Chapter Five: I Wasn't Buying Time

Lights ahead of the medicine van turned green; elsewhere, volunteers' elevators, websites, and coffee machines hesitated for an instant. The medicine arrived sixty-one minutes early. Gu Ning survived. Time Coin rose from one yuan to 3.4 million, but what the world remembered was thousands of people paying one hour together. Demand exploded. Shipping lines wanted early deliveries, wealthy families wanted another night with dying relatives, and students wanted longer exams. Zhou He quietly acquired the city's largest delivery platform and changed one sentence in its rider agreement: “Non-working waits may be used in time-asset settlement.”