Field note. The human has trained a swarm.
It sits alone in a small room, facing the glowing rectangle, and speaks continuously to no one physically present. Yet it is not alone. A column of text ascends the screen without pause, generated by unseen humans in unseen rooms, and the specimen reacts to each line as though stung. It reads names aloud. It thanks the swarm. It performs small physical tasks on command: it spins, it eats, it displays objects, it laughs at instruction.
Periodically a symbol arrives, a rendered flower or animal, and the human undergoes visible distress that I initially logged as seizure. Further observation corrected this. The symbols are tribute. Each one represents currency transferred from a member of the swarm to the specimen. The larger the tribute, the more violently the specimen must convulse with gratitude. It shrieks the giver's name. It presses both hands to its sternum, a gesture I have elsewhere recorded during grief.
The specimen does not stop. Three hours. Four. The swarm swells and thins and swells. When it thins, the specimen's speech accelerates and its eyes widen, a documented predator response to a diminishing food source. It begs the departing not to depart.
I have concluded the following. The human has discovered that attention can be metabolized, and has begun feeding on it directly, bypassing all prior functions. It has not eaten. It has not slept. It will do this again tomorrow at the same coordinates.
The swarm calls this "being live." The specimen has never appeared less alive.