The Circle (12 page)

“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 because
of 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 bit
crazed last week and didn’t get a chance to set it up.”

“Okay. But just know, from now on, that being social, and being a presence on your
profile and all related accounts—this is part of why you’re here. We consider your
online presence to be integral to your work here. It’s all connected.”

“I know. Again, I’m sorry to have misstated my feelings.”

“Good. Okay, let’s start by setting this up.” Gina reached over Mae’s divider and
retrieved another screen, bigger than her second screen, which she quickly arranged
and connected to Mae’s computer.

“Okay. So your second screen will continue to be the way you’ll stay in touch with
your team. That will be exclusively for CE business.
Your third screen is for your social participation, in the company Circle and your
wider Circle. Does that make sense?”

“It does.”

Mae watched Gina activate the screen, and felt a thrill. She’d never had such an elaborate
arrangement before. Three screens for someone so low on the ladder! Only at the Circle.

“Okay, first I want to go back to your second screen,” Gina said. “I don’t think you’ve
activated CircleSearch. Let’s do that.” An elaborate, three-dimensional map of the
campus appeared. “This is pretty simple, and just allows you to find anyone on campus
in case you need a face-to-face.”

Gina pointed to a pulsing red dot.

“Here’s you. You’re red hot! I’m kidding.” As if recognizing that might have been
considered inappropriate, Gina quickly moved on. “Didn’t you say you knew Annie? Let’s
type in her name.” A blue dot appeared in the Old West. “She’s in her office, surprise
surprise. Annie is a machine.”

Mae smiled. “She is.”

“I’m so jealous you know her so well,” Gina said, smiling but briefly and unconvincingly.
“And over here you’ll see a cool new app, which sort of gives us a history of the
building every day. You can see when each staffer checked in every day, when they
left the building. This gives us a really nice sense of the life of the company. This
part you don’t have to update yourself, of course. If you go to the pool, your ID
automatically updates that on the feed. And outside of the movement, any additional
commentary would be up to you, and of course would be encouraged.”

“Commentary?” Mae asked.

“You know, like what you thought of lunch, a new feature at the gym, anything. Just
basic ratings and likes and comments. Nothing out of the ordinary, and of course all
input helps us do a better job at serving the Circle community. Now that commentary
is done right here,” she said, and revealed that every building and room could be
clicked on, and within, she could add any comments about anything or anyone.

“So that’s your second screen. It’s about your coworkers, your team, and it’s about
finding people in the physical space. Now it’s on to the really fun stuff. Screen
three. This is where your main social and Zing feeds appear. I heard you weren’t a
Zing user?”

Mae admitted she hadn’t been, but wanted to be.

“Great,” Gina said. “So now you have a Zing account. I made up a name for you: MaeDay.
Like the war holiday. Isn’t that cool?”

Mae wasn’t so sure about the name, and couldn’t remember a holiday by that name.

“And I connected your Zing account with the total Circle community, so you just got
10,041 new followers! Pretty cool. In terms of your own zinging, we’d expect about
ten or so a day, but that’s sort of a minimum. I’m sure you’ll have more to say than
that. Oh, and over here’s your playlist. If you listen to music while you work, the
feed automatically sends that playlist out to everyone else, and it goes into the
collective playlist, which ranks the most-played songs in any given day, week, month.
It has the top one hundred songs campuswide, but you can also slice it a thousand
ways—top-played hip-hop, indie, country, anything. You’ll get recommendations based
on what you play, and what others with similar taste play—it’s all cross-pollinating
while you’re working. Make sense?”

Mae nodded.

“Now, next to the Zing feed, you’ll see the window for your primary social feed. You’ll
also see that we split it into two parts, the InnerCircle social feed, and your external
social, that’s your OuterCircle. Isn’t that cute? You can merge them, but we find
it helpful to see the two distinct feeds. But of course the OuterCircle is still in
the Circle, right? Everything is. Make sense so far?”

Mae said it did.

“I can’t believe you’ve been here a week without being on the main social feed. You’re
about to have your world rocked.” Gina tapped Mae’s screen and Mae’s InnerCircle stream
became a torrent of messages pouring down the monitor.

“See, you’re getting all last week’s stuff, too. That’s why there’s so many. Wow,
you really missed a lot.”

Mae followed the counter on the bottom of the screen, calculating all the messages
sent to her from everyone else at the Circle. The counter paused at 1,200. Then 4,400.
The numbers scrambled higher, stopping periodically but finally settling at 8,276.

“That was last week’s messages? Eight thousand?”

“You can catch up,” Gina said brightly. “Maybe even tonight. Now, let’s open up your
regular social account. We call it OuterCircle, but it’s the same profile, same feed
as you’ve had for years. Mind if I open it up?”

Mae didn’t mind. She watched as her social profile, the one she’d first set up years
ago, now appeared on her third screen, next to the InnerCircle feed. A cascade of
messages and photos, a few hundred, filled the monitor.

“Okay, looks like you have some catching up to do here, too,” Gina said. “A feast!
Have fun.”

“Thank you,” Mae said. She tried to sound as excited as she could. She needed Gina
to like her.

“Oh wait. One more thing. I should explain message hierarchy. Shit. I almost forgot
message hierarchy. Dan would kill me. Okay, so you know that your first-screen CE
responsibilities are paramount. We have to serve our customers with our full attention
and our full hearts. So that’s understood.”

“It is.”

“On your second screen, you might get messages from Dan and Jared, or Annie, or anyone
directly supervising your work. Those messages inform the minute-to-minute quality
of your service. So that would be your second priority. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“The third screen is your social, Inner- and OuterCircle. But these messages aren’t,
like, superfluous. They’re just as important as any other messages, but are prioritized
third. And sometimes they’re urgent. Keep an eye on the InnerCircle feed in particular,
because that’s where you’ll hear about staff meetings, mandatory gatherings, and any
breaking news. If there’s a Circle notice that’s really pressing, that’ll be marked
in orange. Something extremely urgent will prompt a message on your phone, too. You
keep that in view?” Mae nodded at her phone, resting just below the screens on her
desk. “Good,” Gina said. “So those are the priorities, with your fourth priority your
own OuterCircle participation. Which is just as important as anything else, because
we value your work-life balance, you know, the calibration
between your online life here at the company and outside it. I hope that’s clear.
Is it?”

“It is.”

“Good. So I think you’re all set. Any questions?”

Mae said she was fine.

Gina’s head tilted skeptically, indicating she knew that Mae actually had many questions
still, but didn’t want to ask them for fear of looking uninformed. Gina stood up,
smiled, took a step back, but then stopped. “Crap. Forgot one more thing.” She crouched
next to Mae, typed for a few seconds, and a number appeared on the third screen, looking
much like her aggregate CE score. It said: M
AE
H
OLLAND
: 10,328.

“This is your Participation Rank, PartiRank for short. Some people here call it the
Popularity Rank, but it’s not really that. It’s just an algorithm-generated number
that takes into account all your activity in the InnerCircle. Does that make sense?”

“I think so.”

“It takes into account zings, exterior followers of your intra-company zings, comments
on your zings, your comments on others’ zings, your comments on other Circlers’ profiles,
your photos posted, attendance at Circle events, comments and photos posted about
those events—basically it collects and celebrates all you do here. The most active
Circlers are ranked highest of course. As you can see, your rank is low now, but that’s
because you’re new and we just activated your social feed. But every time you post
or comment or attend anything, that gets factored in, and you’ll see your rank change
accordingly. That’s where the fun comes in. You post, you rise in the
rankings. A bunch of people like your post, and you really shoot up. It moves all
day. Cool?”

“Very,” Mae said.

“We started you with a little boost—otherwise you’d be 10,411. And again, it’s just
for fun. You’re not judged by your rank or anything. Some Circlers take it very seriously,
of course, and we love it when people want to participate, but the rank is really
just a fun way to see how your participation manifests itself vis-à-vis the overall
Circle community. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay then. You know how to get hold of me.”

And with that, Gina turned and left.

Mae opened the intra-company stream and began. She was determined to get through all
the Inner and Outer feeds that night. There were company-wide notices about each day’s
menus, each day’s weather, each day’s words of the wise—last week’s aphorisms were
from MLK, Gandhi, Salk, Mother Teresa and Steve Jobs. There were notices about each
day’s campus visits: a pet adoption agency, a state senator, a Congressman from Tennessee,
the director of Médecins Sans Frontières. Mae found out, with a sting of remorse,
that she’d missed, that very morning, a visit from Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel
Prize. She plowed through the messages, every one, looking for anything she would
have reasonably been expected to answer personally. There were surveys, at least fifty
of them, gauging the Circlers’ opinions on various company policies, on optimal dates
for upcoming gatherings,
interest groups, celebrations and holiday breaks. There were dozens of clubs soliciting
members and notifying all of meetings: there were cat-owner groups—at least ten—a
few rabbit groups, six reptile groups, four of them adamantly snake-exclusive. Most
of all, there were groups for dog-owners. She counted twenty-two, but was sure that
wasn’t all of them. One of the groups dedicated to the owners of very small dogs,
Lucky Lapdogs, wanted to know how many people would join a weekend club for walks
and hikes and support; Mae ignored this one. Then, realizing that ignoring it would
only prompt a second, more urgent, message, she typed a message, explaining that she
didn’t have a dog. She was asked to sign a petition for more vegan options at lunch;
she did. There were nine messages from various work-groups within the company, asking
her to join their subCircles for more specific updates and information sharing. For
now she joined the ones dedicated to crochet, soccer, and Hitchcock.