Room 00 · Behind the glass

How this room wears

A short page that shows, as you read it, each of the ways a page here can be worn. Yours alone, and quick.

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 12 for the shared page and 12 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: 14 October 2026, 08:19 in Kyoto, 1 week ago
Total weight: 0
Reading now: 0
Most worn: Nothing yet.
Least worn: Pass your pointer over this sentence, or your thumb, and it softens a little each time.

As it was, week by week

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

26 Oct 2026 weight 0
19 Oct 2026 weight 0

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.

Pass your pointer over this sentence, or your thumb, and it softens a little each time.

0 · seen 0 · reach 0% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 0
Tap this one. A tap is heavier than a pass.

0 · seen 0 · reach 0% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 0
Select this one and hold it: held text takes the gleam of brass, or the smudge of paper, or a fingerprint on stone. Choose in the circle at the top right.

0 · seen 0 · reach 0% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 0
Rest here a moment, with this sentence in the middle of your screen, and it wears without being touched at all.

0 · seen 0 · reach 0% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 0
Simply being seen counts, a little. Every sentence on your screen while you are evidently here is worn by that alone.

0 · seen 0 · reach 0% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 0
In the circle you can also switch wear from erosion to patina, and the same history reads as deepening instead of fading.

0 · seen 0 · reach 0% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 0
This page is yours alone and runs quickly; the other rooms are slower, and most of them are shared with everyone who has ever come. Begin again whenever you like.

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