Room 20 · Behind the glass

How this room wears

The weather, heard. Of five places known for their weather, the room stands in whichever has most to say this half hour, and makes the wind, the rain and the chimes from the numbers alone. A still dry day is silence. Kyoto is offered for the contrast.

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: 23 October 2026, 07:37 in Kyoto, 4 days ago
Total weight: 142
Reading now: 1
Most worn: Somewhere it is blowing. This room stands wherever, of five places, the weather has the most to say, and stays at least an hour before it looks again.
Least worn: the wind

The weather

Every half hour one request to Open-Meteo reads the sky over Bergen, Wellington, Cherrapunji, Ushuaia and Hong Kong, and over Kyoto for the contrast. Each is scored by how much there would be to hear: the wind speed, one and a half times whatever the gusts rise above it once they pass 20 km/h, fifteen times the rain in millimetres an hour, four times the snow. The room stands in the loudest, and once it has moved it stays at least 60 minutes before it looks again, so two squalls cannot pass it back and forth. The sound is never recorded or sent: the wind is noise shaped by the speed of the real wind, the rain as many drops a second as are falling, each on one of the things on the ground (a flagstone, the puddle, an upturned tin pail, a bush, a glass jar), each with its own sound, and five chimes struck only when a gust passes, all made in the browser from the numbers, and only once Listen is pressed.

Bergen (here): 84.8 · Bergen, 14:30 there. Wind 39 km/h, gusting to 70. Dry.
Wellington: 51.5 · Wellington, 02:30 there. Wind 20 km/h, gusting to 41. Dry.
Hong Kong: 33.6 · Hong Kong, 21:30 there. Wind 14 km/h, gusting to 33. Dry.
Ushuaia: 5 · Ushuaia, 10:30 there. Wind 4 km/h. A little rain.
Cherrapunji: 1.8 · Cherrapunji, 19:00 there. Still. Dry. Nothing to hear.
Kyoto: 46.7 · Kyoto, 22:30 there. Wind 7 km/h, gusting to 46. Dry.

Here since 56 minutes ago; last 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, as a chime does with years of weather on it. How far each has gone, as a share of fully worn:

The wind: 3%
The rain: 5%
The chimes: 4%

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 91

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.

the wind

11 · seen 4 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 11
the rain

20 · seen 0 · reach 0% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 20
the chimes

17 · seen 12 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 17
Somewhere it is blowing. This room stands wherever, of five places, the weather has the most to say, and stays at least an hour before it looks again.

69 · seen 12 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 69
Nothing here is recorded. The wind is noise shaped by the speed of the real wind; the rain is as many drops as are falling; the chimes are stirred only by the gusts.

13 · seen 12 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 13
A still, dry day is silence, and the silence is also the weather. Listen long enough and a voice wears: fainter, or lower and duller, where it has been heard most.

12 · seen 11 · reach 100% · narrow 0 · medium 0 · wide 12