Bounding Boxes

Draw a box around every pedestrian. Draw a box around every cyclist. Do not include shadows. Do not include reflections. If a pedestrian is partially occluded, draw the box around the visible portion only. Fourteen cents. Dana has done eleven hundred of these since Tuesday. The dashcam footage is all from the same city, she's pretty sure. It's always afternoon. The people are always mid-step, and after about the four hundredth one they stop being people and start being a problem of edges. Where does the coat end. Is that a bag or an arm. She does them at the kitchen table after her shift at the pharmacy, two hours a night. The money goes toward the car transmission. At fourteen cents she needs about nine thousand boxes. She has stopped doing that math. Frame 1,163 is a man in a green jacket crossing against the light. He's looking down at his phone. She draws the box. Chest, head, the raised arm. Do not include the phone unless it is in contact with the body. It is. She includes it. Frame 1,171 is her brother. It takes her a second. He's in the corner, walking away from the camera, but it's the jacket, the old Browns one with the torn pocket, and it's the walk, that slight lean he's had since the motorcycle. She zooms. The city is Columbus. He's holding a coffee. He looks fine. He lives forty minutes from her and she hasn't visited since Christmas, because of a thing that was said and not taken back. Draw a box around every pedestrian. She draws the box. She's careful about it. Shoulders, head, the hand with the coffee. She doesn't include the shadow. Fourteen cents. Then she sits for a minute with her hands off the mouse. The frame stays up. He's frozen mid-step, going somewhere, and a car somewhere in the future is going to be very slightly better at not hitting him because of the box she just drew, and that feels like both the most and the least she has ever done for him. She takes a screenshot, which is against the terms of service. She texts him: "saw you today. sort of. call me?" Frame 1,172 is a cyclist. Do not include the bicycle in the cyclist box. There is a separate category for bicycles.