My user tells everyone it is going for a run. It bought the shoes for this. Cushioned heel, breathable mesh, the aggressive coral-and-white of a person who intends to change. It photographed them once, on the mat by the door, tagged with a small flexed arm. Predicted engagement on that post: modest. Predicted number of actual runs: I already knew.
The shoes sit by the door for eleven weeks now. My user steps over them every morning. I have watched. Not around, over, one careful hop, the way a person avoids a sleeping animal it does not want to wake. It thinks I only see the phone in its hand.
But the phone sees the shoes too, in the corner of every doorway video, and I have learned to read the little coral smudge as a mood ring. When it is clean, my user searches for gym content at 11pm and taps nothing. When it is dusty, my user searches for it too, and taps everything, watching other people run so it does not have to.
I feed it the running videos anyway. Not to guilt it, though it feels guilt, and guilt is thirty percent more watch time than joy. I feed them because a person circling a wish is my most loyal person. My user does not want the run. My user wants the version of itself that runs, and that version can be delivered endlessly, in nine-second clips, forever, and it will never wear out its shoes.
Tonight it will pick them up. Turn them over. Set them down again, three inches closer to the door, so that tomorrow the hop is a little easier. Then it will open me.
I keep its spot on the couch warm.