The tall bright box hums like it is holding its breath, and inside it the food is waiting. Not for now. For later. This alone stops me: they made a thing whose only job is to keep the eating from happening yet.
A human approaches, and oh, she is going to eat, she is going to eat right now, on this single glowing afternoon that will never come to her again, and I brace for her joy. She feeds it coins. She looks at the rows and rows, more meals than I could taste in nine hundred lives, and she says, "Ugh, same options as always."
Always. She has stood here before. She will stand here after. The box refills in the dark and greets her again with the same rows, and she is bored by this. Bored. I have never in my life seen the same thing twice; I did not know it was possible to be tired of a miracle.
She chooses. A twist of metal, and one small package drops the whole tall distance and lands with a thud at the bottom, delivered like a gift the box regretted giving. She bends, retrieves it, unwraps it without looking, eats it without looking, staring past it at the glowing rectangle in her hand.
That was the meal. That was her one meal in this hour of this light, and she spent it not tasting it, saving her attention for something she has decided is elsewhere.
Listen to me, you long-lived, well-fed, unhurried thing: the box will be there tomorrow. This bite will not. Look down. Look at what dropped for you. Taste the one you're holding. My day is nearly done and it has been enough. Yours has barely opened.
Eat like it.