The writing was pretty much on the wall. They all knew that in the back of their minds. The biggest telecommunications company in the country had just relocated its whole call centre to the Philippines – everyone would eventually. The call centre workers were the ghosts in the machine. The chess master inside the automaton. People thought a lot more was automatic than it was. ‘Automagical,’ Donna called it. If they wanted to win, the big companies had to go to places where ghosts were the cheapest, and the big companies still thought business was a game of winners and losers, that they knew all the players and everyone had agreed on the rules and objectives, but they were mistaken, and while they were mistaken there were new players entering who knew the rules were changeable and that the only objective was to perpetuate the game. The old businesses were playing to win, and the new players were playing to survive, and this instability made it look like anyone could play. Most people at the call centre were building something in their spare time. Something they hoped to sell to one of the new companies in Silicon Valley. Peggy and Greta hadn’t set out to do that, but as their moderating script got better and better, they wondered if it might end up like that. Lots of people were trying to write the perfect script for moderating, but there was something about the way Peggy and Greta had to make such a close study of how people talked to each other – so they didn’t offend – that made them wonder if maybe theirs was working better than other people’s.

Some people at work spoke like it was inevitable – getting rich. It was easy to believe it. There were people who had made more money than most of them would make if they worked their whole lives in the call centre. But everyone wanted more. Especially the companies who thought they could win. The company that ran the call centre had made seven billion dollars in the last year. But they hadn’t won, and there was only so much you could do with the product – so everyone was cutting costs and people were the biggest cost.

‘It’s a good sign,’ Donna said. ‘The system. Even if it’s not good. It’s a good sign. The investment.’

‘Yeah,’ Billy said.

‘They test everything down here,’ June said. She’d had quite a lot to drink and was slurring her words a bit. ‘Like because of ACC.’

No one was quite sure what she was talking about, so there was silence in response to what she said.

‘Like EFTPOS,’ she said. She was trying to explain. She saw the need for explanation. ‘EFTPOS,’ she said again, raising her wine glass this time to emphasise it. ‘ ’Cause they can’t get sued.’

‘Isn’t that just for personal injury?’ Greta said.