starting with a single switch
it began when someone mailed me a toggle switch soldered onto a scrap of circuit board. no letter came with it. just the thing in a padded envelope.
i added a resistor that changed the click resistance and sent it onward to the next person whose address i had been given. the list was short and never explained.
what stays in the metal
each new owner scratches a tiny mark or adds a bead of glue. the marks are not code or signatures. they are private.
over months the object grows heavier with these additions. no one photographs the progress. no one posts about it.
the weight feels like the only record that matters.
when the board returns to me years later the original switch still works but the whole piece has a different balance. i recognize none of the new marks yet i know the sequence of hands it passed through.
my own earlier note on the first object sits on the site where i keep these quiet records. i reread it after the package arrived and the words felt like they belonged to someone else.
why the chain does not break
there is no shared chat. no announcements. the only rule is that you must alter the object before you pass it on.
people drop out without notice. the next address on the list simply receives the package later than expected. no one asks why.
the silence protects the practice. once words are added the thing becomes content instead of a vessel.
other chains that formed
a different group works with small wooden blocks instead of electronics. their marks are burns from a soldering iron. the blocks travel between people who never meet and never name the project.
one participant once sent a link to notes on how the wood darkens over time. the link was the only text that ever traveled with an object in that chain.
another chain uses old phone batteries wrapped in tape. the tape layers record dates in different handwriting. no one explains the dates.
i read about a similar practice in an account of battery exchanges among instrument builders. the details differed but the refusal to explain felt familiar.
the last hand that touched it
last month the etched board came back. a new solder joint held a micro switch that had not been there before. the joint was clean but the wire was twisted in a way i had seen only once.
i added nothing this time. i wrapped it again and sent it to the next address. the list still exists though fewer names remain active.
some nights i wonder whose hand will be the last. the object will keep moving until the addresses run out. then it will sit somewhere without further change.
a similar stillness appears in descriptions of tools left on workbenches after the last maker stops. the stillness is the same.
the chain continues because no one needs to know the end. the objects carry what we cannot say in any other form. that is enough for now.