The Circle

M
Y GOD
, M
AE
thought. It’s heaven.

The campus was vast and rambling, wild with Pacific color, and yet the smallest detail
had been carefully considered, shaped by the most eloquent hands. On land that had
once been a shipyard, then a drive-in movie theater, then a flea market, then blight,
there were now soft green hills and a Calatrava fountain. And a picnic area, with
tables arranged in concentric circles. And tennis courts, clay and grass. And a volleyball
court, where tiny children from the company’s daycare center were running, squealing,
weaving like water. Amid all this was a workplace, too, four hundred acres of brushed
steel and glass on the headquarters of the most influential company in the world.
The sky above was spotless and blue.

Mae was making her way through all of this, walking from the parking lot to the main
hall, trying to look as if she belonged. The walkway wound around lemon and orange
trees and its quiet red cobblestones were replaced, occasionally, by tiles with imploring
messages of inspiration. “Dream,” one said, the word laser-cut into the red stone.
“Participate,” said another. There were dozens: “Find Community.”
“Innovate.” “Imagine.” She just missed stepping on the hand of a young man in a grey
jumpsuit; he was installing a new stone that said “Breathe.”

On a sunny Monday in June, Mae stopped in front of the main door, standing below the
logo etched into the glass above. Though the company was less than six years old,
its name and logo—a circle surrounding a knitted grid, with a small ‘c’ in the center—were
already among the best-known in the world. There were over ten thousand employees
on this, the main campus, but the Circle had offices all over the globe, and was hiring
hundreds of gifted young minds every week. It had been voted the world’s most admired
company four years running.

Mae wouldn’t have thought she had a chance to work at such a place, but for Annie.
Annie was two years older and they’d roomed together for three semesters in college,
in an ugly building made habitable through their extraordinary bond, something like
friends, something like sisters or cousins who wished they were siblings and would
have reason never to be apart. Their first month living together, Mae had broken her
jaw one twilight, after fainting, flu-ridden and underfed, during finals. Annie had
told her to stay in bed, but Mae had gone to the 7-Eleven for caffeine and woke up
on the sidewalk, under a tree. Annie took her to the hospital, and waited as they
wired her jaw, and then stayed with Mae, sleeping next to her, in a wooden chair,
all night, and then at home, for days, had fed Mae through a straw. It was a fierce
level of commitment and competence that Mae had never seen from someone her age or
near her age, and Mae was thereafter loyal in a way she’d never known she could be.

While Mae was still at Carleton, meandering between majors,
from art history to marketing to psychology—getting her degree in psych with no plans
to go further in the field—Annie had graduated, gotten her MBA from Stanford and was
recruited everywhere, but particularly at the Circle, and had landed here days after
graduation. Now she had some lofty title—Director of Ensuring the Future, Annie joked—and
had urged Mae to apply for a job. Mae did so, and though Annie insisted she pulled
no strings, Mae was sure that Annie had, and she felt indebted beyond all measure.
A million people, a billion, wanted to be where Mae was at this moment, entering this
atrium, thirty feet high and shot through with California light, on her first day
working for the only company that really mattered at all.

She pushed open the heavy door. The front hall was as long as a parade, as tall as
a cathedral. There were offices everywhere above, four floors high on either side,
every wall made of glass. Briefly dizzy, she looked downward, and in the immaculate
glossy floor, she saw her own face reflected, looking worried. She shaped her mouth
into a smile, feeling a presence behind her.

“You must be Mae.”

Mae turned to find a beautiful young head floating atop a scarlet scarf and white
silk blouse.

“I’m Renata,” she said.

“Hi Renata. I’m looking for—”

“Annie. I know. She’s on her way.” A sound, a digital droplet, came from Renata’s
ear. “She’s actually …” Renata was looking at Mae but was seeing something else. Retinal
interface, Mae assumed. Another innovation born here.

“She’s in the Old West,” Renata said, focusing on Mae again, “but she’ll be here soon.”

Mae smiled. “I hope she’s got some hardtack and a sturdy horse.”

Renata smiled politely but did not laugh. Mae knew the company’s practice of naming
each portion of the campus after an historical era; it was a way to make an enormous
place less impersonal, less corporate. It beat Building 3B-East, where Mae had last
worked. Her last day at the public utility in her hometown had been only three weeks
ago—they’d been stupefied when she gave notice—but already it seemed impossible she’d
wasted so much of her life there. Good riddance, Mae thought, to that gulag and all
it represented.

Renata was still getting signals from her earpiece. “Oh wait,” she said, “now she’s
saying she’s still tied up over there.” Renata looked at Mae with a radiant smile.
“Why don’t I take you to your desk? She says she’ll meet you there in an hour or so.”

Mae thrilled a bit at those words,
your desk
, and immediately she thought of her dad. He was proud.
So proud
, he’d said on her voicemail; he must have left the message at four a.m. She’d gotten
it when she’d woken up.
So very proud
, he’d said, choking up. Mae was two years out of college and here she was, gainfully
employed by the Circle, with her own health insurance, her own apartment in the city,
being no burden to her parents, who had plenty else to worry about.

Mae followed Renata out of the atrium. On the lawn, under dappled light, a pair of
young people were sitting on a manmade hill, holding some kind of clear tablet, talking
with great intensity.

“You’ll be in the Renaissance, over here,” Renata said, pointing across the lawn,
to a building of glass and oxidized copper. “This is where all the Customer Experience
people are. You’ve visited before?”

Mae nodded. “I have. A few times, but not this building.”

“So you’ve seen the pool, the sports area.” Renata waved her hand
off toward a blue parallelogram and an angular building, the gym, rising behind it.
“Over there there’s the yoga studio, crossfit, Pilates, massages, spinning. I heard
you spin? Behind that there’s the bocce courts, and the new tetherball setup. The
cafeteria’s just across the grass …” Renata pointed to the lush rolling green, with
a handful of young people, dressed professionally and splayed about like sunbathers.
“And here we are.”

They stood before the Renaissance, another building with a forty-foot atrium, a Calder
mobile turning slowly above.

“Oh, I love Calder,” Mae said.

Renata smiled. “I know you do.” They looked up at it together. “This one used to hang
in the French parliament. Something like that.”

The wind that had followed them in now turned the mobile such that an arm pointed
to Mae, as if welcoming her personally. Renata took her elbow. “Ready? Up this way.”

They entered an elevator of glass, tinted faintly orange. Lights flickered on and
Mae saw her name appear on the walls, along with her high school yearbook photo. W
ELCOME
M
AE
H
OLLAND
. A sound, something like a gasp, left Mae’s throat. She hadn’t seen that photo in
years, and had been happy for its absence. This must have been Annie’s doing, assaulting
her with it again. The picture was indeed Mae—her wide mouth, her thin lips, her olive
skin, her black hair, but in this photo, more so than in life, her high cheekbones
gave her a look of severity, her brown eyes not smiling, only small and cold, ready
for war. Since the photo—she was eighteen then, angry and unsure—Mae had gained much-needed
weight, her face had softened and curves appeared, curves that brought the attention
of men of myriad
ages and motives. She’d tried, since high school, to be more open, more accepting,
and seeing it here, this document of a long-ago era when she assumed the worst of
the world, rattled her. Just when she couldn’t stand it anymore, the photo disappeared.