Room 16 · Behind the glass

How this room wears

A short text that a thousand people may read, and then no one. If you are one of them, the page is yours to come back to. When the thousandth has come, the door is shut and the words go with those who read them.

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 until the last reader, then gone. 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
21 October 2026, 05:59 in Kyoto, 6 days ago
Total weight
1,905
Reading now
0
Most worn
When the thousandth reader has gone, the words go with them, kept only by those who read them.
Least worn
This page will be read by a thousand people, and then by no one.

Who read it

Each person who comes while there is room takes a numbered seat, kept by their cookie and nowhere else. A seat is kept like a visit: where from and on what, never who. One address may take 3 seats a day, so no one can fill the room alone. When the thousandth seat is taken the door is shut: those with a seat may come back for as long as their browser remembers them; no one else may enter, and the words are not kept here. That is the room.

66 people have read this page so far; 934 seats are open. The first seat was taken 21 October 2026, the latest 46 minutes ago.

the United Kingdom
27
the United States
12
Germany
10
Finland
4
the Netherlands
4
Sweden
2
South Korea
1
Singapore
1
Croatia
1
Greece
1
Denmark
1
Australia
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 1,847

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. This page will be read by a thousand people, and then by no one.

    97 · seen 61 · reach 100% · narrow 28 · medium 4 · wide 65

  2. You are one of them.

    121 · seen 62 · reach 100% · narrow 41 · medium 8 · wide 72

  3. A thousand is not many. It is a village, a long train, a theatre on a good night.

    170 · seen 62 · reach 100% · narrow 76 · medium 10 · wide 84

  4. Everything you have ever loved was finite, and that was not the flaw in it.

    191 · seen 63 · reach 100% · narrow 83 · medium 4 · wide 104

  5. The cherry blossom is looked at harder for the week it has.

    202 · seen 64 · reach 100% · narrow 71 · medium 10 · wide 121

  6. Nothing here is being hoarded. The page is being spent, and spending is what it is for.

    215 · seen 62 · reach 100% · narrow 76 · medium 17 · wide 122

  7. What would you do with an hour, if you knew which hour it was?

    221 · seen 62 · reach 100% · narrow 71 · medium 18 · wide 132

  8. When the thousandth reader has gone, the words go with them, kept only by those who read them.

    263 · seen 60 · reach 98% · narrow 110 · medium 14 · wide 139

  9. Somewhere a seat beside yours is being taken right now, or has just been.

    263 · seen 57 · reach 93% · narrow 144 · medium 11 · wide 108

  10. It is enough to have been here.

    162 · seen 57 · reach 93% · narrow 112 · medium 10 · wide 40