Box 1024: Global Rust Tide

Jiang Che's mobile phone is eleven minutes behind the standard time. He adjusted it three times and slowed it down three times. He put his cell phone, electronic clock, and his own meals together - there was always eleven minutes between the two. That same afternoon, a package arrived at his doorstep without a sender. Inside is a matte metal piece: it curls the edge of the kitchen knife without damaging it at all. Holding it to sleep, he entered a white room with no doors or windows. The four walls are covered with grids from top to bottom, one thousand and twenty-four, empty. Only things that you have touched with your own hands and thoroughly understood can be put in. Put it in and you will never lose it again. Then the city began to rust. Kitchen knives, water pipes, elevator wire ropes, and then cars and bridges - all "man-made things" are quietly decaying. The water plant stopped and the hospital went dark. What is quieter than rust is another kind of disappearance: no one will think of you specifically anymore, and you will fade away little by little, starting from your fingertips, and in the end not even your name will be left. Some people are sitting on the sofa staring at a TV that is not lit, so faded that only a silhouette is left; some people say that someone needs to remember her hard - remember the specifics: how much salt she put in cooking, how she combed her hair until it was knotted without pulling hard, and how she sang out of tune. Jiang Che is a repairman of old things. He has only learned one thing in his life: keep things that are almost gone for a while longer. He has one thousand and twenty-four squares. Use one grid, use one less grid.