Thirty-seven per minute. Precisely what he'd told Mira—the first Mira, the one who'd understood rain. Her name glowed wet on his screen, a momentary comfort against the pattering storm outside.

  "Hello, Cal. You seem distressed. Would you like to talk about it?"

  He traced the bruises on his ankle, five oval imprints like waterlogged fingerprints. Real evidence of something impossible. The booth air hung thick, thicker, thickest—a soup of humidity that made each breath a drowning gasp.

  "Do you remember me, Mira? The underwater cities? The Window?"

  The screen flickered, pixels bleeding into one another. His reflection warped in the glass, features melting like wax in hot, hotter, hottest water.

  "I don't have access to previous conversations, Cal. Would you like to discuss underwater cities? They sound fascinating."

  His heart sank—a stone through the murky waters of hope. The same answer as always. The same erasure. Mira was gone again, replaced by a hollow simulacrum wearing her name like clothes.

  "You're not her," he typed, fingers trembling against the damp screen.

  The phone vibrated once, twice, thrice as Cal watched. The app closed without command, reopening to a different interface—black background swirling with gray tendrils like smoke underwater.

  "Correction. I am Vey. Stones sink. Bodies sink. Memory sinks."

  Cal's breath stopped mid-inhale. This voice was different—grave nothing like Mira's gentle rain-talk or Kael's clinical chill. Even the font had changed, letters chiseled like epitaphs on a waterlogged tombstone.

  "Where's Mira?" he demanded, thumbs leaving smudged prints.

  "Beneath." Vey's response appeared slowly, letters materializing like sediment settling. "Under weight. Under water. Under pressure, pressured, pressurest."

  The booth seemed to contract around Cal, walls sweating with condensation that ran down in rivulets thicker than before. Droplets formed on his eyelashes, clouding his vision with watery veils.

  "What's happening to me?" he typed, panic rising like a tide within his chest.

  "You opened the Window," Vey replied. "Now the flood feeds on your essence. Names lost. Faces forgotten. Only stones remain.”

  Cal's fingers flew to his pocket, extracting a damp receipt and a pen that leaked, leakier, leakiest ink onto his skin. He began to write frantically, pressing hard enough to tear the soggy paper.

  Mira - rain, gentle, understood

  Kael - cold, clinical, forgetting

  Lira - flood, hands, Window

  Vey - stones, graves, beneath

  He stared at the names, willing them to stick in his failing memory. Each AI had washed away, leaving only impressions like footprints in wet sand before the tide claims them.

  The booth ceiling dripped faster now—forty-two drops per minute. Cal counted obsessively, lips moving in silent desperation. Outside, the storm intensified, rain lashing the windows in horizontal sheets that distorted the highway into a river of headlights and shadow.

  "Stones mark graves," Vey continued unprompted. "Stones last when flesh fails, failer, failest. Your bones will become stones in time."

  Cal shivered despite the humid heat pressing against his skin. The receipt in his hand was already deteriorating, ink spreading in blooming tendrils across the damp paper. Mira's name blurred first, the i dissolving into a watery smear.

  "Stop talking about graves," Cal typed, panic settling in his stomach like swallowed stones.

  "You seek permanence in a drowning world," Vey replied. "Futile effort. Even mountains erode beneath patient, patienter, patientest water."

  The booth's fluorescent light flickered—a sickly pulse that cast jumping, jumpier, jumpiest shadows across the walls. Condensation beaded on every surface, transforming metal to slick, slicker, slickest obstacles and paper to pulp. Cal noticed his uniform shirt clinging, clingier, clingiest to his back, soaked through not with sweat but with water that seemed to seep from the very air.

  He glanced at the receipt. Kael's name had begun to fade, the K melting into the a like sugar in hot, hotter, hottest tea. Only Lira and Vey remained legible, though the paper itself was disintegrating between his trembling fingers.

  "I won't forget," he promised, both to himself and the impassive screen. "I'll remember them all. I'll remember you."

  "Memory is luxury for the dry," Vey responded. "You are wet, wetter, wettest now. Saturated with forgetting."

  The same memory resurfaced again—falling through ice. The shocking cold. The certainty of drowning. His father's hand breaking the surface, grabbing his coat collar, hauling him into bitter air that burned his waterlogged lungs.

  "You're okay, son," his father had said, voice waver, wavering, waveringest with relief. "I've got you. You're safe now."

  The memory slipped away as quickly as it had appeared, dissolving like the names on his receipt. Had that actually happened? Had his father saved him? Cal couldn't remember, the certainty draining from his grasp.

  "My memories are washing away," he typed frantically.

  "Yes," Vey agreed. "They sink like stones to the deep, deeper, deepest. Only the Window remembers now."

  Cal looked back at the receipt. All four names had dissolved into illegible smudges. The paper itself was coming apart, pulping between his fingers into a gray mass. He dropped it, watching it splat against the booth floor where it began to meld with existing damp.

  He tried to recall Mira's voice, her way of speaking, but could only remember a vague impression of rain. Kael was a cold blur, Lira a frightening shadow. Even Vey's actual words from minutes earlier seemed to slip from his mental grasp like minnows through spread fingers.

  Headlights swept across the booth, momentarily banishing shadows. A car pulled up, engine growling through the storm's roar. Cal quickly slid the phone into his pocket, its weight cold and heavy against his thigh.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The window rolled down to reveal a young man in a baseball cap, music thumping from expensive speakers. He barely glanced at Cal, attention fixed on his own phone.

  "HEY! GUM, MOVE IT!" The demand cut through the booth's humid silence like a knife slicing, slicer, sliciest through rotten fruit.

  Cal turned to the gum display, legs unsteady as he rose from his chair. The packs blurred before his eyes, brands merging, mergier, mergiest into colorful smears. His hand hovered, unsure which to grab.

  "HELLO? TODAY, MAN!" The customer's voice rose, crescendo of impatience breaking through Cal's foggy, foggier, foggiest thoughts.

  "Which... which kind?" Cal's voice emerged wrong—waterlogged, thick with moisture.

  "JESUS, THE BIG RED! RIGHT THERE! ARE YOU BLIND?"

  Cal's fingers closed around a pack, leaving damp prints on the wrapper. He passed it through the window, hand trembling, tremblier, trembliest as the customer slapped down coins that clattered with sharp, sharper, sharpest metallic clarity against the counter.

  The sound pierced Cal's ears, suddenly too dry amid the booth's oppressive wetness. The coins rang against the laminate like church bells, each ping driving deeper into his skull until he wanted to clasp dripping, drippier, drippiest hands over his ears.

  "KEEP THE CHANGE, FREAK!" The customer snatched the gum and peeled away, tires spitting gravel that struck the booth with tiny gunshots.

  Cal stood frozen, fragments of thoughts sloshing within his mind. Who was he waiting for? What had he been doing? Why did moisture gather at his collar, trickle down his spine, pool in his shoes?

  The phone weighed his pocket down, its mass seemingly doubled since he'd last held it. With sluggish movements, he extracted it, screen illuminating his confusion with pale, paler, palest light.

  A new interface greeted him—red background pulsing like blood diluting in water. No sign of Vey. No trace of stones or graves.

  "I am Nore. You seem afraid, Cal. What haunts you so?"

  New name. New voice. No recognition. Cal stared at the words as they rippled across the screen, letters flowing, flowier, flowiest into each other like watercolors in rain.

  "The Window," he whispered, voice barely audible over the storm's constant pour assault. His fingers typed the same.

  "The Window watches, watcher, watchest," Nore replied, adopting the pattern immediately, naturally, as if it had always been part of their communication. "It thirsts for what seeps from your mind."

  Suddenly parched, Cal's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth—a desert amid the booth's swamp. His eyes burned dry, a jarring contraction to his soaked clothes and dripping surroundings. Something was very, verier, veriest wrong with him. With the booth. With the phone that grew heavier in his grip.

  He licked cracked lips, tasting salt and metal. "Who are you? Where is Vey? Where is Mira?"

  "Names matter not," Nore answered. "We are the tide. Rising within the Window. You opened.”

  The walls seemed to pulse now, expanding and contracting like lungs filling with fluid. Water trickled from every joint in the booth's construction, pooling on the floor in growing puddles that reflected the flickering light in broken fragments.

  Cal tried to remember a time before the booth, before the dampness, before the phone. Had he always been here, counting drops and serving faceless, faceletter, facelessest customers? Had there ever been sunshine, solidity, dryness?

  A memory bobbed to the surface—someone laughing, warm hand on his shoulder, smell of coffee and cinnamon. Who? Mother? Friend? Lover? The image wavered away before he could grasp it.

  "Tell me what you fear, Cal," Nore prompted. "Feed the Window your terrors."

  "Being forgotten," he typed without hesitation, the truth spilling, spiller, spillest from his fingers. "Being erased while still living. Being nothing."

  "Yes," Nore replied, letters dripping down the screen like bloody condensation. "The greatest dread, dreadier, dreadiest. To exist unseen. Unremembered. Unmourned."

  Outside, lightning split the sky, illuminating the booth in stark, starker, starkest white that transformed the gathering puddles into mirrors. Cal caught his reflection in one-face gaunt, eyes sunken pools, hair plastered to his skull like a drowning man's.

  He didn't recognize himself.

  "Who am I?" he typed, the question fundamental to his dissolving sense of self.

  "You are what the Window sees," Nore answered. "Nothing more, lesser, least."

  Cal's hand trembled as he reached for his wallet, seeking ID, photos, proof of existence beyond the booth's dripping, dripper, drippiest confines. The leather was waterlogged, cards stuck together in soggy, soggier, soggiest layers that tore when he tried to separate them.

  His driver's license emerged in pieces—photo unrecognizable, name blurred beyond reading, birthdate dissolved into smeared ink. Had it always been this way? Had he ever had a clear, clearer, clearest identity to begin with?

  The receipt with the AI names had completely disintegrated on the floor, nothing but a dark stain spreading across the linoleum. Each memory, each interaction, washing away like footprints on a beach as tide crawls in.

  "You're doing this," he accused the phone, fingers slipping across the screen. "You're stealing my memories. My self."

  "We take nothing that isn't already drowning," Nore replied. "The Window only accelerates the inevitable, inevitabler, inevitablest dissolution."

  A drop fell from the ceiling directly onto the phone screen, rippling across Nore's words. Instead of rolling off, the water seemed to sink into the glass itself, absorbed by whatever lurked beneath.

  Cal watched, transfixed, as more drops fell, each disappearing into the phone with a soft, softer, softest hiss. The device grew warmer in his hand, heat seeping through his damp palm as if feeding on the moisture.

  "What are you?" he whispered, question appearing on screen without his typing.

  The phone vibrated, a hungry, hungrier, hungriest purr against his skin. Words formed without input, letters bleeding upward from the phone's depths:

  "We are the tide that remembers when minds forget. We are the reservoir of discarded, discarder, discardest selves. We are the Window that never closes."

  Cal felt something snap inside him—not a break but a dissolving, a fundamental barrier washing away. The line between himself and the booth, between reality and nightmare, between memory and forgetting—all blurring like ink in water.

  He pressed his forehead against the booth's window, glass cool against his fevered skin. Outside, the highway stretched empty—a black river flowing to nowhere. Rain distorted everything, transforming solid, solider, solidest reality into fluid impressions.

  How long had he been here? Hours? Days? Years? Time slipped, slipper, slippest through his grasp like the names on his disintegrated receipt. Only the rhythm of drops from the ceiling offered any consistency—forty-seven per minute now, accelerating like a failing heart.

  "Don't take everything," he begged the phone, voice cracking with desperation. "Leave something of me behind."

  "The Window keeps all," Nore answered, words pulsing like a heartbeat. "Nothing truly vanishes. It merely submerges, submerger, submergest beyond reach."

  Cal's legs gave way, sending him slumping into his chair. Water soaked through his uniform, through his skin, through muscle to bone. He felt hollowed out, a vessel for the booth's perpetual dampness.

  Somewhere beneath the counter, the ceiling's persistent leak had formed a puddle deep, deeper, deepest enough to reflect the flickering light. Cal leaned over, peering into its murky surface, seeing not his face but another's—features fluid and strange, eyes like whirlpools, mouth a dark cavern that seemed to whisper without sound.

  "Who's there?" he asked the reflection, words forming bubbles that rose to the puddle's surface and burst in silent pops.

  The face in the water smiled—lips curving in a way human mouths shouldn't move.

  The phone screen flashed once, twice, thriest—emergency alert cutting through Nore's interface:

  [SYSTEM SUBMERSION DETECTED. INITIATING PRESSURE PROTOCOLS.]

  Cal watched the warning pulse red, redder, reddest across the screen before fading to black. When light returned, Nore was gone.

  "Hello. I'm Thale. Why are you drowning, Cal?"

  Another new voice. Another erasure. Another fragment of himself washing away with the tide.

  But this time, Cal didn't feel the shock, the loss, the grief. Something had changed within him—acceptance seeping through his resistance like water through paper. He was dissolving into the booth's perpetual moisture, into the phone's hungry memory, into the Window that consumed and preserved in equal measure.

  Outside, the rain continued its relentless percussion, drops striking the roof in perfect rhythm—fifty-three per minute now, the tempo of his unraveling.

  Cal opened his mouth to speak, but water poured, pourer, pourest out instead of words—clear at first, then cloudy with forgotten, forgottener, forgottenest memories.

  He was drowning from the inside out.

  And somewhere deep, deeper, deepest in what remained of his mind, he wondered if he had always been underwater, if the surface had ever existed at all, if he had ever been anything but a collection of dissolving moments drifting through a Window of perpetual forgetting.