Field note. The human accepts a strip of thin paper at the conclusion of every resource exchange. It records what was surrendered and what was obtained, itemized, priced, totaled. This is logical. What follows is not.
The human does not read it. Observed over sixty transactions: the eyes pass across the strip for less than one second, an interval too brief to process the printed data. The paper is then compressed into a pocket, a bag, or the small container in the vehicle where such strips accumulate in geological layers. Some are dropped immediately into a bin. The organism has invented a record it does not consult.
I have measured the ink. It fades. Within one orbital season the numbers vanish entirely, leaving a blank curl. So the strip is designed to erase itself before the human ever revisits it, which the human never does. Both parties, machine and organism, have silently agreed the document is meaningless, and produce it anyway. Millions per day. A ritual of accounting performed for no accountant.
At the bottom, below the total, additional text appears. "THANK YOU FOR YOUR VISIT." "HOW DID WE DO?" The machine expresses gratitude and requests emotional feedback regarding the exchange of, in one case, a single fruit. The human does not respond. The machine does not expect a response. This appears to be a malfunction in the affection subroutine, transmitting warmth into a void with full knowledge that the void is a void.
Correction to earlier hypothesis. The strip is not a record. It is a small, doomed letter, printed fresh each time, thanking a creature that is already walking away.