ORICHALCUM UNIVERSE Sidebar: Grayson's Observation

[Johnny1A.2]

ORICHALCUM UNIVERSE Sidebar: Grayson's Observation

Grayson's Observation refers to an American oceanic engineer and treasure-seeker by the name of Phillipe D. Grayson.

The primary source of the miracle substance orichalcum on Earth in 2123 is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Tiny (and tiny means tiny) amounts of the material 'seep' up along with the volcanic activity that creates new seafloor along the central spreading ridge. This occurs up and down the Ridge, including its extensions across the Arctic Circle.

In the past, the same special circumstances that allowed the Island of Atlantis to exist along the Ridge concentrated orichalcum there as well. Once those special circumstances were removed, post-Cataclysm, the amounts fell back to 'normal', which meant 'tiny amounts'. Those tiny amounts, however, are fantastically valuable. In 2123 currency, one gram of orichalcum is worth about 90 million dollars (and the buying power of a dollar is higher in 2123 than in 2023, so in 2023 dollars it would be closer to 360 million dollars a gram). At that price, even tiny amounts are worth seeking, even at the bottom of the ocean.

Various technologies have been developed, by 2123, to detect the presence of tiny amounts of orichalcum along the Ridge. The search for orichalcum is complicated by international tensions, shots have been exchanged at the bottom of the Atlantic over the stuff between national navies.

The only place where tiny amounts of orichalcum have been found that are more accessible is Iceland, where the Ridge actually emerges above the ocean locally. While this is a windfall and a problem at once for Iceland, it does little to slake the insatiable demand.

Phillipe Grayson was a skilled oceanic engineer and underwater miner, and also a natural risk-taker. Some also consider him one of the great con men of the twenty-second century. It occurred to Mr. Grayson that the Atlantic Ridge had been creating new oceanic crust since Pangaea began to break up, in the early Jurassic Period. Logically, Grayson concluded, since the Ridge had presumptively been seeping tiny amounts of orichalcum all along, the Atlantic seafloor ought to be dotted with tiny deposits of the stuff, all the way from the Ridge to the coasts.

Critics of Grayson pointed out that he had no way to know for sure if the Ridge had been producing orichalcum all that time, since the mechanisms behind the process were poorly understood anyway. But the sheer value of the material, and Grayson's entirely deserved reputation for professional competence, was sufficient for Grayson to raise money and bring in investors for the search.

The result was that a number of investors went broke, and Grayson ended up declaring bankruptcy and walking away with much of the value of the company. Lawsuits followed, but nobody was able to pin anything definite on Grayson, who by this point had decamped with his money to another jurisdiction and was unavailable to testify. By a peculiar coincidence, the same thing was true of the Federal judge who had presided over the aforementioned bankruptcy proceedings.

Subsequently, others tried to make the idea work, and with similar results. The techniques used to detect the presence of orichalcum at the Ridge turned out to be unworkable when the material was buried under many layers of sediment and ooze out on the abyssal plain. Even in 2123, working on the bottom of the Atlantic is a non-trivial matter, requiring skilled personnel and expensive equipment. Assuming the tiny deposits of orichalcum did exist, they would be worth seeking out even so...if one knew exactly where to find them. Absent that knowledge, the problem made finding a needle in a haystack look trivial. The Atlantic is vast, the hypothetical orichalcum deposits would be very tiny, and buried under layers of material on the abyssal plain.

Still, the lure of such potential wealth is strong. By 2123, Grayson's Theory is to dreamers what the gold dissolved in seawater was to dreamers a century and more earlier. More than a few con men and self-deceived visionaries have tried to make it work, the con men usually walking away with greater profits than the sincere visionaries.

But Grayson's Observation, in itself, might be true...and hope springs eternal...