The Quality Circle (Part 2)

Wade found her in the parking lot after second shift, leaning against her driver's side door like he belonged there. The security lights made his face all planes and shadows.

"Your score's dropping," he said. No preamble. No smile this time.

"I've noticed."

"You're not playing the game right. Rating people too high, not protecting yourself." He shook his head, something almost like concern in his voice. "The system doesn't reward generosity, Marlene. It punishes it."

"What system?"

"The one we all live in." He straightened, rolled his shoulders like he was working out a kink. "Look. There's a group of us who've figured out how to survive this. We call it the mentorship circle. We help each other. Watch each other's backs."

"How?"

"Coordinate our feedback. Make sure the numbers work out so everyone in the circle stays safe." He spread his hands, palms up, the gesture of a man with nothing to hide. "It's not personal. It's just math. The system needs someone at the bottom every cycle. Better to choose than be chosen."

Marlene thought about Marcus Chen. About Janet Flores. About the maintenance tech whose name had already slipped away.

"And if I say no?"

"Then you're on your own." Wade's voice was gentle, almost kind. "And you're already at 6.4. How much lower do you think you can go?"

He walked to his truck and drove away, taillights disappearing down the access road. Marlene stood in the empty parking lot, the November wind cutting through her jacket, and felt the weight of the choice he'd laid in front of her.

She went home. She didn't sleep.

Thursday, she went to the meeting.

#

The mentorship circle met in a storage room behind quality control, filing cabinets pushed against the walls to make space for eight folding chairs. The air smelled of dust and old paper and the faint chemical residue that permeated everything in the plant.

Marlene recognized most of the faces. Wade. Linda from HR. Two shift supervisors. A handful of senior employees with scores safely in the sevens and eights.

"The way it works is simple," Wade said. "Each cycle, we identify who's trending lowest outside our group. We make sure our ratings point that direction. Nothing dramatic—a three here, a four there. The aggregation does the rest."

"What happens to them?" Marlene heard herself ask. "The people who bottom out?"

Silence. The fluorescent lights buzzed.

"They're optimized," Linda said finally. Her voice was different here, stripped of the HR pleasantness. "That's all you need to know."

"But where do they—"

"Marlene." Wade leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the posture of a man delivering difficult news. "I know this is hard. I asked the same questions when I started. But here's the thing: the system exists whether we participate or not. People disappear whether we choose them or not. The only question is whether you're on the inside or the outside. Whether you're making the choice or having it made for you."

She thought about her 6.4. About the way Marcus Chen's face had already begun to blur in her memory. About the mug in her kitchen cabinet, World's Okayest Dad, the letters fading a little more each time she looked.

"What do you need from me?"

Wade smiled. It was the warmest she'd ever seen him look.

"Just rate honestly," he said. "We'll take care of the rest."

#

The next evaluation cycle, Marlene rated Derek Stahl a four.

She told herself it was honest. He was new. He made mistakes. He rated everyone too high, which the algorithm interpreted as poor judgment. The number was defensible.

Derek stopped coming to work two weeks later. His locker gleamed. His name vanished from the schedule. Someone mentioned him once in the break room—"whatever happened to that Marine kid?"—and Marlene watched the question die in the silence that followed.

Her score climbed to 7.1.

She stopped keeping the notebook.

#

Patty Odom found her in the break room on a Tuesday morning, three weeks before the next evaluation deadline. The older woman sat down across from Marlene without asking, Bible tucked under her arm, coffee untouched.

"I know about the circle," Patty said. Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact. "I know you're part of it now."

Marlene's hand tightened on her own cup. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes you do." Patty's eyes were steady, the eyes of a woman who'd spent twenty-eight years watching and remembering while others chose to forget. "I know what happens to the people who bottom out. I know you helped put Derek Stahl there."

"That's not—"

"I'm not here to judge you." Patty opened her Bible, turned pages that were soft with wear. "I've been reading about the good Germans lately. You know who they were? The ones who went along. Who told themselves they were just following orders, just doing their jobs, just surviving. They weren't evil, most of them. They were just—" She paused, searching for the word. "—practical."

"What do you want from me, Patty?"

"I want you to understand what you're becoming." Patty closed the book. "I'm going to keep asking questions, Marlene. I'm going to keep being a problem. I know what that means. I know where it ends." She stood, gathering her things. "The question is: when they come for me, what are you going to rate me?"

She walked away. Marlene sat in the break room, the fluorescent lights humming overhead, the rating terminal glowing blue in her peripheral vision.

#

The evaluation deadline was Friday at midnight.

Marlene sat at Terminal Three at 11:43 PM, the break room empty around her, the plant floor silent. Third shift was skeleton crew, automated processes that mostly ran themselves. Somewhere in the building, a compressor cycled on and off, the rhythm as steady as breathing.

Patty Odom's name glowed on the screen. The rating field waited.

She thought about the mentorship circle. About Linda's spreadsheet, the names color-coded in reds and greens. About her own score: 7.6 now, safely above the threshold, as long as she kept playing.

She thought about Patty in the break room, her Bible worn soft with use. When they come for me, what are you going to rate me?

She thought about Derek Stahl. About Marcus Chen. About the maintenance tech whose name she'd already lost, erased from her own memory as thoroughly as from the company database.

Her finger hovered over the keypad.

When the lambs vote for the slaughter, are they still lambs?

She typed a three.

She submitted.

The terminal thanked her for her contribution to excellence.

#

Three months later.

Marlene's score held steady at 7.8. She'd learned the rhythm of survival—the small betrayals that kept the numbers right, the calculations that let her sleep at night. She no longer kept a notebook. She no longer tried to remember the names that vanished from the schedule.

Patty Odom had stopped coming to work six weeks ago. Her locker gleamed. Her Bible had disappeared from the break room, though Marlene couldn't remember when.

The new hire stood at Terminal Three, badge in hand, watching the cursor blink.

"Excuse me." The young woman turned, and her face was open, eager, uncomplicated by experience. "You're Marlene, right? The QC supervisor? I was hoping you could explain how the rating system works. I want to make sure I do it right."

Her name was Patricia. Marlene had seen it on the intake paperwork, had felt something twist in her chest at the sound of it. Patricia with an "ia," not the Patty that everyone shortened it to.

"It's simple," Marlene heard herself say. The words came from somewhere else, somewhere that used to be her. "You evaluate your peers honestly. You identify areas for improvement. You help the company optimize its resources."

Patricia nodded, making mental notes. "And the scores—they actually matter? Someone told me people get fired based on them."

"Nobody gets fired." Marlene smiled. In the blue glow of the terminal, her reflection looked like someone she used to know. "They're just optimized. That's all."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

"It isn't." Marlene put her hand on the young woman's shoulder, the way Wade had once put his hand on hers. "Just find your value. Help others find theirs. Everything else takes care of itself."

She walked away, her footsteps echoing in the empty break room. Behind her, she heard Patricia swipe her badge, heard the soft chime of the system accepting another contribution.

#

That night, Marlene went home to her apartment on the east side of town. She made dinner from a box, ate it standing at the counter, washed the dishes in silence.

Marcus Chen's coffee mug sat in the cabinet behind the mismatched plates. She didn't take it out anymore. She didn't need to. She'd stopped looking at it weeks ago, the same way she'd stopped looking at a lot of things.

She couldn't remember his face now. She knew she should be able to—knew she'd worked beside him for six years, eaten lunch with him, listened to him talk about his daughters—but when she tried to picture him, all she found was static. A shape where a person used to be.

Outside, the lights of Piedmont Chemical glowed against the November dark. The plant never closed. Three shifts, twenty-four hours, the machinery breathing through the night like a living thing. Tomorrow there would be new evaluations, new names to rate, new calculations to make.

Marlene turned off the kitchen light.

Her score was 7.8. She was safe. She was exactly what the system needed her to be.

She went to bed and dreamed of nothing at all.

# # #