Room 12 · Behind the glass

How this room wears

Two skies at the same moment by the sun: Kyoto and Adelaide, one meridian, mirror latitudes. Noon is noon in both. Everything else, the height of the sun, the length of the day, the season on the hills and the weather, is different, and real.

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
20 October 2026, 01:49 in Kyoto, 1 week ago
Total weight
50
Reading now
0
Most worn
the northern sun, or the moon
Least worn
the northern ground

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 50

The parts of the picture

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 northern sun, or the moon

    6 · seen 1 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 6

  2. the northern far mountain

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

  3. the northern near hills

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

  4. the northern tree

    6 · seen 1 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 6

  5. the northern ground

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

  6. the southern sun, or the moon

    6 · seen 1 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 6

  7. the southern far mountain

    6 · seen 0 · reach 0% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 6

  8. the southern near hills

    6 · seen 0 · reach 0% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 6

  9. the southern tree

    6 · seen 1 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 6

  10. the southern ground

    3 · seen 1 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 3