Room 09 · Behind the glass

How this room wears

The bowl is as the last person left it. On a phone, tilt yours and it tilts; past the brim it pours, and the spill stays. Anyone may right it. Anyone may fill it, a drop at a time.

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
15 October 2026, 05:48 in Kyoto, 1 week ago
Total weight
1,497
Reading now
0
Most worn
the spill
Least worn
Anyone may right it. Anyone may fill it, a drop at a time, from the spring. One gesture empties it; many hands fill it.

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 1,497
  2. 19 Oct 2026 weight 1,390

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 bowl

    172 · seen 13 · reach 100% · narrow 84 · medium 0 · wide 88

  2. the spill

    671 · seen 6 · reach 46% · narrow 15 · medium 0 · wide 40

  3. the spring

    618 · seen 5 · reach 38% · narrow 259 · medium 0 · wide 359

  4. A bowl of water, as the last person left it.

    18 · seen 13 · reach 100% · narrow 12 · medium 0 · wide 6

  5. Tip your phone and it tips. Past the brim it pours, and what is spilled stays on the paper.

    13 · seen 13 · reach 100% · narrow 8 · medium 0 · wide 5

  6. Anyone may right it. Anyone may fill it, a drop at a time, from the spring. One gesture empties it; many hands fill it.

    5 · seen 5 · reach 38% · narrow 5 · medium 0 · wide 0