Alone with you in the Ether. Olivie Blake. 2022.

IN A CHICAGO ART GALLERY
TWO PEOPLE MEET BY CHANCE

He is a doctoral student, consumed by calculations on time travel - which he uses as a distraction from destructive thoughts.
She is a bipolar counterfeit artist, undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. By the end of the story, these things will still be true. But this is not a story about endings.

For Regan, people are predictably tedious, including and perhaps especially herself. She copes with the dreariness of existence by living impulsively, sometimes imagining a new, alternate timeline springing from each rash decision. To Aldo, the world feels chaotic. So he's erected a wall of routines: a backbeat of rules.
Without them, the framework of his existence would collapse.
For Regan and Aldo, life has involved resigning themselves to society's expectations. But could six conversations with a stranger be the variable that disrupts the entire simulation?