Mae had never thought about it quite this way, but it made a certain sense. Was she too shy about expressing herself? “I don’t know, actually,” she said.

Denise narrowed her eyes. “Mae, I’m no psychologist, but if I were, I might have a question about your sense of self-worth. We’ve studied some models for this kind of behavior. Not to say this kind of attitude is antisocial, but it’s certainly sub-social and certainly far from transparent. And we see that this behavior sometimes stems from a low sense of self-worth — a point of view that says, ‘Oh, what I have to say isn’t so important.’ Do you feel that describes your point of view?”

Mae was too off-balance to see herself clearly. She didn’t know what to say.

“Mae,” Denise said, “we’d love if you could participate in a special program. I think it’ll really open your eyes to just how valuable a participant you can be. I think this shyness, this sense that your voice and your experiences don’t matter — I think that will all soon be in the past. Does that sound appealing? What do you think, would you like to be enrolled in this program?”

Mae knew nothing about it but knew she should say yes, so she smiled and said, “Absolutely.”

After the interview, at her desk, Mae scolded herself. What kind of person was she? She was so 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, who took this gift, this coveted job at the Circle — a company that had, at her desperate request, insured her parents! Had saved them from familial catastrophe! — and had been skating through. Damn it, Mae, she thought. Be a person of some value to the world.

She texted Annie, apologizing, saying she would do better, that she was embarrassed, that she didn’t want to abuse this privilege, 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 6 o’clock. She had plenty of hours to improve, there and then, so she embarked on a flurry of activity, sending 4 zings and 32 comments and 88 smiles. In an hour, her PartiRank rose to 7,288. Breaking 7,000 was more difficult, but by 8, after joining and posting in 11 discussion groups, sending another 12 zings, one of them rated in the top 5,000 globally for that hour, and signing up for 67 more feeds, she’d done it. She was at 6,872, and she turned to her InnerCircle social feed. She was a few hundred posts behind, and she made her way through, replying to 70 or so messages, RSVPing to 11 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.