SEE HERES THE THING

IT CAN

ALCHEMISTS HAVE HADRON COLLIDERS NOW

It has happened Anon

Hold up, you didn’t highlight that last part? The part about how Soviets ACCIDENTALLY Turned lead shielding into gold with an experimental nuclear reactor???

There is a ‘however’, however.

Due to the processes used, the resultant Gold is usually highly radioactive.

Or, if you prefer to use a more, arcane, vernacular, Cursed!

YOURE JUST JEALOUS OF MY MICRON THIN LAYER OF FRESHLY TRANSMUTED GOLD

It also cost more to power up the reactor long enough to make the gold than the gold is remotely worth.

HEY THE TASK WAS “TRANSMUTE GOLD” NOBODY EVER SAID IT HAD TO BE COST EFFECTIVE

(chortle) Somebody remind me which SF writer, years and YEARS back, suggested that the reason possession of fairy gold was deadly was exactly for this reason…?

Closest I know of isn’t fairy or transmuted gold, but Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions had the “curse” on plunderers of a sun-struck giant be the result of the carbon in the giant turning into radioactive silicon and irradiating anyone who went near enough to take the giant’s gold.

el dorado, labeled THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR