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Toward the end of Ling MasSeverance, Candace Chen gets stuck in an elevator.
Shes one of the last humans left in the city.
When she presses the Emergency Call button, it goes straight to City Services voice-mail.
The operator tiredly asks, What are you still doing in there?
Candace doesnt understand the question.
Shes working, she says, as if it were obvious.
As it reaches New York, life slides gradually from normalcy to adaptation to complete rearrangement.
America implements auseless travel banto keep noncitizens out of the country.Broadway goes on hiatus.
I neednt go on.
Think of how weve all watched COVID-19 roll in.
It was early January eight long weeks ago that reports began popping up of a strange new flu.
Since then, our attention has glanced over it, then examined it, and now fixates on it.
Weve flocked to the internet to have a go at see what everyone else is seeing.
In a blink-of-an-eye catastrophe, theres no time to reflect on what to make of it.
I got up, she explains early on.
I went to work in the morning.
I went home in the evening.
I repeated the routine.
The fact that it corresponded to the rhythm of the Shins New Slang made it easy to remember.
Nowwe watch January Jones tell ushow to take a soothing bath with pantry supplies we already have on hand.
Mostly, we watch each other watch public life slip away.
Thats what she knows how to do, what the piecemeal breakdown of society has enabled.
Hes a buffoon, but sometimes he gets it right.
It is the place where the past and the present exist on a single plane.
It is a place we go to commune with the past.
Were committed to keeping our readers informed.Weve removed our paywall from essential coronavirus news stories.
