DAY 120
NIGHT
The pressures of the mercurial time known as junior high are liable to make anyone memorize a cringe-inducing level of facts about mercury.
THE WHITE LOSER INN
ON THE FRONTIER
AMNESIA WAS THE TERM for a temporary memory loss caused by complications in the hippocampal formation. Amnesia patients typically regained their lost memories within twenty-four hours. So what was my excuse? I didn’t remember being cleaned up and having my clothes changed. Did I doze off in the bath or what? How’d I get back to my room, and why did I smell like soap and water? I would’ve asked the girls or the scythes, but the girls were busy in one of their meetings, and the scythes were having a sleepover with the orphans.
“If I’d known the demon scythes would’ve been so happy as humans, I’d have turned ’em long before we got home.”
I’d just been too preoccupied with other things, honestly. The cleanup and sorting work from the Theocracy was astronomical. I had relics galore, tomes aplenty, and enough gold and silver to sink a boat. I had also, of course, wiped the Cathedral workshops clean. The magical devices and doodads they’d cooked up there were nothing to write home about, but if nothing else, I could strip ’em for parts.
My Cathedral cache cataloguing turned up something new and cool: mercury!
“Mercury is a minor metal known for being liquid at room temperature. It plays a heavy role in both Western and Chinese esoteric alchemy. These days, its uses are typically limited to mirrors and thermometers, neither of which are any help to me, as I don’t have the foggiest how to treat glass with mercury. And if I made a thermometer, how would I ever be able to check if it was calibrated properly? And what would I even use it for?”
My Magic Threads and their supertechnological expertise could cut near perfectly flat metal and glass plates. Any imperfections were invisible to the naked eye; in fact, no air molecules could penetrate the plates. With such high precision manufacturing capability, why would I need mirrors?
“Although I’d make a pretty penny selling them… Assuming the girls buy as many mirrors as is humanly possible, how many would I need to make to satisfy the demand?”
Don’t get me wrong—I wanted to open mirror-producing workshops. But I was worried about the deadly poisonous metals usually utilized in mirror production: cadmium, arsenic, the works. Why did mercury have to be such a pretty color and yet so toxic?
Let’s talk mercury. Mercury was element number 80 on the periodic table. Good ol’ Hg. Since time immemorial, people have been fascinated by this strange metal. Up until modern science came about, alchemists couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Mercury formed the nexus of many an alchemical experiment because the alchemists believed mercury was the fundamental element of all other metals. If combined with the right metal, they believed, mercury could turn into gold. (That’s Au for all you chemistry nerds out there.)
“While alchemy has more than its fair share of occultism and woo-woo, we can consider it the precursor to modern chemistry. It’s a discipline of research and experimentation built upon sound philosophical principles. Then there’s Chinese alchemy and its own quest for immortality. Mercury plays an important role there too. Seems like every search for the elixir of life or godhood itself always leads back to mercury. Problem is, if mercury stops aging, no one’s ever lived long enough to find out.”
Yes, every ex-junior high cringelord worth his salt knew everything there was to know about this exciting element.
“The element symbol for mercury derives from the Latin hydrargyrum, with hydro meaning ‘water’ and argyrum meaning ‘silver.’ That’s because this lustrous liquid metal flows like water. Sometimes it’s called quicksilver, or living silver. Oh god, the cringe is real… I thought I’d grown out of this phase!”
Mercury was the only metal to be liquid at standard temperature and pressure. Its low melting point was derived from relativistic effects on its structure, as recent research has demonstrated. It has fascinated would-be scientists since the dawn of time, and would-be demon lords on junior high playgrounds since just about as long.
“To this day, the running joke among scientists is that once you start studying Hg, you can never put it down. If this lusciously lustrous liquid is charming such erudite figures as the scientific community, preteen boys don’t stand a chance. I’d bet my bottom dollar the nerds know just as much about it as I do.”
Anyhow, the high-density metal mercury had all sorts of practical applications, from measurement devices like thermometers and barometers to electronics like light switches, batteries, and light bulbs. The liquid in large-scale liquid mirror telescopes was mercury; furthermore, its use in chemical manufacturing and specifically electrolysis made it an extremely sought-after element. We should also not neglect to talk about its toxic properties.
“The phrase ‘as mad as a hatter’ has roots in mercury. The millinery industry once used mercury nitrate to treat fur, which led to many hatters developing mercury poisoning symptoms. While scientists and alchemists devoted further research into this ostensibly universal curative, the mercury worked its deadly neurotoxic magic. Let’s see now…”
Hg’s unique properties and extensive catalogue of uses earned it the moniker ‘the wonder element.’ Wonders, however, were not always positive. Mercury and its many compounds were all powerful neurotoxins. And, coincidentally, I’ve read that mercury was an essential component in hydrogen bombs.
“Mercury is hardly visible in daily life, and as such, many people don’t give mercury much thought. But it’s out there and around us in abundance! We find mercury in coal deposits, and when that coal is burned, mercury is released in gaseous form. Gaseous mercury is invisible, and like all gasses, it spreads in the atmosphere to cover all corners of the globe. So it’s a part of our lives, even if it doesn’t appear so at first glance.”
Some atmospheric gaseous mercury was deposited back into the ground when absorbed by trees and plants. Other mercury molecules were oxidized via photochemical reactions and returned to the environment as rain, which in turn collected in lakes, oceans, and surface runoff in our watersheds.