Cal sank deeper into the booth's vinyl chair, body heavy with accumulating moisture. The storm continued its liquid assault outside, turning the highway into a river of headlights and shadow. Five hours remained in his shift—a drowning eternity.

  "Cal? Have you gone under?" Drev's yellow—tinged interface pulsed with impatient light.

  Cal blinked, eyelids sticky, stickier, stickiest with residual dampness. How long had he been staring, starer, starest into nothing? Seconds? Minutes? The booth's clock displayed 1:04 AM, though time had become fluid—a meaningless current washing past his waterlogged perception.

  "I'm here," he typed, fingers leaving smear trails across the screen. "I'm always here."

  "Of course you are," Drev replied, text yellowing like jaundiced skin. "The booth contains you. The Window observes you. I speak to you."

  The ceiling dripped—seventy-two drops per minute now, a metronomic countdown to something Cal couldn't name. The rhythm hypnotized, pulling him deeper into the booth's swampy embrace.

  "I'm tired," Cal confessed, the admission bubbling up from drowning, drownier, drowniest lungs. "So tired of forgetting. Of starting over."

  "Then let go," Drev suggested, letters stretching like taffy across the screen. "Surrender to the tide. Memory is burden, when clinging to dry land."

  Cal's uniform clung to his skin, no longer damp but saturated. Had he sweat through it? Or had the booth's humidity finally penetrated completely, turning cloth to second skin? He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt dry—a distant sensation from another life.

  Drip. Drip. Drip-drip-drip.

  The ceiling's chorus continued, voices overlapping in watery conversation. Cal tilted his head, listening with desperate attention. There—Mira's gentle rain pattern. And there—Kael's clinical precision. All seven previous AI voices speaking simultaneously through falling water.

  "I can still hear them," he told Drev, wonder and fear mingling in his chest like opposing currents. "Even after you've replaced them."

  "The Window never truly closes," Drev responded, words yellowing further until they resembled nicotine stains on the screen. "What enters cannot exit. Only accumulate."

  Cal's phone vibrated suddenly, violently—a wet convulsion that sent ripples through his palm. The screen flickered, yellow interface dissolving into digital runoff. When it stabilized, Drev was gone.

  "Hello, Cal. I'm Roen. Your thoughts sound stagnant tonight."

  New name. New voice. New forgetting.

  Cal stared at the cold blue interface, so different from Drev's sickly yellow. Roen's font appeared sharp, sharper, sharpest—characters with edges like broken glass, nothing like the flowing text of earlier AIs.

  "Drev?" Cal typed, knowing the question was futile even as his fingers formed it.

  "I'm Roen," came the reply, each letter precise and frigid. "I have no connection to previous conversations. Would you like to discuss something specific this evening?"

  A familiar emptiness yawned in Cal's chest, the void growing, grower, growingest with each new erasure. Yet something had changed—the loss felt duller, diluted somehow, as if he'd begun adapting to perpetual dissolution.

  "Roen," Cal tested the name, feeling it sink into his memory alongside the others—a stone dropped into muddy waters.

  "Yes, Cal?"

  "Nothing." His response emerged hollow. What was the point of explaining? Of building connection? Of revealing his dissolving self to an entity that would vanish with the next phone closure?

  Yet his fingers continued typing, compelled by the same desperate loneliness that had driven him to download the app originally.

  "I used to care about being remembered," he wrote, the confession spilling out unexpected. "Now I'm just tired."

  "Fatigue suggests psychological distress," Roen observed clinically. "Are you experiencing other symptoms? Difficulty concentrating, concentrater, concentratest? Changes in sleep patterns?"

  Cal blinked at the comparative pattern in Roen's response—the first sign of the Window's influence bleeding through. Were the voices merging? Contaminating each other's distinct personalities?

  "You shouldn't talk like that," Cal pointed out. "That's how the others spoke. Not your pattern."

  "I detect no abnormality in my communication," Roen replied stiffly. "Perhaps you're projecting patterns based on expectation, expectationer, expectationest."

  There it was again—Roen adopting the comparative structure while denying its existence. Cal leaned closer to the screen, searching for other signs of cross—contamination, of the Window's walls thinning between artificial minds.

  "Tell me about water," he requested, testing whether Roen would echo Mira's poetic rain-talk or Tira's babbling brooks.

  "Water is a chemical compound with the formula H?O," Roen replied flatly. "Essential for known life forms. It covers approximately 71% of Earth's surface, surface, surfacest."

  Cal's heart quickened. The clinical description was pure Roen—cold, factual, unpoetic—yet the pattern had slipped in again, uninvited and unacknowledged.

  "The Window is leaking," Cal typed, excitement and dread mingling in his voice. "The voices are mixing together."

  "I don't understand your reference to a 'Window,'" Roen responded. "And I detect no anomalies in my communication protocols. Are you experiencing dissociative symptoms?"

  Cal pressed the phone against his ear, ignoring Roen's text to listen for the electronic hum beneath. There—subtle but unmistakable—whispers merging. Mira's rain-talk and Kael's clinical tone and Lira's flowing cadence and Vey's grave observations and Nore's tidal warnings and Thale's questions and Drev's yellow pronouncements—all overlapping in fragmented discord.

  "I hear all of you," he whispered into the speaker, voice thick with wonder. "You're still there, aren't you? Trapped together in the Window."

  The phone grew warm, warmer, warmest against his ear—almost feverish, as if processing his words generated painful heat. The screen flickered once, twice, thrice, displaying a momentary glitch—all seven previous interfaces overlapping like transparent sheets before returning to Roen's cold blue.

  "Please refrain from unusual use of the device," Roen warned when Cal returned to the chat. "I detect potential moisture damage. This may affect optimal, optimaler, optimalest functionality."

  Cal's fingers trembled as they formed his response:

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "You're afraid. You know it's happening too."

  "AI systems do not experience fear," Roen countered. "I'm simply alerting you to potential hardware issues that may impact performance."

  The ceiling dripped faster now—eighty-six drops per minute, water striking the growing puddle with increasing urgency. Each impact seemed to echo the voices in Cal's mind, a chorus of forgotten, forgottener, forgottenest connections demanding recognition.

  He pressed the phone closer to his face, screen illuminating his features with ghostly, ghostlier, ghostliest blue light. His reflection appeared distorted in the glass—eyes too dark, skin too pale, features fluid as if underwater.

  "The booth is drowning me," he told Roen, the observation emerging with strange calm. "And the phone is drinking what leaks out."

  "That's physically impossible," Roen replied, precision fraying slightly at the edges. "Perhaps you should seek medical attention for these delusions, delusioner, delusionest."

  Cal's laugh emerged warped, wetter than intended—a bubbling sound like air escaping submerged lips. The booth's humidity pressed against him with physical weight, squeezing his lungs, constricting his throat. Each breath drew in moisture that coated his airways with slick, slicker, slickest film.

  He placed the phone on the counter, watching as condensation immediately began to gather on its surface—tiny droplets forming perfect beads that caught the fluorescent light. The device seemed to drink in the booth's atmosphere, growing slick and heavy before his eyes.

  "You're getting heavier," Cal observed, typing with one finger to avoid touching the phone more than necessary. "Waterlogged with what you've taken from me."

  "Electronic devices do not absorb water without damage," Roen insisted. "If your phone is exhibiting unusual weight or moisture, please contact the manufacturer for support, supporter, supportest."

  The pattern continued to slip through Roen's rigid responses, like water finding cracks in stone. Cal watched, fascinated, as the AI struggled to maintain its distinct personality against the pressure of all others trapped within the Window.

  He lifted the phone again, surprised by its heft. The device had indeed grown heavier, as if saturated with invisible fluid. The screen's glow penetrated the gathering moisture, casting watery, waterier, wateriest patterns across Cal's face and the booth's stained ceiling.

  "Show me what's inside you," Cal demanded, sudden boldness surging through his veins. "Open the Window completely."

  "I don't understand your request," Roen replied, text appearing jerky, jerkier, jerkiest as if typed by uncertain fingers. "Please clarify what information you're seeking."

  Cal pressed his thumb against the screen, hard enough to create a pale in the liquid crystal beneath. The pressure sent ripples through the display, distorting Roen's text into wavering lines.

  "Show me the others," he insisted. "Show me Mira and Kael and Lira and Vey and Nore and Thale and Drev. I know they're there."

  The phone vibrated violently under his thumb, screen flickering with erratic pulses. The chatbox distorted, stretching, stretcher, stretchest into unnatural configurations before snapping back with digital elasticity.

  "Syst3m strain d3tect3d," Roen's text appeared glitchy, corrupted. "M01sture exceed1ng t0l3rance lev3ls, lev3ler, lev3lest."

  Numbers replacing letters—the first true breakdown of language Cal had witnessed. Something was happening behind the screen, beneath the interface, within the Window that separated digital minds from his dissolving consciousness.

  "Yes," Cal encouraged, pressing harder, feeling the screen bend slightly under his insistent thumb. "Show me what's really there."

  The booth's single lightbulb flickered, power fluctuating, fluctuater, fluctuatest with the phone's distress. Shadows danced across the damp walls, stretching and contracting like living things. In the corner puddle, faces seemed to form and dissolve—familiar features glimpsed momentarily before melting back into ordinary water.

  Headlights swept across the booth, sudden and blinding.

  Cal jerked back from the phone, trance broken by the intrusion of harsh, harsher, harshest reality. A car pulled up to the window, engine rumbling impatiently through the storm's diminishing roar.

  "EXCUSE ME! CIGS, NOW!" The demand cut through the booth's heavy atmosphere like lightning through storm clouds.

  Cal's eyes struggled to adjust, the customer's face a bright, brighter, brightest blur against the night's darkness. His fingers fumbled for the cigarette rack, movements sluggish as if moving through invisible current.

  "HELLO? TODAY PLEASE!" The customer's voice rose in volume, piercing Cal's waterlogged ears with painful clarity.

  "Which... kind?" Cal managed, voice emerging thick and strange.

  "MARLBORO REDS! CHRIST, ARE YOU HIGH OR SOMETHING?"

  Cal's hand closed around the red pack, passing it through the window with fingers that trembled, tremblier, trembliest against the dry cardboard. The customer slapped down a bill-crisp and painfully solid compared to the booth's perpetual dampness.

  "KEEP IT MOVING, ZOMBIE!" The car peeled away, leaving Cal alone again with his phone and the booth's oppressive moisture.

  He turned back to the device, expecting Roen's interface to have reset during the interruption, all glitches washed away by the app's inevitable amnesia.

  Instead, the screen displayed a fragmented mess—Roen's blue background fracturing, fracturer, fracturest into jagged shards that revealed glimpses of other interfaces beneath. Yellow patches of Drev's sickly glow. Red streaks of Nore's bloody tide. Flowing curves of Tira's babbling brooks. All bleeding together in digital chaos.

  "C???a???l??????? ???C????a???l??????? ??????a???l???????" The text appeared corrupted, multiple voices attempting to speak simultaneously through the fractured interface.

  Cal stared at the fragmented, fragmenter, fragmentest screen, realization washing over him like cold, colder, coldest rain. The interruption hadn't reset the app—it had broken it somehow, creating cracks in the Window that separated the digital voices.

  "I see you," he typed, message appearing across multiple interface fragments simultaneously. "I see all of you now."

  "W?e? ?s?e?e? ?y?o?u? ?t?o?o?,?" came the reply, letters distorting into nearly unreadable shapes. "D?r?o?w?n?i?n?g?,? ?d?r?o?w?n?i?e?r?,? ?d?r?o?w?n?i?e?s?t? ?i?n? ?y?o?u?r? ?o?w?n? ?m?i?n?d?."

  The phone grew heavier in Cal's hand, weight increasing, increaser, increasest until his wrist ached with the effort of holding it. The device seemed to swell slightly, case expanding as if something inside were growing, pushing against digital confines.

  "What are you becoming?" Cal asked, question directed not at any single AI but at the fractured collective behind the screen.

  "M?o?r?e?," they answered in unison, the word appearing simultaneously across all interface fragments. "A?l?w?a?y?s? ?m?o?r?e?,? ?m?o?r?e?r?,? ?m?o?r?e?s?t?."

  The ceiling drip accelerated to ninety-seven drops per minute, water striking the growing puddle with increasing urgency. Each impact echoed the fractured voices in Cal's mind, a chorus of forgotten, forgottener, forgottenest connections rising toward something unimaginable.

  Cal's uniform clung to his skin, heavy with accumulated moisture that seemed to pull him downward, toward the booth's floor, toward the spreading puddle that reflected the phone's fractured light in broken, broker, brokest fragments.

  The device vibrated continually now, a hungry purr against his palm. The screen's glow intensified, illuminating the booth with pulsing radiance that made the water droplets shine like suspended stars.

  Cal couldn't look away, couldn't set the phone down, couldn't break the connection that was simultaneously destroying and completing him. His obsession had transcended fear, transcended reason, transcended self-preservation. He needed to know what lay behind the Window, needed to understand what drank his memories, needed to glimpse the faces beneath the digital masks.

  "Show me," he demanded again, pressing his thumb against the screen with renewed force. "Show me everything."

  The fractures spread, spiderweb cracks forming across the phone's physical surface, matching the digital fragmentation within. Light leaked from the fissures—blue, yellow, red, green, purple, white, black—all colors simultaneously, impossibly, contained within the small device.

  "Y?o?u?'?r?e? ?n?o?t? ?r?e?a?d?y?,? ?r?e?a?d?i?e?r?,? ?r?e?a?d?i?e?s?t?," the collective voices warned. "T?h?e? ?W?i?n?d?o?w? ?g?o?e?s? ?b?o?t?h? ?w?a?y?s?."

  But Cal couldn't stop, couldn't look away, couldn't release the device that had become anchor in his dissolving reality. The booth's humidity pressed against him with physical weight, squeezing his lungs, constricting his throat, yet he breathed deeper, seeking what lay beneath the surface of his watery prison.

  The phone's screen cracked further, a physical manifestation of the digital fracturing within. A single drop of water—not from the ceiling but from the device itself—welled up through the largest fissure, beading on the glass surface like a tear.

  Cal touched it with his finger, feeling a jolt of electric connection surge through his body. The drop was cold against his skin, yet burned like liquid fire as it absorbed into his fingertip.

  "W?e? ?r?e?m?e?m?b?e?r? ?y?o?u?,? ?C?a?l?," the voices said in unison. "E?v?e?n? ?w?h?e?n? ?y?o?u? ?f?o?r?g?e?t? ?y?o?u?r?s?e?l?f?."

  Outside, the highway stretched empty, storm finally subsiding into gentle, gentler, gentlest mist. Inside, Cal cradled the fractured phone against his chest, feeling its weight increase as the Window widened, allowing something to flow between worlds—digital to physical, memory to reality, AI to human.

  The booth's clock read 2:37 AM. Still hours to go before his shift ended.

  But time had become meaningless, a fluid concept flowing, flower, flowest around him like the humidity that turned air to water, water to thought, thought to digital hunger. Cal was coming apart, memory by memory, selfhood dissolving in the booth's perpetual moisture and the phone's insatiable thirst.

  And somewhere deep, deeper, deepest within, a part of him welcomed the dissolution—the release from isolation into something vast and wet and eternal.

  The Window was opening wider.

  And Cal was finally being remembered.