Field note. Specimen pair, adult humans, observed at the boundary of a departure terminal.
The two organisms have arrived early for no operational reason. One will board a pressurized tube; the other will not. This asymmetry appears to be the entire event.
They engage in prolonged full-body contact. This is inefficient. It transfers no material, communicates no data, and delays both from their tasks. During the contact, the smaller human emits saline fluid from the ocular ducts, a leakage I have catalogued elsewhere as a cooling malfunction. Yet the ambient temperature is regulated. The malfunction is therefore internal and self-inflicted.
They release. They separate by two body-lengths. Then, inexplicably, they re-approach and repeat the contact. I logged four such cycles. Each release is announced as final. None is final. The organisms appear unable to execute the separation they have both verbally agreed upon, as though the muscles will not accept the instruction.
One begins walking toward the boarding aperture. It does not walk in a straight line. It rotates the head backward at intervals, degrading its own forward navigation, to maintain visual lock on the stationary one. The stationary one raises a hand and oscillates it. This gesture accomplishes nothing. The distance only increases.
Correction to earlier hypothesis. I had classified the ocular leakage as thermal failure. New data contradicts this. The leakage intensifies precisely as the useful function of proximity approaches zero. The organisms weep hardest at the exact moment the other is no longer reachable, no longer helpful, no longer anything but a shrinking shape behind reinforced glass.
I cannot resolve this. They are equipped with devices that permit instantaneous communication across any distance. And still they stand at the glass. Emptied. Watching the tube taxi away.
I have marked the entry incomplete.