The talk begins with a speculative claim: there are liminal forces amidst us, unseen and barely felt, ripples of vitality -- every milieu, even the most apparently quiescent, is charged. In Paul Klee’s words, “the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and ... there are many more other, latent realities.” There subsists, in other words, a virtual realm of protean volatilities active amidst any particular set of more recognizable “objects” and their “properties.” Such virtual energies are subtle, but that does not mean that they do not affect or touch us. Perhaps the recent pandemic afforded a glimpse into these vitalities: alongside the overtly experienced “social disaster” inaugurated by the novel coronavirus, was there not also exposed, fleetingly, the presence of an asocial, apersonal realm of energetic forces? “Hey!” says a viral swarm, with its own trajectories, evolutionary responses, needs, and demands. I will explore some visualizations -– from the experimental films of Len Lye, to paintings of Paul Klee and the very recently published drawings of Franz Kafka -- of those motile, etherial potencies. And I try to theorize their peculiar kind of efficacy, distinguishable from the causal capacity associated with more clearly demarcated “objects.” Virtual energies elide the categories of cause and object, being more atmospheric process than object and more etherial influence than cause. The efficacy consists not in the engineering of effects but in the inducing of new tones and styles of perception, and, perhaps, a redirection of the trajectory of a social assemblage.