It hadn’t dawned on most people that there was a potential future involving touch.

Wi-Fi connections, simulators, and a proliferation of competing video conferencing tools had translated every aspect of intimacy into something that could be pocketed.

Downloading immersive imitations had become more satisfying than expecting reality to deliver something meaningful. Even so, Sandra and Mika wondered if they needed to make things short-distance to keep their spark alive.

They lived hundreds of miles apart, which was actually a huge appeal for both of them when this all started. There would be no temptation to brave the world the pandemic was forging; even if there was a way to be both reckless and reassured, the process of following through would be so complicated that any sense of arousal would be extinguished before it could count.

Location filters had ceased to matter when health-related contact tracing was no longer prioritized by the federal government. Mika mentioned in one of their texts that the idea of governmentally sanctioned intimacy was silly. Yet, this was what they both wanted to feel like nurturing something more tangible wouldn’t destroy humanity.

On their way to the barricaded apartment complex, Sandra obsessed over what human beings had done to themselves by so readily embracing technology. They thought about the simplicity of people’s impulses and the lowest-common-denominator aspects of attraction. The visual and sensory stimuli that people could grasp digitally had become enough because imagination was always better than the real thing.

Reaching climax virtually was not exactly an innovation that required much technological advancement. People had always found ways to reach each other in digital spaces. Sandra and Mika simply needed to touch and hold each other before they forgot what used to comfort them. It was never just about physical gratification for either of them. The fact that they could show each other vulnerable parts of themselves was what made the idea of their bodies touching feel essential. Neither of them brought up their plans to meet with their therapists.

Mika was hosting, so naturally, they were terrified. They’d secured extra food from their monthly grocery run with the intention of feeding one more person.

So many questions ran through their mind: What does someone coming to you in the dark of night in the middle of a pandemic really want from you? What would sex look and feel like in person? Would sex feel natural just because they’d spent two years generating a NSFW text chain? Could this ruin everything? It was on their minds and deliberately unacknowledged.

So many typos went unfixed because the momentum couldn’t be lost. Maybe Sandra and Mika both wanted to look into the other person’s non-pixelated eyes to more realistically assess the idea of their bodies connecting.

Nothing had ever gone beyond the chat window radius for Mika. Their work setup was static except for the occasional change in laptop placement or lighting.

Sandra was much more chaotic in a way Mika welcomed. A call from them could mean greeting a screen pointed toward a ceiling while Sandra experimented with a new recipe. Phone speakers were invented for this kind of echoing madness, but Mika liked that they could open a tab or window and go on an adventure with the person they trusted most.

How did people put their faces and mouths and weird legs in front of other people before we all knew our angles? Dysmorphia could run rampant when they each saw themselves in chat windows for work and play every day.

It dawned on Sandra just how little hope they had learned to have in anything. Traveling such a long distance felt like going to the end of the universe and then a bit further. The blocks beyond where they got groceries and medicine for their pets were essentially a new frontier. It was as though sustained knowledge of disease, nationalism, the abandonment of society’s “progressive” facade, and a lack of contact with others had sent their souls back into hiding.

Sanda considered that they and Mika knew each other so deeply that physical touch was simply all that was left to discover. This felt like a tremendous achievement—to fully know another human being. Why did it still feel so empty? Why did so much of being in love feel like waiting for the next part that would inevitably make more sense?

Mike sent the passcodes and Sandra uploaded them. They loaded up the video game everyone used for security verification and the visit to Mika’s “personal security hub” was successfully approved once Sandra typed in the right credentials.

These checks had become so mundane that someone’s security codes were requested before their full names. People had become very good at hiding behind layers of constructed personalities.

The digitization of everything meaningful felt like putting a weight down. In reality, humanity was picking up so much that they would desperately want to shed one day. Sandra felt as though they wanted to manage so much less. They felt strongly that there shouldn’t be an app or a device for every little thing that forms a whole person. It seemed like a toxic disruption of the things that made us kind.

Mika and Sandra were very likely trying to carve something out that was specifically theirs and not surveilled by a tech company, even if it was simply sharing a mediocre meal while looking into each other’s IRL faces.

Even in a world that mandated humans stay far away from one another, there was absolutely no change in things like true attraction and vulnerability. People had simply gotten too comfortable being socially and emotionally distant. Technology and hastily assembled social norms couldn’t change the way real love felt.

So much was unclear. Calendars seemed meaningless and any semblance of a sleep schedule had fallen away long before it was just the two of them—mother and newborn.

A few weeks earlier, so much had looked so different. There was new life and new hope. As happy as everyone was to be in this child’s life, it was essential that they keep their distance to give it a world to live in someday. The access to joy she had anticipated was cut off, leaving only the despair and anxiety that had defined most of her life before the baby arrived. At least she wasn’t the only one at home now.

People were being told to thrive in the face of chaos. The idea was that we couldn’t allow the pandemic to keep us from us. Masses assumed a familiar retreat behind screens through which they could still observe one another. They gardened, made obscene amounts of bread, bought plants, adopted animals, sent questionable texts, and imposed their warped ideas of connection onto a situation they couldn’t control.

She wanted to find the energy to indulge in the misery, but someone would always need her. She couldn’t sleep for too long or venture to a separate room—not that her apartment spanned more than a room and a half.

The nanny had been let go and sent to safety. The child’s father now had permission to be as distant as he’d become before any talk of a pandemic. She didn’t even blame him. They imagined that they needed this child to heal things they could have only healed themselves. They had a few hopeful moments after the child was born, but the added urgency of keeping the human population as alive as possible halted their fumbling romance.

She wondered if everything she had ever done—including bringing this child into the world— was part of a foolish quest to finally feel like she mattered. All those years of loneliness, inertia, and self-doubt culminated in being trapped with the ultimate responsibility. The silver lining was that she was learning everything she thought she could never learn about love.

She had to have hope, communicate effectively, and manage fear for two. Leaving work voluntarily to add a new life the world’s strained population felt like the closing of a significant chapter in her life. She was certain she wouldn’t be treated the same way when she returned to a professional setting, even in a pre-pandemic society. According to everyone else, her life was already supposed to have undergone profound, irreversible change. Now, she would welcome feeling judged or patronized if it meant she could sit in a room with another human being.

Pregnancy had already acclimated her to counting days, hours, pounds, and opportunities. Bringing life into a zero sum world had meant becoming acutely aware of what she could leverage to make another person’s life marginally better. Now it felt like the stakes were being recalculated in a way no human being could reasonably process. It was disheartening to get used to counting days and waiting for either salvation or the sudden onset of fairness.

She never wanted to be the kind of parent that always brought up their child as a conversation topic. She had spent many months publicizing as little as possible, but it also means that she had deliberately kept this significant chapter of her life hidden from the people she desperately wanted to reach now.

At least the baby wanted real things. She was missing the likes, Facebook invites, and photo tags she had learned to chemically register as important. In fact, the only way she was taught to live this milestone in her life was by sharing, filtering, and optimizing each development. Instead of documenting this new life for the corporations that exploited her, she sat with the chaos and decided to simply remember what she could.

As long as the baby was consistently fed and able to rest, she could continue looking forward to each day instead of hiding.

Betty was waiting for the Wi-Fi to start working.

It was her third month working from the new house. It was also the third month of saying goodbye to her partner Ron in the morning and waiting for the one hour they might have together at night.

Ron was, unfortunately, essential.

He had to work despite the seemingly infinite reality of the pandemic because his job fell within the increasingly urgent category of wellness. He made serums that helped people make the most of visits to a float spa. This was one enclosed space in which the danger of disease did not linger, or at least that’s what customers hoped.

Humanity had entered a time during which escape and its providers were mandatory.

Betty was a designer. These days, she was working on surveillance drones for concerned parents and not feeling entirely enthused about it. This was the only way she and Ron could claim a space for themselves.

Ron often joked about the fact that “starter” homes were the only ones people their age could ever hope to buy. It was a small miracle that they had a few rooms and a backyard to themselves just when space became so much more precious.

The new rituals of their lives were equal parts soothing and disheartening. Making food, rearranging the few pieces of furniture they owned, and seeing what their one hour together could accommodate was already second nature.

Betty was surprised by how much she’d taken to mundane domestic activities. She suddenly had preferences for designs on plates and opinions about how the living area could comfortably accommodate a coffee cart. It was her and Ron’s chance to make something just for them. She just wished he could be there to take part in more of that process with her.

If the pandemic hadn’t swallowed everything, they would sit in traffic every day and quote the podcasts they frequented to pass the time while cooking dinner together. They would both miss each other equally.

Life was an infinite sequence of Zoom meetings and alarmist tweets. Working from home while working on a home was a bit too much home for Betty to stomach. She wondered if it was overwhelming for Ron to help people forget how life was changing outside. He was a gateway to something he probably wished he could enjoy. Then again, he and Betty wanted to remember the specificity of that bizarre moment in history. Life had been turned upside down just when they had secured the ultimate symbol of “normalcy.” How could they appreciate the comfort of another person that truly understood them if they each had to spend 23 hours each day simply waiting and coping?

Ron was excited to get home especially early one day. He and Betty 17 bonus minutes to spend together before their worlds began spinning again. Mostly, they used the time they had to talk and do emotional check-ins.

There was more and more to take in each day even though their routines stayed mostly the same. The federal government’s lack of a response coupled with the fracturing of what people defined as facts made for an increasingly volatile environment. The world beyond their front door was changing between each iteration of them closing and reopening it. After she stared at the door all day with much more time to speculate, Betty wondered if All Ron was getting from her were stir-crazy leftovers.

Autonomy was what they had originally wanted. They had designed their pre-pandemic lives to avoid spending too much time together. They lived independently and had completely different hobbies.

Most weekends were still for rock climbing trips with their friends, though. That’s how they’d met and it was the thing that made them feel the most connected to both the world and each other. It was impossible to imagine what going outdoors for extended periods of time would mean in the very near future. Betty and Ron both anticipated checkpoints, protective gear for their faces, and more managed methods of being in nature.

According to most experts, outside could be the safest place of all if enough space was made between people. It was ironic that they might need to introduce a sense of physical autonomy into spaces where they felt the most whole.

The Wi-Fi appeared to be working again. Betty signed into Zoom and clicked over to her Twitter tab. Things felt the same, which was becoming strangely comforting.

Leon and Sunita rolled out of bed and crammed themselves into the car. They got the coffee and tacos they always got and took off on a little adventure. Leon had spotted a table on Craigslist and decided that it would make their apartment a home. They had both recently reached the ends of their shaky savings and found themselves wanting to look forward to something. At first, it felt like chasing free furniture was something they’d left behind after getting their undergraduate degrees. The more they thought about it, though, having someone else provide something stable for them was a tremendous relief.

Leon wanted to work on his art and maybe write. Sunita wanted to start her jewelry business and needed a surface on which to put things down. Logistically, the table could not accommodate these two intended purposes. Sunita’s setup would require a fully functional workshop. Leon’s art would maybe come more easily if he could overcome his current bout of depression. When he quit his insurance job to find himself as an artist, he hadn’t considered what it took for people like him and Sunita to keep their inspiration alive. That’s where the table came in. It would fix everything.

The table was yellow. It was also an antique. It was the kind of thing Sunita liked to sketch after watching a documentary about a famous artist in New York. They both wanted to be elderly artists in New York that everyone already loved. This was part of the problem. On Craigslist, the poster included their address—it was the kind of house Leon and Sunita could only hold in their periphery for moments while driving past it. This is precisely what they would do today. They would drive past, acquire the perfect yellow table, and come back to a place that felt more like a sustainable home.

They always ate in front of the television. Sometimes the television was a laptop. Either way, they always needed to be in the middle of a season of something to feel like they could function. Even a season finale that would conclude an uneven narrative was something they could get excited about. Sunita worked at a bookstore and wondered if it would withstand the dwindling sales figures her manager kept going over during meetings. If she could get back to working with her hands and creating the jewelry concepts she’d been sketching, something would click.

The thing Leon and Sunita had was each other. There was no effort or explanation required. The ease between them made the ride into the rich neighborhood immediately warm and memorable. They played the songs they liked and commented on the parts of town they needed to visit more. The streets got wider and the houses got larger as they got closer to their destination. There were certain kinds of things they wanted to entertain the idea of wanting, and this neighborhood had all of those things.

When they pulled up to the house, they parked at the end of a long driveway and debated about who should go in.

“You sent the email, right? I think it should be you.” Sunita nudged Leon.

“Oh, I guess I…I assumed you would go in. You know you’re better at these things?”

“What do you mean? There’s no negotiation here. It’s, like, a free thing.”

“Yeah, but I still feel like I’ll mess it up somehow.”

Sunits sighed and opened her car door. “Let’s go in there together,” she said.” Don’t you want to see where this table lives so we can give it a similar home?”

Leon got out of the car. “That table is about to downsize. I wonder if it knows it’s settling.”

“This person probably has dozens of things just like that table laying around. Look at the size of this place. It has two dining areas, at least.”

“Imagine the placemats if you’re hosting more than 5-7 people!”

They rang the doorbell and heard someone walking toward the door.

“Hey, are you here for that table?”

“Yes, was there some additional interest in it?”

“Well, um…It was kind of a first come, first serve deal. Someone already came by and took it. Sorry.”

Leon looked devastated. “Are you sure? Was it the yellow one with the tall legs?”

“Yeah, hard to mistake it for another table. Our mom used to call it the giraffe. It doesn’t really match anything and we wanted to get rid of it anyway since it was her writing desk before she passed away. I really didn’t mean to lead you on.”

“No, it’s fine. It was free so it made sense that the first person here got it. Thanks, anyway.”

When the thing they were looking forward to didn’t pan out, Leon and Sunita felt suddenly stranded in a place they couldn’t make their own. They decided to go to the diner they always ended up going to so they could feel some semblance of control over the day. Why had the table meant so much? Who had it now? What dreams was it fulfilling?

The truth was that the table itself was never going to be what they wanted or needed it to be. It was an object that would simply sit with the other objects living in their tiny apartment. They found one of the shows they had been streaming and played it while both playing on their phones. The comfort of it was overwhelming, and for a second they both decided to stop trying to figure out what was next.

Leon grabbed his sketchbook and so did Sunita. They turned the TV off after a few hours and drew in silence. They drew each other’s faces, their happy places, and things they remember liking as kids. They were surprised to discover how much they could still learn from each other. This made the apartment feel rekindled with hope. Table or no table, they probably had everything they needed to be alright.