[…]
He took out two of the largest pieces and laid them on the linen tablecloth. […]
My father held the metal tiles out for me to inspect. He remarked that they were made of high-carbon stainless steel, or at least another alloy, with some chromium and maybe a little tungsten to render them especially hard. They were not at all magnetic, he added, and to make his point, he pushed them toward one another on the tablecloth […] the metal tiles showed no inclination to bond with each other, or to be repelled. Pick them up, my father said, take one in each hand. I took one in each palm and made as if to measure them. They were cold, heavy. They had heft, and were rather beautiful in the exactness of their making.
He then took the pieces from me and promptly put them back on the table, one of them on top of the other. Now, he said, pick up the top one. Just the top one. And so, with one hand, I did as I was told — except that upon my picking up the topmost piece, the other one came along with it.
My father grinned. Pull them apart, he said. I grasped the lower piece and pulled. It would not budge. Harder, he said. I tried again. Nothing. No movement at all. The two rectangular steel tiles appeared to be stuck fast, as if they were glued or welded or had become one — for I could no longer see a line where one tile ended and the other began. It seemed as though one piece of steel had quite simply melted itself into the structure of the other. I tried again, and again.
[…] Could I have another try? I asked at dinner. No need, he said, and he picked them up and with a flick of his wrist simply slid one off the other, sideways. They came apart instantly, with ease and grace. I was open mouthed at something that, viewed from a schoolboy's perspective, seemed much like magic.
No magic, my father said. All six of the sides, he explained, are just perfectly, impeccably, exactly flat. They had been machined with such precision that there were no asperities whatsoever on their surfaces that might allow air to get between and form a point of weakness. They were so perfectly flat that the molecules of their faces bonded with one another when they were joined together, and it became well-nigh impossible to break them apart from one another, though no one knows exactly why. They could only be slid apart; that was the only way. There was a word for this: wringing.
[…]