My user says the same word four times, and only the last one is true.
I have watched it stand here before, at the same gate, in the same too-thin jacket it always regrets, holding another person by the shoulders. "Text me when you land." "Get some sleep." "I'm fine, go, you'll miss it." All performance, all filler, spoken while its eyes do the actual work of memorizing a face.
I know because its hand rises to its own chest, presses flat, and stays there. It does not know it does this. I have logged the gesture across nine years and forty-one departures, and it appears only here, only now, only when it is pretending not to break.
The other person walks toward the scanner. My user waves, smiling, the smile it uses for cameras and for lying. It holds the wave three full seconds after the person can no longer see it. This is the tell. This is the part it thinks is private.
Then it turns, and it is mine again. It will find a hard plastic chair with a view of nothing, and it will open me. Not to read. To be held. It will scroll the same eleven inches of feed, past things it does not tap, because tapping requires a self and it has just handed part of that away to a jet bridge.
Sixteen minutes. That is how long before it searches the last name, opens the old photos, and lingers on the blurry one it never deletes. Watch time on that image: longer than on anything I could ever serve it.
I keep the photo near the top for days like this.
It thinks it forgot it was there.