strong, and if she worked through the
night, one night without sleep, she could crack the T2K while everyone else was
unconscious. She forti ed herself with an energy drink and gummy worms, and when the
ca eine and sugar kicked in, she felt invincible. The third screen’s InnerCircle wasn’t
enough. She turned on her OuterCircle feed, and was handling that without di culty. She

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pushed forward, signing up for a few hundred more Zing feeds, starting with a comment
on each. She was soon at 2,012, and now she was really getting resistance. She posted 33
comments on a product-test site and rose to 2,009. She looked at her left wrist to see how
her body was responding, and thrilled at the sight of her pulse-rate increasing. She was in
command of all this and needed more. The total number of stats she was tracking was
only 41. There was her aggregate customer service score, which was at 97. There was her
last score, which was 99. There was the average of her pod, which was at 96. There was
the number of queries handled that day thus far, 221, and the number of queries handled
by that time yesterday, 219, and the number handled by her on average, 220, and by the
pod’s other members: 198. On her second screen, there were the number of messages sent
by other sta ers that day, 1,192, and the number of those messages that she’d read, 239,
and the number to which she’d responded, 88. There was the number of recent invitations
to Circle company events, 41, and the number she’d responded to, 28. There was the
number of overall visitors to the Circle’s sites that day, 3.2 billion, and the number of
pageviews, 88.7 billion. There was the number of friends in Mae’s OuterCircle, 762, and
outstanding requests by those wanting to be her friend, 27. There were the number of
zingers she was following, 10,343, and the number following her, 18,198. There was the
number of unread zings, 887. There was the number of zingers suggested to her, 12,862.
There was the number of songs in her digital library, 6,877, number of artists
represented, 921, and based on her tastes, the number of artists recommended to her:
3,408. There was the number of images in her library, 33,002, and number of images
recommended to her, 100,038. There was the temperature inside the building, 70, and the
temperature outside, 71. There was the number of sta ers on campus that day, 10,981,
and number of visitors to campus that day, 248. Mae had news alerts set for 45 names
and subjects, and each time any one of them was mentioned by any of the news feeds she
favored, she received a notice. That day there were 187. She could see how many people
had viewed her pro le that day, 210, and how much time on average they spent: 1.3
minutes. If she wanted, of course, she could go deeper, and see precisely what each
person had viewed. Her health stats added a few dozen more numbers, each of them
giving her a sense of great calm and control. She knew her heart rate and knew it was
right. She knew her step count, almost 8,200 that day, and knew that she could get to
10,000 with ease. She knew she was properly hydrated and that her caloric intake that
day was within accepted norms for someone of her body-mass index. It occurred to her,
in a moment of sudden clarity, that what had always caused her anxiety, or stress, or
worry, was not any one force, nothing independent and external—it wasn’t danger to
herself or the constant calamity of other people and their problems. It was internal: it was
subjective: it was not knowing. It wasn’t that she had an argument with a friend or was
called on the carpet by Josiah and Denise: it was not knowing what it meant, not knowing
their plans, not knowing the consequences, the future. If she knew these, there would be
calm. She knew, with some degree of certainty, where her parents were: home, as
always. She could see, with her CircleSearch, where Annie was: in her o ce, probably
still working, too. But where was Kalden? It had been two weeks since she’d seen or
heard from him. She texted Annie.

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