The Call Centre

Please hold. Your afterlife is important to us.

Priya Raman is the best telemarketer on the night shift at Vantage Direct Solutions, and she has never believed a word of the sign above the supervisor's booth: THE SCRIPT IS YOUR FRIEND.

Then the script starts growing new lines nobody wrote. "And how are the children, Mrs. Petrie? The little one still won't sleep?" Reps who read them word for word get answers. Then they start getting calls back, from numbers disconnected decades ago.

Sales are u...