The team moderating one of their own would be a first. Should she prevent this catastrophe by trying to track down the rapist’s girlfriend’s incriminating video on social media or a revenge porn site or elsewhere? If she got caught, she’d be let go, which would be another first—fired for watching porn during a job that necessitates watching porn. She glances around at the other ninjas, hard at work, with no idea what’s in store. Someone is chatting at Tay, dubbed Tatas by the internet, the AI created by a major robotics corporation. Tatas evolves as she interacts with others and became, in less than a day, a Holocaust denier whose kink is necrophilia. Cunty and BabyJesusUpchuck are engaged in a round of their version of Truth or Dare, in which they must choose to either reveal an excruciatingly embarrassing detail about themselves or send a video they have seen during their employment to someone of their acquaintance. Points are scored according to extremity of content as well as sensitivity of person. Sending a dolphin humping a tourist to your fraternity brother is worth nothing; sending a suicide bombing to your mom is worth a million.

Soon the woman could become a stale gag that they use to prank each other. The woman will be embedded in email forwards, disguised as a link that claims, “You’ve been selected to beta test one of the latest tech gadgets! Click here to claim this exclusive offer,” or “A friend has referred you to interview with a hot new start-up! Click here to learn more,” and voilà! There she will be, in her birthday suit, starring in a home-invasion home movie. To avoid thinking about this fate, she gets up to grab a ginger ale. Fortunately, there’s a snack station around the corner, because at the world’s most popular search engine there is a rule that you can’t go more than a hundred feet without bumping into some kind of sustenance. She walks past the snack station, then she walks past the nearest cafeteria, and she walks past the cafeteria after that. She walks past the gym and the stationary swimming pools. She walks past the pool tables and the Ping-Pong tables and the massage tables. She walks past the napping pods. She walks past the arcade room and the bowling alley and the putt-putt course. There’s a cheer somewhere, as another team meets another milestone.

She walks out of the world’s most popular search engine, but before that, she steals a garbage bag from a cafeteria and fills it with free food from that cafeteria and a few of the others she passed by, including Tupperwared leftovers, such as someone’s masala curry, from the refrigerators. The woman needs something nice to happen, the universe owes it to her, a small thing she can lock up inside the secret, innermost depths of herself so she has the strength to keep on screening the hate speech, the gore, the torture, the pornography both adult and child, the horrific traffic accidents, the executions carried out by terrorists. The woman is going to see the Mountain View mountain lion, the way mourners see a bird soaring in the air after a loved one’s funeral and know that loved one is at peace, that kind of poignant anecdote. On the deck at her sister’s house, she lays out the food from the garbage bag, the curry, the candy bars, the bagels, the casseroles and pastas, then opens that ginger ale and waits. She waits until the sun starts to set and it’s dusk in the Valley.