Touch

by Courtney Maum

  On the ride to the office, Sloane’s mind was a veritable flow chart of the way that touch could return to people’s lives. Gardening, handwriting instruction, arm wrestling, tango. Break dancing, harp playing, baking bread from scratch. Second skin. Skin-to-skin. Voluntary skin grafts.

  Real, in-person socializing. Face-to-face language lessons. Enlarging of the family by secondary means. Adoption. Youth-mentoring programs. Borrowing grandparents. This was an idea that came to Sloane as Anastasia idled at a stoplight in front of the Eye and Ear Infirmary at 14th Street, where nurse aides were helping their stooped and wheelchaired charges into the hospital, curved hands on their backs.

  People were losing connection with their elders: not just in terms of people not making the efforts to stay in touch with their relatives, but also in terms of connecting with them physically: engaging with old people, touching their thin skin. Sloane felt certain that they’d soon be seeing a lot more of the elderly in advertisements. Just look at the success of the Céline campaign that used the octogenarian Joan Didion as a model, or Jin picking up on the same trend in his rejected phone ad. Skin, to a certain extent, is the ultimate expression of tactility: it changes its appearance and integrity every day. After decades of seeing people Botoxed and airbrushed in film and magazines, Sloane could envision a celebration of aged skin. The lines, the furrows, the scars, the sculptures that time works into our bodies to hallmark a life lived.

  People paid to use strangers’ cars to get to work now, they rented out rooms in other people’s homes. For the moment, the sharing economy was mostly about things, but if Sloane stretched into the void where possibility lapped, she could see an economy where people would share people. An expansion of services in professional touch (and not, as Dax simplified, simply more prostitution). Craniosacral massage, Reiki, laughter therapy, even pedicures, such professionalized forms of tenderness were already common. But the outsourcing would become more extreme, more existential. Sloane thought about the idea she blurted out at the Sparkhouse meeting: a world in which people rented friends and relatives. If they didn’t have a sibling, they could sign up for a brother or a sister from a list of volunteers. No children? Part-time foster parenthood, a rise in foreign exchange student sponsorships, a national registry for therapy babies: all of these could trend.

  Several years earlier, a rival Dutch trend forecaster had posited altruism as a rising movement, but Sloane never thought that this rang right. Altruism was the practice of selflessness for other people’s benefit. Sloane now believed they’d see the birth of Intra-Interpersonalism—the participation in human relationships for the benefit of one’s own soul and mind. After so many years spent hoping electronics would do it for them, people were going to start using other people to feel better about themselves. As long as the relationships developed to the mutual benefit of both parties, Sloane thought this ego-driven version of altruism could be a powerful thing.

  Driving across town to Union Square, Anastasia’s motor peacefully hummed. Sloane felt full of possibility, impossibly alive. Silly Putty, warm clay, pottery, hot kilns. High-ropes courses, singing lessons, the touch of fingertips to ivories, her mind seared with the ways in which people could rediscover social ease.

  Across the street, Sloane watched a bus bow down to hydraulically greet its passengers. “UNTRACEABLE” read the television series poster plastered along its side, the profile of a man with a Day-Glo DNA map pulsing on his shaved skull. Although she had no idea what the show was actually about, she could guess that it was one of the dystopian series all the rage right now, where genome-mapped youths were trying to free themselves of the microchips that relayed their every movement to some all-white-wearing, monotone-speaking committee version of The Man.

  But most dystopias were but a version of the present with the fear ramped up. Untetheredness, untrackability, disappearances, these would also trend. After a decade where “total access to celebrities” meant knowing what so-and-so was eliminating from their bowels, mysteriousness and aloofness would once again be prized. It was happening already, of course: the cool kids in Lima, in São Paulo, in parts of the Midwest who wouldn’t be caught dead handling smartphones: if they had a phone at all, it was a throwback flip phone. It was going to be the height of gaucheness, being totally available, being able to be reached. The new cool kids would be unfindable online, and difficult to locate in real life because they’d no longer be updating their every whereabout. Sloane envisioned a rare smile on the normally pained faces of the United States Postal Service employees when she announced that communication by first class mail was going to be cool again.

  Sloane was so caught up in the tidal wave of premonitions that she hadn’t taken the time to consider that she’d given her longstanding partner the heave-ho and bonked her art director on the same night. The concurrence of these events made them feel dreamlike, but they had happened, and there would be consequences. Sloane was still in the untouchable stage of morning-after giddiness, but as they approached Union Square, reality knocked.

  It was paramount that whatever had happened—was happening?—with Jin remain a secret. It was problematic enough that Sloane was sensing a rise in sensuality when she’d been hired to present a line of products that were resolutely tech. But she’d always found her way through paradoxical predictions before. There were compromises, modulations, there were softer sounds. The essential thing was for Sloane to feel her way through all these current inklings and forecast their applications, and then—when she had a good sense of where she really saw physical trends heading—she would decide how to make her premonitions work for ReProduction. In the interim, discretion was imperative. And in any case, to the outside world, she was still in a long-term relationship with Roman Bellard.

  As for her ex-partner, as intractable as she’d always thought Roman was, she might have overestimated the extent to which he was willing to move on. She’d received countless texts that morning, and several voicemails, the equivalent of a love letter from her SMS-preferring ex:

  I am sorry. I truly didn’t think my words would come as a surprise.

  And another one, even higher on the rungs of ignorance:

  I in no way want to embarrass you with my article, I want to celebrate our life! All of the things we have foreseen together, all the victories! I was certain that this was something you would see with me, see through with me. Imagine you, surprised!

  A brief moment of remorse then followed:

  Will I be “no sex” forever? My darling, I don’t know this. Maybe, maybe not. But surely you too want to be part of a world where penetration feels new again?

  His final texts were panicked, ego-driven:

  Do you just not agree with the article’s premise, is that—my love—the problem? Do you think I have the anti-penetration angle wrong? I don’t think so, dear. The research is there. But you know how much I value your opinion. How much I always have.

  Sloane rolled her eyes. Yes, she thought that his conviction that the “wired rich” were going to go off penetrative sex was wrong in the long term. Sure, she could imagine the trend hitting like a wild vegetable—a headache of weeks during which one feigns excitement about ramps, but then it would pass as all fads do. After all, the urge to copulate was biological, drummed into us. It was easier to go off white flour than sex.

  And yet. There were upsides to cybersex that Sloane couldn’t deny. Certainly for people in long-distance relationships, for the disabled, the homebound, virtual augmented reality gave them a new lease on life. But grace, empathy, strength of character, courage—these weren’t values habitually cultivated by people who slicked their genitals into tubes to commingle with an avatar.

  “Sloane?” interrupted Anastasia, “I’m afraid I’ve got Monsieur Bellard trying to get through again.”

  “Block him,” Sloane replied, grabbing a cluster of grapes from the car fridge. Who kept it stocked? Her buddy, Anastasia. Sloane w
as in the mood to suspend disbelief around all things that didn’t please her, and the idea that there was someone other than her Russian driver keeping the snacks fresh was one.

  “Very good,” said Anastasia. “I also have a text message coming in from a Mr. Kwang Lee—”

  “Whoa there,” said Sloane, shooting upright. “Let’s come up with a moniker for that one. Let’s go with . . . Seatbelt.”

  “You would like me to refer to the gentleman who is trying to text you as . . . ‘Seatbelt’?” Anastasia repeated.

  “For now, yes please,” Sloane replied, equally disappointed with her lack of imagination. “Put it through?”

  Her heart beat like something opening as she waited for it to ping upon her phone.

  Sloane, the message read. This is a text message.

  Sloane smiled. The short, the glowing, words. She thought that this was perfect. The message recognized morning-after etiquette but didn’t go further than that, which allowed for mystery and contemplation. Sloane touched her fingertips to the keyboard: This is a reply.

  • • •

  It could just have been her altered mood, of course, but it seemed to Sloane that the atmosphere had changed in Mammoth’s open work spaces. The environment was calmed somehow, purged of nervy, visible light. Some of the desks seemed to have freed themselves from the white tentacles of chargers that had been crisscrossing over and around keyboards for so long. Sloane swore she saw fewer web pages open on people’s browsers. She noticed eye contact, people chatting without the trademark twitchiness that had marked such conversations before.

  Before heading to her own office, Sloane stopped by Deidre’s desk with an article she’d ripped out of that morning’s paper about how the demand for adult construction toys had sent such manufacturers into overdrive.

  Deidre smiled shyly when she saw the headline. “Well, I did have more people than usual in the LEGO class last night.”

  “I think we should make it mandatory.” Sloane grinned.

  “If there’s not a shortage of interlocking plastic bricks.”

  “Touché,” Sloane replied.

  • • •

  Sloane herself must have been emanating a new communicative vibe because all along her path that morning, people wanted to talk.

  Mina Tomar stopped her by the coffee bar to discuss the possibility of mood-adapting lip stains, and even mascaras—eyelashes being uncharted territory for cosmetic color play.

  And as she was passing through the open work plan on the way to her own office, Andrew Willett from furniture popped up to accompany her to her door.

  “So, I’m not entirely . . . sure of this?” he said lowly, not wanting to be overheard. “But I was messing around last night and thinking of the role of, um, body heat in people’s lives?”

  Sloane’s very muscles felt like they were brightening into a wider smile. “Did you want to come inside?” she asked, gesturing toward her office.

  “Oh, no, I’ve got to go to a meeting, but I just wanted to run this by you. To, you know, see if this is the kind of thing you’re looking for.” He glanced nervously at the floor. “It’s not furniture, really, but I was thinking we could retrofit our bedding products with electromagnets that sense, and then maybe heat up, the vacant side? You know, for people who don’t have, or lost a partner—” Andrew’s voice halted. He must have seen the recognition flash briefly across Sloane’s face. I sleep with a hot water bottle every night. So I can pretend someone’s beside me.

  “That’s brilliant,” Sloane said, responding as quickly as she could to subdue his embarrassment. “It’s totally right. Just imagine what that could do for people in mourning? To not reach over and feel the cold side of the bed? Or heated full-body pillows that people could hug? This is exactly the kind of thinking I was hoping for,” Sloane said, not adding that what she liked about it was that it was touch-focused. Elemental and kind. The idea of imitation body heat resonated in her as if in response to something else. She saw it again, beautifully and briefly: a renaissance in touch.

  After Andrew’s interlude, the good things kept on coming: Sloane looked over and saw that her suggestion box was nearly full. She didn’t even take her coat off, she simply sat and overturned the box so that the notes poured out like scattered leaves across the carpet of her office. She picked the brightest piece of paper up.

  I think a lot about hypnosis. I think that we’re all hypnotized. I’ve been doing experiments on pop music recently, and every song is an iteration of another song. The key the music is scored in changes but the chord progressions don’t, the hooks don’t, the amount of time it takes to get to the chorus, all of that’s the same. I think the American music industry has hypnotized us to accept total mediocrity by putting out the same song over and over again.

  Sloane folded the note, her palms warm in agreement. Music by demand was one thing, music made on demand was something else. Ever since the music identification application Shazam teamed up with Warner Bros to create a crowdsourced record label, people were only consuming songs that sounded like songs they’d heard and liked before.

  It was the same with online dating. People were only choosing people whose tastes and appearances lined up with their own. The twenty-first century was over taking risks.

  She went for another note.

  A friend of mine just got a gazillion dollars for a product he’s developed. It’s a drone that dangles mistletoe over partygoers’ heads. Most days, I feel like giving up.

  Me too, Sloane wanted to say to the note’s author. Me often. Today’s consumers allowed companies to tell them what they wanted instead of actually asking themselves what they were hungry for. Take fat-free “Greek yogurt” that tasted like cardboard whey, for instance. As long as shoppers continued to buy into manufactured versions of their heart’s desires, could you blame some asshat for going to market in November with a mistletoe drone?

  Sloane reached in the box again.

  what is it w/the touchy-feely R U trying to push us out of jobs

  Sloane’s hands went cold and achy. Her stomach dropped.

  “Sloane?” called Deidre, peeking her face in tentatively through the door. “It’s time for your ten o’clock with electronics.”

  Sloane loved the maternalism of Dax’s assistant, who was slowly becoming hers. She liked being escorted places like a little child. She liked the several minutes it took them to cross the carpeted plains to make it to whatever conference room she would be put on trial in. That morning, it was a simulacrum of the fifth-floor meeting room on the third.

  • • •

  Sloane managed to keep whatever “touchy-feely” premonitions she was having under wraps during her meeting with electronics. They all agreed that Mammoth’s prized Denizen smart kitchen was the right suite of products to debut at the ReProduction summit. A virtual chef in your kitchen, a personal assistant in your phone, was the way they’d flaunt the time-saving benefits of synched kitchen electronics to people who had been “underusing” their refrigerators and stove tops.

  They spent the first part of the meeting debating whether the child-free and child-having used their refrigerators differently or not. One woman, Allison, the only woman among them with kids, said that even though they were half stupid with sleep deprivation, many new parents knew exactly what was in their fridge because supplies were so important. If you were out of milk, or formula, applesauce, what have you, you knew. You needed to know.

  “So therein,” Sloane said, after Allison’s input, “the ‘freshness thermometer’ application would be really useful to nonparents. Let’s go with the assumption—I think it will serve us, given the target demographic of this conference—that the urban child-free are home less often, cook less, work longer hours. Therefore, they literally open up their fridges less than parents. So an app that reminds them that their arugula is wilting and they need to get anot
her batch if they’re still set on making that pesto they’d planned, would be really welcome. So let’s definitely highlight that.”

  After they ran through the synched functions and the way they would present them, it was time to start thinking of products that didn’t already exist in the Mammoth lineup.

  A man named Jarod from business development told Sloane that Daxter was adamant that the group preview an app.

  “Something for the anti-moms,” he said.

  “Oh, I’ve got an app for that,” said a bro-type whose name Sloane didn’t know. “‘No Kidding’ filters,” he said proudly. “Lets you block people who want kids on dating sites.”

  “What the hell do you all have against surprises?” Allison spoke up. “I don’t want to sound like one of the olds here, but why does everything need to be so obvious? Isn’t there a value in kind of . . . finding things out?”

  “Discovery,” Sloane chimed. “I think there’s really something to that. Like, remember when you’d go to a new city and you’d want to try a restaurant. You’d ask the concierge if you were staying at a hotel, or maybe a like-minded-looking stranger. And I don’t know about you”—she laughed, just thinking of it—“but sometimes those recommendations were freaking bad.”

  The others laughed, too.

  “Tofu Terrace,” offered Allison. “Seattle. I specifically remember that.”

  “Totally,” Sloane said. “It was a vegetarian outdoor buffet for me, too. But regardless, there’s something kind of wonderful about being disappointed, because it’s true what Allison said: even a disappointment is still a surprise. Now we know everything about a place before we’ve even gone. I wonder if we couldn’t invent something that could restore the element of surprise to the way we navigate new environments.”

  “We could call it ‘Shitty Time,’” said the bro dude.