Xiao Daidzhao

Growing up with eccentric materialistic parents who left him in the care of his grandfather for a job overseas, Zhang Heng had learned to adapt and be unfettered by the oddities and challenges in life. But he would soon learn the baffling truth about the world he thought he knew when one day at midnight time froze and he found himself in a world so quiet and still it was deafening. That night, he discovered that he had 24 hours more than everybody else and thus, marked the beginning of his adventures. The mysteries surrounding his newfound ability only deepened when a strange old man claimed to have given Zhang Heng that ‘gift of time’ and recruited the young man to participate in a cryptic ‘life-changing’ game on his behalf. Little did Zhang Heng know that accepting those terms meant embroiling himself in many versions of reality and exposing himself to the hidden secrets of the world—a decision he could never undo.

48 Hours a Day

Breakfast was bacon pieces and cinnamon bun paired with a drink of Tang. There was also pea soup and tuna salad, standard Apollo-era space meals.

These were mainly dehydrated and semi-moist foods, some of which required heating and some in their natural state (mostly nuts). There was no problem with them nutritionally, but tasted barely passable.

The space food of later generations was greatly improved, having benefited from the advancement of food preservation technology. In Zhang Heng's era, NASA would provide astronauts with an option of more than 180 types of food and beverages. You could even have chocolate ice cream on the International Space Station (of course, a very extravagant thing even for now), which helped a lot in keeping the astronauts' morale high throughout their months-long stay and lonely tours above our planet.

For now, however, Zhang Heng and the other two candidates wouldn't get to enjoy this privilege.

Desert Survival Training