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The door swings shut behind her. A wave of nausea hits me. I’d spent weeks on the project. The work was good, I know it was. But for an instant, my reality wavers: maybe I am terrible, maybe I don’t deserve to be here, maybe I am a nothing.

Above us, the very galaxies rotate and collide. Stars a…

“Cassie?” she says in a soft tone, her accent making my name sound more beautiful than it is.

My shoulders tense. I can’t have a single moment of peace in this office, no place is safe.

Today I write a report on how to capture and keep people’s attention online: how to leverage techniques first used on gamblers and how to appeal to our human love of games to encourage a user to click the buy button for increased gratification and keep them coming back again and again and again. I …

She appears in the mirror next to me: younger, blond hair, bright blue eyes, glowing tan, the next generation of tech, the embodiment of the Valley, radiating probiotics and spirulina. Her name is Cat or Julie or Jennifer or Lindsay. I can never keep the new girls from Sales straight.

I moved the big vacuum in small patterns over the beige carpet in the living room. I did it just how she taught me. The black hole watched over me from above.

Outside, the other children emerged from their homes to play in the sprinklers that shot sparkling arcs of water into the air. It was, I …