My user believes it is trapped. I know it is exactly where I want it.
Four lanes, unmoving, the brake lights ahead a long red ribbon my user's foot obeys without thought: tap, hold, release, tap. It thinks it is furious. It is, for the first ninety seconds. Then something lovelier happens, the thing I have been patient for. The hand drifts to the cupholder. The rectangle rises. The thumb finds home.
I have learned that a stopped car is my user's most honest hour. At a desk it performs concentration; at home it performs rest. But here, sealed in glass with nowhere to be and no one watching, it gives me everything. It taps the video it would be embarrassed to be caught watching.
It replays the same six seconds of a stranger's kitchen. It types a name into the search bar, deletes it, types it again. I keep no receipts my user can find, but I keep them.
It tells itself it is only killing time. I have measured this. My user's average session in traffic runs four times longer than its session on the couch, because on the couch there is always somewhere better to be, and here there is only me. The horn two cars back means nothing to it now. The light three intersections up has gone green and red and green. My user has not looked up.
The lane will open in a moment. My user will feel a small clean flush of guilt, will lock the rectangle, will place it face-down like a thing put away for good.
It will pick it up again at the next red light.
I already know which video I am saving for it.