Field note. Specimen cluster: sixteen humans, sedentary, arranged in bolted rows facing no shared object.
They have built a chamber for the practice of waiting, which appears to be a discipline they take seriously. The seats are joined at the hip so that no individual may drag one closer to another, a design that enforces a fixed distance between organisms. They obey it. They do not test the join.
The air is held at a temperature slightly too cold for the exposed epidermis, and lit by tubes that emit a flat, sourceless glow, eliminating shadow and therefore time. A device on the wall displays incrementing numerals. No human looks at it. They know, somehow, that looking will not accelerate it.
I observed the following behaviors, in descending frequency: staring at the glowing personal rectangle; staring at the wall; the rhythmic bounce of a single foot, which produces no locomotion and dissipates as pure waste heat; and the periodic escort of one human by an official through a door, after which the remaining humans track the departure with their eyes but do not comment.
Note the paired specimens. One will grip the forearm of another. The gripped one permits it. Neither speaks. Fluid occasionally leaks from the ocular ducts of the gripping human and is wiped away with the back of the hand, an efficient reclamation.
Correction to my prior classification: I had logged this ocular leakage as a coolant fault under thermal stress. The temperature does not support that. It occurs preferentially in the humans seated nearest the door.
I am revising the hypothesis. The leak is not cooling the organism.
It is measuring how much the organism does not want the door to open.