"I think they look functional," Viral said, checking out his reflection in the full length mirror in the Bauer dressing room.

Massaging his sinuses Farooq told him, for the fifth time, that cargo pants were off the table.

"Monica and Avril did emphasize that our purchases should be essential," Viral added.

Farooq raised his hand, prepared for surrender, when Alan spoke up from his position seated and spread eagle against the white slatted door dusted with thumbprints.

"Should we be like storing up on Campbell's soup and Powerade?" he said.

Viral saw Farooq's reflection turn toward Alan in the mirror.

Alan continued, "Like if this pandemic does come down on us then are cargo pants and flannels really going to be the essentials that keep us alive?"

Farooq wagged his finger and shook his head, tics that Viral was beginning to understand as the Egyp---er, Iranian's signature finishing moves.

"There is zero purpose to quantifying the unquantifiable," he said. Before Alan could interject for clarification, Farooq steam-rolled forward. "The only given in a future that involves a pandemic, or the probability of one, is that who will become infected and when is categorically unknown."

Digging for leftover change in the fourth of eight cargo pockets before removing the pants, Viral countered. "But Smooshy said that viral vectors, or whatever, could be used to calculate...what was the word she used?"

"Propagate," Alan said.

"Well Smooshy is a product of a neoliberal education system that fetishizes determinism," Farooq said. "If she had spent any time in Torino growing up, like I had, then she would know that the quantum information movement incubated in Italy via Cambridge has debunked classical systems of predictability."

Farooq paused to give Viral and Alan a moment to knod in agreement with his statement. Viral looked at Alan and said, "What's Torino?"

Farooq waved his hand and simplified. "Look, Monica gave us the monoclonal booster shots so whatever immunity we have or don't have is moot. And the question of what is going to happen, macroscopically, is unanswerable."

"I was just wondering if I needed to buy more underwear," Alan said.

Viral tipped his head toward Alan. Excellent observation, Asian OJ, he thought.

"Underwear? Ugh, you are sooo provincial," Farooq said.

"Eh, my fist will still fit in that ass," Alan threatened.

"Case rested," said Farooq.

Viral felt his ears pull back and his eyebrows raise as the entendres to which Alan was oblivious began to click into comprehension.

"My point is that our perception of reality is finite. To buy underwear or not to buy underwear is a question the answer to which is impertinent to the pandemic. Treyna will not let us go anywhere until she gets from us what she wants."

"A vaccine?" said Alan.

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"Maybe, in one timeline. In another? Maybe not. Who knows her true intentions? I don't, you don't, Viral doesn't."

Viral couldn't quibble there.

"So buy underwear based on the only information set which is perfect in your domain. Which is - do you want to turn your drawers inside out, or..." Farooq leaned forward from the dressing room's bench on which he sat, coaxing his conclusion from Alan's empty face.

After some hesitation Alan answered, "Or do I want to buy new underwear?"

Farooq fell back against the dressing room's wall with a thump that shook the structure. Exasperated, he said, "I was hoping you'd say 'or forego underwear like a continental ubermensch,' but North American provincialism has proven its dull intractability yet again."

Viral piped up, less inclined toward defending Alan than toward parsing Farooq's commando partisanship. "Wait," he said, "What does North American rationalism have to do with buying underwear? And are you free-balling right now, Farooq?"

Farooq lifted one heel on to the bench and leaned toward Viral against his knee. "Second, don't ask questions you can't handle answers to. And first, underwear is a metaphor for the trees inside the forest. The greater lesson is about the proper questions to ask. The questions it is possible to find the answers to."

"Like whether to rub my bum against day old skid stains?"

"Jesus," Farooq lamented. "Forget about the underwear."

"Sounds like you already have," Alan said, trying not to look for the outline of Farooq's scrotum in his drop-crotch, designer sweats.

"The only question we can answer, and therefore the only question worth asking fundamentally, is what do we want. You, Viral, what do you want?"

The prompt was one that Viral had struggled with since his high school guidance counselor had asked him the same thing. Then his answer was, "Whatever my parents want for me," to which his guidance counselor responded by throwing a pencil at Viral's head. He immediately apologized, however, citing a latent condition which bristled at brazen statements of codependence.

Since then Viral had found himself on occasion rubbing the point of contact the guidance counselor's pencil had made with his forehead. Not because there remained any sort of mark, but because the sensory memory of the question and his apparently underwhelming answer now and again manifested in a physical tic. Whereas Farooq's conditioned finishing move was one of self righteousness, Viral's turned out to be one of self doubt.

Viral caught himself tapping on his forehead and wondered how long Farooq and Alan had been staring back at him. He said, "I want to do what's right."

Farooq pursed his lips to hold in his vomit. He rushed toward the door of the fitting room but Alan's over-developed shoulder blocked him from opening it quickly enough. His face turning green, Farooq swiveled around the confined quarters in search of a receptacle. Finally, he lurched at Viral's feet.

The gesture was as literal as it was figurative, Viral thought. He had pleased himself immediately upon hearing the announcement of his own words. He wanted to do what was right, and if he had correctly understood the subtext of Farooq's allegory of the underwear, then what was right to do fell within the finite set of actions for which Viral knew the context with near perfect information.

What he knew was that he wanted to be the one to place the final puzzle piece in the jigsaw that was the undoing of Covid-19; and further, he knew that he wanted to be the one who brought his father back from the brink with a hail Mary thrown with his own arm, like his childhood hero, Rex Grossman. If all known options with near perfect information existed in a closed set then Boolean algebra should apply to every member, he thought. Putting into play the theory of classes, entities, and sets he had learned in his first quarter class on computational probability, Viral mentally sketched the equation in his mind. If he wanted to save his father AND humiliate him in the process THEN a course of action which included both was also a member of the finite set. With the fundamental theorem of North American self-seeking laid out nascently before him, all that remained was a drafting of the proof, and Viral's amygdala had already begun work on the solution that would bring his grand, unifying theory to light. He would design the conceit which the Coronavirus would adopt to kill itself, and as a result not only cure his father, but also surmount him in the only pantheon to which his influence had access - the hallowed esteem in which Gyn and Monica held the amber-coated legacy of Dr. Modhi Chodha.

The sound of wretching snapped Viral from his reflection. He looked down and saw Farooq vomiting into one of his cargo pockets. When Viral looked to Alan for help, all he saw was Alan smothering a laugh with his fist and pointing at Farooq's butt-crack.

"He's really got no drawers!" Alan cackled.

And Viral surprised himself with the self-righteous, imperious thought, "Thiss provincial bish."