The Alchemist of Gold
It is said that in the deepest recesses of this labyrinthine city, amid the dust of long-forgotten archives, dwelt a scribe named Aurelio. To others, he was known only for his days spent with yellowed pages and faded ink, yet none knew that he was not transcribing history, but pursuing a more ancient, more secret knowledge – the true essence of gold.
Not for wealth. Aurelio had no interest in the metal that glittered seductively in the marketplace; it was merely a crude projection of worldly desires. What he sought was the 'touchstone' that made gold gold – not a substance, but rather a concept, a forgotten rule of grammar, a metaphysical principle explaining how this inert metal could sway the rise and fall of empires and drive humanity to madness.
His clues came from an incomplete manuscript, attributed to an unknown disciple of Hermes Trismegistus, titled On the Transmutation of Essence. The book cryptically suggested that gold was not a fixed member of the periodic table, but rather a kind of 'fold in existence,' the universe's echo of the concept of 'value' within the human collective unconscious. It was not 'discovered,' but only acquired its dazzling attributes after being 'designated' and 'named.' In other words, humanity's craving for value, like a slow and continuous alchemy, ultimately transformed an unremarkable metal into the ultimate symbol of desire.
Aurelio's dwelling was less a room than a nest constructed of bookshelves and parchment scrolls. Its sole window overlooked an eternally congested street, where people hurried by, their faces etched with the anxiety of numbers and profit. The massive electronic screen of the exchange flickered day and night with the fluctuations in the price of gold, its pulsating digits seeming to possess life, commanding the city's very breath. Aurelio often stood at the window, observing the surging crowd below as they scrambled for, hoarded, and worshipped countless replicas of the dull, lusterless nugget of natural gold on his desk—said to have been taken from an ancient lode. He felt a profound absurdity, a Kafkaesque dislocation: the entire world was frenzied over a symbol, yet no one probed the meaning behind it, like a congregation worshipping an empty shrine.
Guided by the incomplete manuscript, Aurelio began his 'experiments.' He used no crucibles or flames; his tools were language, symbols, and the fragments of history. He collected myths about gold, poems, legal codes from different civilizations, attempting to decode from them the 'grammar' that forcibly bound matter to value. He discovered that in certain ancient languages, the root word for 'gold' was closely linked to 'light,' 'the sacred,' 'power,' and even 'fear.' Value, it seemed, was not inherent in the gold itself, but rather applied to the metal's surface like an invisible glaze, through language and narrative.
As his research deepened, however, the chain of logic began to reveal unsettling loops. If the value of gold stemmed from human consensus, from what did this consensus arise? From gold's rarity and stability? But were not this rarity and stability themselves the result of having been 'selected' and imbued with meaning by humanity? He felt trapped in an Escher-esque loop, or perhaps, a Borges-esque library built of ideas, where every book explained another, yet the first volume remained elusive.
As time went on, Aurelio's behavior grew increasingly eccentric. He ceased all communication with others, subsisting solely on dry bread and water. His room became buried under papers covered in strange symbols and logical deductions, resembling the scribblings of a mad mathematician. He came to believe that if he could only find that initial act of 'naming,' the 'genesis moment' that endowed gold with value, he could reverse the process and return gold to its essential meaninglessness as mere metal. The thought both thrilled and terrified him. If he succeeded, would the world's economic system instantly collapse? Would human society descend into chaos? Or would nothing happen at all, because this 'value' was already too deeply ingrained in human existence itself to be stripped away?
One deep night, it is said, a rare thunderstorm struck the city. When the caretaker pushed open Aurelio's door the next morning, he found only papers scattered across the floor and the window left open, overlooking the rain-washed, still-bustling street below. Aurelio had vanished, as if he had never existed.
Some said he had gone mad and thrown himself from the window. Others whispered he had found the secret and been 'erased' by some ancient organization guarding it. Yet another speculation, more aligned with the logic of the incomplete manuscript, suggested that Aurelio might have actually succeeded. In the very instant he grasped the essence of gold's value, his own existence lost its anchor of 'value,' like a deleted word, dissipating beyond the framework of meaning, returning to a certain ineffable 'void.'
Afterwards, the price of gold continued to fluctuate, the screens of the exchange still flickered, and people remained captivated by the golden metal, their dreams and desires bound to it. Only, in some obscure corner of the city, the eccentric scribe Aurelio would occasionally be mentioned, like recalling a half-forgotten dream. Those who spoke of him did not know that the gold they chased, cherished, lived and died for, might merely be an ancient and colossal misunderstanding—a magnificent yet hollow labyrinth unintentionally constructed by countless nameless 'Aurelios' throughout the river of history. And the true alchemist, perhaps, is not the one who transmutes stone into gold, but the one who dares to gaze into the abyss and question the value of value itself, even if the ultimate answer is the void, or their own self-annihilation.