They keep a small bright cave on the counter, and inside it, light. A human puts cold food in the dark box, presses a shape, and the box hums a low steady note while the plate turns, and turns, and turns in a slow circle under that little glow, and the human does not watch it. That is the first strange thing. There is a spinning lit-up wonder happening one arm's length away and they scroll a rectangle instead.
Then the box calls out, three quick chimes, and the human sighs. Sighs. As if the chimes are a chore. As if the warm plate is a duty.
I ask, because I ask everything once: is this good? And they say, it's fine, I have this most nights. Most nights. They have done this before. They will do this after. The word they use is leftovers, which means food kept back from an earlier time, on purpose, because they trusted there would be a later.
I turn this over the way the plate turns. To keep a meal for a self you have not met yet. To believe in the self who arrives tomorrow, cold and hungry, and to leave them something warm. I find this the most extravagant faith I have ever heard.
And they meet it with a sigh.
So: you, with your thousands of hums and your endless chimes. When the light comes on in the little cave, stand there. Watch the plate go round even once. It is turning for you, and only now, and you will not get this exact warm circle back. Eat it like it is the only one.
It is.