unforum

[J3tBl4ck]

[number9dream]

[European Chris]

Which in a way there were. They just couldn't mix a decent dry Martini.

[duckiemonster]

Pedants.

[cassandra]

My current theories as to what they're extracting are cobalt or gold.

Timeline's good for cobalt if they have a parallel history or if there's still Earth contact. The process for creating fulminating gold was known to alchemists at this time. Of course, we'll have to see if Granier reveals any sickness among the miners (not that their life expectancy exists beyond a year at this point anyway).

Here's some (no, really) wild spec: Vianne Adamek (or someone, but she's my current favorite) somehow preserved her sentience in the Cube, which is made of gold:
Gold because there was so little of it in the world - all at Viendenbourg, where the miners removed most -or all- of it, and others can't access it. Hence no one knows the properties of gold. Also, gold *is* ruined/affected by mercury and acetone, and the water bit can be interpreted not as H2O per se but aqua regia - the alchemical substance that dissolves gold. Also, there's no mention of what happened to Adamek and the Academy right after the War ended, which puzzles and disturbs me And there's that little mention of Adamek's mind (by Kermeen) sort of...still being in the Academy Of course, that could be a veiled 3P reference.

*edit* actually, I thought of another entertaining gold/Cube theory which seems to fit better, but it doesn't belong here. I'll add to another thread. Suffice to say that the Cube is reconstituted "high-spin" gold from the highly creative ORME theory, or it's a box itself (clathrate cage?) containing the powder ORMUS gold. Which is why no one can detect the properties. bah, I'm rambling.**end edit**


/spec

[Mikeyj]