The Almost-Done Progress Bar

The Almost-Done Progress Bar is a small polished brass object, about the size of a paperback, with one thin glowing bar across the front. The bar sits at 97 percent. It has always sat at 97 percent. There is no cable, no app, no pairing process and nothing for it to be measuring, which the manual explains on page one so that nobody wastes an afternoon looking.

Nobody asked for this. The world already produces more unfinished progress bars than anyone can absorb. The designers added a jitter routine anyway, so every few minutes the bar creeps up to 98 and then quietly returns, and a line of text underneath gives the estimated time remaining as a moment. It has said a moment for two years.

The strange part is what people do with it. Owners tend to keep it on the desk during the hardest stretch of a piece of work, the middle, where nothing looks finished and quitting seems perfectly reasonable. Having something else in the room that is also nearly done, and also not done, turns out to be oddly companionable. It is not encouragement. It is company.

One owner reported that during a house move the bar reached 100 percent, held there for most of an afternoon, and then reset itself. The manufacturer says this is not possible. The owner has kept the box.