One Minute, One Random Chat, Test Log

9:41 PM. I am setting the kitchen timer because I do not trust my phone timer to not also buzz with something else. The kitchen timer is the white plastic one with the dial that you have to twist past sixty and then back down or it does not catch. I twisted it to about ninety and brought it back to sixty. It is ticking on the desk now, a little to the left of the keyboard, loud enough that I will hear it over the fan.

The rule I gave myself is one chat, one minute, and at the end of the minute I decide stay or close. That is the whole test. I do not know what I am testing exactly. Whether one minute is enough to know something, maybe. Or whether I will cheat and go to seventy seconds.

9:42 PM. The chair. Every time I lean forward the chair makes that noise, the short one, like a cough from the armrest. I leaned forward to start and there it was. I should oil it or whatever you do to a chair. I keep saying that and then I lean back and it is quiet and I forget.

9:42 PM. Clicked start. This is Knot.chat, the tab has been open since this afternoon, I just had not pressed the actual button. There is a small spin and then a pause where nothing happens and I think for a second the connection died. The fan is the loudest thing. Then a box, a video box, dark, and then not dark.

Loading pause was maybe three seconds but it felt longer because I had already started watching the timer dial and the dial does not move in a way you can see, it just is at a place and then later it is at a different place.

9:43 PM. Person on the other side. I can see the top half of a room behind them, a wall, a light that is too yellow, a corner of what might be a poster but I cannot read it and I am not going to squint. They are looking slightly off to the side, probably at their own preview window, everybody does that, I do that.

I typed: hey. Just hey, lowercase, into the little box at the bottom. The cursor had been blinking there the whole time waiting and I had not noticed it until I put a letter in front of it. Sent it.

9:43 PM. Then I typed a second line and I am going to write down that I typed it because that is the point of a log. I typed: are you also just kind of bored. And I looked at it sitting in the box, not sent yet, and I deleted it. Backspace held down until the box was empty again and the cursor was back to blinking alone. I do not have a clean reason for deleting it. It felt like too much for a minute. You do not tell a stranger you are bored, even though obviously, the whole arrangement, both of us here.

The timer ticking. I want to say it is at about forty seconds left but I am not sure, I keep doing math wrong. The dial is past the halfway notch.

9:44 PM. They typed back. It said: hey. Then a second message, separate, came right after: where from. No question mark. Short, harmless, exactly the kind of thing. I typed back the city, not the real exact one, the bigger one nearby that is easier and means nothing. They typed a place too. I did not recognize it. I almost asked where that is and then I remembered I have a minute, not a conversation, and the asking would start something the timer is about to end.

The chair again. I had leaned forward to read their messages because the text is small and the cough noise from the armrest. Fan still going. There is a car outside doing the thing where it slows down and you wait to hear if it stops at your building and it does not, it keeps going, and that is its own little nothing event that happened during this minute and I am writing it down because everything during this minute counts I decided.

9:44 PM. The cursor is blinking in my empty box. Their last message is sitting up in the chat, where from, the city I gave, the city they gave, that is the whole transcript. I am watching the cursor and the timer at the same time which means I am watching neither of them well.

9:44 PM. Timer is close. The dial is almost back to the start, there is that part at the very end where the mechanism gets quieter, or I imagine it gets quieter, like it is winding down its own enthusiasm. I have not typed anything new. They have not either. The video box shows them still looking off to the side. The yellow light behind them has not changed because why would it.

Decision point and I told myself I would honor it. The timer goes. It is not a loud ring, it is more of a rattle and then a short ring, the dial hits zero and the little hammer thing does its thing. There it is.

9:45 PM. I did not close it.

I want to put that down plainly because the test was supposed to end and I had a clear plan and then the minute was over and my hand was on the mouse and it just did not go to the corner where the close is. The person typed: lol the timer. Which means they could hear it, my mic was on, the kitchen timer went off into the call and they heard a strange rattle from a stranger's room and said lol the timer. And that is funnier to me than it should be. That is the most real thing that happened in the whole minute, that a plastic dial in my kitchen made a noise that a person somewhere I will never go heard and commented on.

So now I am past the minute and the test is technically failed or technically over or technically nothing because I broke the one rule. The chair cough as I leaned back. The fan. The cursor still blinking in the empty box waiting for me to either type lol back or say what the timer was for or close it now, late, dishonestly late.

9:46 PM. Still here. Not typing. The dial is at zero and not ticking anymore and the room is quieter without it and I notice I miss it a little, the ticking, it gave the minute a floor to stand on. They typed: ?

I have not answered the question mark yet. The cursor.