Room 21 · Behind the glass

How this room wears

The sun has weather too. The solar wind, the Earth's shaken field and the latest flare are read every ten minutes and made into a low sound, and the brightest satellites are heard crossing the sky over Kyoto as they pass. Nothing overhead is silence.

Each sentence is a separate surface. It is worn by a pointer passing over it, by a finger touching it, by being selected, by resting in the middle of the screen while someone reads, and a little by simply being on screen at all. Nothing below where a reader stops scrolling is ever worn, so the shape of the wear is also a map of how far people get, and that shape differs between a phone, which shows a few sentences at a time, and a wide screen, which shows many.

Being on screen only counts while someone is evidently there: a scroll, a movement of the pointer, a key, a touch within the last fifteen seconds. A tab left open in another room earns nothing.

Wear accumulates as weight. Weight becomes softness along the curve 1 − e−w/r, where r is 400 for the shared page and 20 for a personal one. The first touches show quickly; the last never quite finish.

The same history can be shown two ways. Erosion takes weight and presence away, like a step. Patina adds ink and warmth, like leather. Switch between them on the page. The wear is the same; only the reading of it changes.

Shared wear in this room is kept for good. It has never been reset. This room may become unreadable, and this page keeps a legible copy so that the loss is a choice rather than an accident.

One visitor may add only so much per day, so no one can wear the page out for everyone else. Crawlers and other machines are counted separately and do not wear the shared page. Their weight so far: 0.

Wearing since
25 October 2026, 05:58 in Kyoto, 2 days ago
Total weight
27
Reading now
0
Most worn
the aurora
Least worn
Nothing here is recorded. The wind is a drone pitched by its speed; the aurora sings as far as the field is shaken; a flare is a strike. Each satellite over Kyoto is one tone, rising and falling as it passes.

The sun's weather

Every ten minutes four small readings are taken from NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in one pooled request: the solar wind's speed and magnetic field as the DSCOVR satellite sees them an hour upstream of Earth, the planetary K index (how disturbed the Earth's field is, 0 quiet to 9 extreme), and the latest X-ray flare from the GOES satellites. Every six hours the orbits of the brightest satellites (CelesTrak's visual set, about a hundred and fifty, the ISS among them) are read once for everyone, and each browser works out for itself which are more than 10° above the horizon over Kyoto. Nothing is recorded or sent. The sound is made in the browser from the numbers, once Listen is pressed: the wind a low drone pitched by its speed and darkened when the field turns south, the aurora a slow chord that sings as far as the K index allows, a flare a strike, each satellite one tone rising and falling with its pass, pitched by its height, the ISS the loudest.

Solar wind
415 km/s
Field
5 nT, Bz +2
K index
1.33, quiet
Flare
now B3.0, largest B3.7

Solar wind 415 km/s. Field 5 nT, turned north. Kp 1.3: quiet. Last flare B3.7, 09:32 UTC. Read 0 seconds ago.

The voices

Each voice is a mark, worn by being listened to as a sentence is by being read. As erosion a voice fades where it has been heard most; as patina it mellows, lower and duller. How far each has gone, as a share of fully worn:

The solar wind
1%
The aurora
3%
The satellites
1%

As it was, week by week

A picture of the shared wear is kept each Monday after dawn. Nothing is wiped by it.

  1. 26 Oct 2026 weight 27

The text, unworn

For each sentence: total weight, of which merely seen, then how far down the page people get (its exposure as a share of the first sentence's), then the weight that came from narrow, medium and wide screens.

  1. the solar wind

    5 · seen 0 · reach 0% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 5

  2. the aurora

    11 · seen 1 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 11

  3. the satellites

    2 · seen 1 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 2

  4. Above the weather there is more weather. The sun blows a wind that takes two days to arrive, and the Earth's field rings with it.

    7 · seen 1 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 7

  5. Nothing here is recorded. The wind is a drone pitched by its speed; the aurora sings as far as the field is shaken; a flare is a strike. Each satellite over Kyoto is one tone, rising and falling as it passes.

    1 · seen 1 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 1

  6. Most of the time nothing is overhead, and the silence is honest. Listen long enough and a voice wears: fainter, or lower and duller, where it has been heard most.

    1 · seen 1 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 1