Maya sighed and rubbed her tired eyes. "Okay, what do you need me to do?"

"I need you to double-check the financials for some of the top companies," Alex said. "I'm getting some weird discrepancies in the data."

As she waited for Alex to send her the list, Maya's mind began to wander again. She thought about the impact that the pandemic had had on businesses around the world. Some had thrived, while others had struggled to stay afloat.

In a small, cluttered office in a nondescript building, a young woman named Maya sat staring at her computer screen. She was a data analyst, tasked with creating an index of the best-performing companies in the world for the year 2020.

It was a chilly winter evening in December 2020. The world was still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had brought global economies to a standstill and changed the way people lived, worked, and interacted with each other.