Use the philosopher's stone for maximum goodness

[Yllaria]

My immediate thought was that this would be a great way to decrease excavation costs. Teleport the soil in batches to a nearby hopper, shift to sweet crude, open valve and fill tanker truck. It would work for street excavations and would be even better for leaking underground fuel tank cleanups. Disposing of contaminated soil is more expensive than disposing of clean fill.

And I’d have to charge because otherwise I’d be undercutting established businesses and workers, not to mention making it less costly to pollute. See, it would be good to charge.

Of course I’d need to do a little of the something to gold thing to cover the up-front costs of the hopper, tank trucks, drivers, office expenses, and the gps unit for the hopper. Or maybe a gps unit for the tank that the crude is to be delivered to. That would cut out the trucks and the drivers and save the gas and pollution associated with transporting the crude.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Yllaria

My immediate thought was that this would be a great way to decrease excavation costs. Teleport the soil in batches to a nearby hopper, shift to sweet crude, open valve and fill tanker truck.

I checked my OP, and it says that the teleportation function only works on you, your clothing, the stone itself, and matter the stone has already been used on. Which is not to say that your plan doesn’t work, just that you have the steps in the wrong order.

And I’d have to charge because otherwise I’d be undercutting established businesses and workers, not to mention making it less costly to pollute. See, it would be good to charge.

I quite agree. Not charging only SOUNDS good. A better approach might be a sliding scale; you’ll fix sites for corporate robber barons at a quite expensive rate, but go cheap (or even pro bono) when the benefactees cannot afford to pay.

Of course I’d need to do a little of the something to gold thing to cover the up-front costs of the hopper, tank trucks, drivers, office expenses, and the gps unit for the hopper. Or maybe a gps unit for the tank that the crude is to be delivered to. That would cut out the trucks and the drivers and save the gas and pollution associated with transporting the crude.

Or you could transmute the polluted soil into gold, silver, or whatnot. I should also think you’d want to vary the commodities you’re creating so as to avoid

[The_Scrivener]

Would there be a way to transform carcinomas, brain plaques, cataracts, etc. into harmless water? Although this would play havoc with established hospitals, surgeons, etc.

Also, I think there’s some plutonium cores in nuclear weapons and similar materials in the likes of North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, and Russia I’d like to see turned into water.

[OtakuLoki]

@The_Scrivener

Also, I think there’s some plutonium cores in nuclear weapons and similar materials in the likes of North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, and Russia I’d like to see turned into water.

Emphasis added.
I really, really hope that you’ll also disarm the Indian nuclear arsenal if you remove Pakistan’s. At this point, I’m not too impressed with the sanity of either polity over the issue of the Kashmir, and I think that some of the rhetoric I’ve seen reported from the Indian side of that mess leaves me thinking that Pakistan has a more pointed need for a nuclear arsenal than many other countries.

[The_Scrivener]

@OtakuLoki

Emphasis added.
I really, really hope that you’ll also disarm the Indian nuclear arsenal if you remove Pakistan’s. At this point, I’m not too impressed with the sanity of either polity over the issue of the Kashmir, and I think that some of the rhetoric I’ve seen reported from the Indian side of that mess leaves me thinking that Pakistan has a more pointed need for a nuclear arsenal than many other countries.

Fair point.
You know that so-called sea of plastic that’s in perpetual circulation in the middle of the Pacific? I’d think that’s a natural for conversion into water… but would physical proximity to the plastic bits be required? Could one wish oneself into a hover over the ocean, fly around for a few hours at high speed, converting all the plastic, and zip back to Honolulu for lunch?

[Illuminatiprimus]

@The_Scrivener

Would there be a way to transform carcinomas, brain plaques, cataracts, etc. into harmless water? Although this would play havoc with established hospitals, surgeons, etc.

The OP says it only works on inorganic matter.

[Aestivalis]

@Illuminatiprimus

The OP says it only works on inorganic matter.

That actually makes things tricky. Most soil would contain some organic matter (think of all the little bugs and worms!) as does your light sweet crude (as a hydrocarbon, it would be considered an organic compound). Pure Chemical Element is tricky as well, since some elements are pretty reactive in their pure states, and many elements we’re familiar with (oxygen, hydrogen, etc) normally come in a compound state (H2, O2). How about isotopes, do we get those?

Another thing to be picky about is the line of sight provision. How large a block of material can you work with underground?

My guess would be that it’d be pretty tough to make a big difference without having to do it anonymously, since you’d get yourself killed pretty quick otherwise. Being anonymous (and invisible) pretty much means you have to do things yourself, and not rely on any organization backing you.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Aestivalis

That actually makes things tricky. Most soil would contain some organic matter (think of all the little bugs and worms!) as does your light sweet crude (as a hydrocarbon, it would be considered an organic compound). Pure Chemical Element is tricky as well, since some elements are pretty reactive in their pure states, and many elements we’re familiar with (oxygen, hydrogen, etc) normally come in a compound state (H2, O2). How about isotopes, do we get those?

Glancing at the owner’s manual again, I see that I misconstrued the limitations when I wrote “organic.” Let’s say “living” instead–in the sense that if you try to transmute living matter, it’s not gonna be living once you’re done with it; and if you accidentally kill something with the stone, you can’t bring it back. For things like that you need the Philosopher’s Stone Premium, and you only have the basic, and, as said above, no product key, so MagicSoft ain’t gonna help.

The line of sight provision Another thing to be picky about is the line of sight provision. How large a block of material can you work with underground?

Let’s say 2 cubic miles is the maximum area the transmutation effect can work on at a time, and 8 miles is the maximum linear range.

As for the line of sight provision, let’s say this:

You can tell the stone to transmute everything within coordinates X, Y, & Z into a given element, as long as you can see at least one of those points. So if you want to turn the chair in your living to solid gold, but nothing else, you have to be able to see the chair. On the other hand, if you want to turn the whole house and its contents to gold, you can, as long as you’re outside.

Thinking about it, I think that rules out Philosoper Stone surgery.

My guess would be that it’d be pretty tough to make a big difference without having to do it anonymously, since you’d get yourself killed pretty quick otherwise. Being anonymous (and invisible) pretty much means you have to do things yourself, and not rely on any organization backing you.

I think that step one has to be amassing enough boodle to build yourself a secret lair accessible only by teleportation.

No, scratch that. Step one is getting a strap for the stone.

[Civil_Guy]

@Aestivalis

… Pure Chemical Element is tricky as well, since some elements are pretty reactive in their pure states, and many elements we’re familiar with (oxygen, hydrogen, etc) normally come in a compound state (H2, O2) …

That’s sort of what I was thinking, along with the idea of mass-production of nanotubes and the like. While H2 and O2 are not strictly elemental (I think?), are they permitted? If not, the trick would be, say, to safely turn a batch of monatomic hydrogen into H2. Get rid of some of the most egregious pollution and produce some clean fuel in the process. All good.

Regardless, got to be cautious about this sort of thing - start small, stay under the radar screen, and watch out for unintended consequences.

And how do we use any of this to further the fight against ignorance… hmmm…

[Autolycus]

Can I use the stone for great justice?

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Autolycus

Can I use the stone for great justice?

Sure, as long as you’re willing to get bit in the ass by the consequences.

@Civil_Guy

That’s sort of what I was thinking, along with the idea of mass-production of nanotubes and the like. While H2 and O2 are not strictly elemental (I think?), are they permitted? If not, the trick would be, say, to safely turn a batch of monatomic hydrogen into H2. Get rid of some of the most egregious pollution and produce some clean fuel in the process. All good.

I’m fairly sure MagicSoft will have programmed the Stone to interpret a command of “convert x kilos of sand to x kilos of oxygen” to mean “x kilos of O2” – in other words, elements are going to be created in their most stable natural form.

Somebody above asked about isotopes. I’d bet that if you’d have to specify which you wanted, otherwise the product you got would be a mixture in whatever proportions are typically found in nature.

@Civil_Guy

Regardless, got to be cautious about this sort of thing - start small, stay under the radar screen, and watch out for unintended consequences.

Particularly in making commodities you intend to use, as opposed to just getting rid of pollution or such.

@Civil_Guy

And how do we use any of this to further the fight against ignorance… hmmm…

:: shrug ::

It’s not winnable anyway.

[Sleel]

Is the interface verbal, mental, or what? Do I just think what I want to do? Does it store information for me? Is it heavy? Can I comfortably carry it around everywhere in my pocket, or on a lanyard around my neck or something?

Can the stone be keyed to me, or can anyone use it? If it’s still set to login: admin, password: password, can I set a root password, or link it to me personally in some way? That would make some nice insurance so that whoever finds out about it doesn’t try to kill me and take it for themselves. I’m assuming that the stone would keep said immoral individual or organization from doing anything nasty with the stone itself even after I was eliminated, but that would be cold comfort for my corpse. Personality keying or something similar would help keep them from torturing me for the code, so I’d like that if possible.

Can I set up auto programming, so that incoming masses above a certain velocity in a radius of, say, 5 meters, get transmuted to oxygen? Or can I set up pattern recognition so that weapons, harmful substances, etc. get automatically transmuted to something harmless? Same thing with the teleportation; can I set hotkeys so that I’ve got pre-programmed jumps to several different locations? I’m a little nervous about preserving the integrity of my precious skin and bodily fluids, and paranoid enough to think of all kinds of ways that others could find around the minimal protections laid out already.

Oh yeah, how good is the cloaking? Is it selective, i.e. can I get it to cloak itself independent of me so that I can appear to not have it but be normally visible? Proof against sight and surveillance equipment, but how about sound, touch, infrared detection, ultraviolet, background x-ray scatter, etc? Can I set the cloaking and forget it, or does it go off after a certain amount of time? The best way to keep the stone from getting stolen or from people trying to force me to use it for their purposes is to keep them from knowing that I’ve got it. Plus, I’m thinking that I’ve got to be able to sleep sometime, and if the cloaking is not pretty darn foolproof I’m eventually going to get caught that way.

Anyway, I think — I think! — we may just have solved that pesky energy problem. Until we figure out how fusion works well enough to get a sustainable and productive reaction (should be any half-century now :dubious:) I could use the stone to transmute radioactive isotopes to something useful, and if anyone needs feedstock, I can provide whatever amount they need from a similar mass of garbage, toxic waste, or other pile-o-useless-crap; no need for mining and centrifuging. Until we get better methods of making fuel cells, I could provide the platinum or palladium needed for the ones we’ve got now, solving the materials bottleneck that’s part of what keeps them from being widespread.

Like Civil Guy said, converting a bunch of the excess CO[sub]2[/sub] and other toxic substances into something else would be helpful. The problem there is that if you just start doing it secretly, you “confirm” the ideas of the people who think that global warming is not man-made, and everyone keeps on using fossil fuels and trashing the environment since it’s “not hurting as much as we thought”.

I think the first step would be to get some money together, enough to start up a small company, and start with some kind of waste processing. That would provide a feed of raw materials and money to invest in a “mining” operation that could front for some modest production of valuable metals. Start small and work up, with a mix of legitimate and dummy corporations to conceal what’s actually going on. Here I’m assuming that the government would disappear an individual who had the kind of capabilities I’d have to demonstrate if I did this openly. If I work through organizations I could slowly work on the things I really wanted to change.

I could pay myself a decent stipend from blind trusts connected to my various businesses. I’m not so altruistic as to work for nothing, but I’m not anywhere near greedy enough to want to grab it all for myself. Besides, this kind of thing is probably within the parameters of what the stone will allow and gives me the means to keep up with my work full-time. I could make sure the companies invest in the kind of technologies I want to encourage. Since I can make money from practically anything, I’d eventually have lots of financial resources to throw at sticky problems, though I obviously couldn’t work on really large-scale projects. Doesn’t seem to matter much though, some of the best work seems to come from either small companies with an overriding vision or research teams with good minds and moderate resources given a challenge to overcome.

The real challenge is information. Without getting involved with a major government, probably the US, I’ll probably never have access to the information I need to do really cool stuff like strategic disarmament. It would be a real shame if warlords found sand in place of cordite in all their ammunition, and their explosives turned literally into air. Oops, I guess your missiles won’t fire because their fuel is inert now, and the fissile material you had painstakingly stockpiled is now plain old iron. Bummer, dudes.

On the other hand, governments don’t seem to be all that good at the intelligence gathering sometimes, so maybe I can do some of that in a few years, given the kind of resources I should be able to scrape together. Secrecy would have to be the watchword for my activities, or I’d end up starting more wars than I prevented, and probably get myself killed in the process.

Or, instead of all the sneaking around, I can arrange a press conference and give a live demonstration of my transmutation abilities, keeping the stone itself and the cloaking, teleportation and other capabilities secret, because while transmutation is scary enough the other stuff would be more than enough to have the black helicopters on their way in minutes. Plus, see above paranoia and desire for backup insurance. I could declare myself to be politically neutral, ask to be put under UN protection, and start doing some of the things I outlined above, but a hell of a lot faster due to international cooperation.

I’d probably never have to worry about making a living and could concentrate solely on altruism, but the drawback to this approach is that I’d be internationally famous and never have any privacy ever again, along with needing ridiculous amounts of security to keep me from getting nabbed by nefarious nogoodniks in private and government sectors who might not believe that I can’t do anything for personal gain — mine or another person’s — or who might not like the idea that I can probably just poof-disappear their nuclear warheads if I get the coordinates.

[tirial]

Set up a recycling plant for old PCs and other junk, possibly along with a mining operation as a cover.
Convert to a careful selection of valuable / useful metals.
Sell metals.
Put funds into a Charitable Trust to promote good causes.
Create “free” pencillin and work with a local drug company to get it into the healthcare system and slash the NHS costs.

Carefully consider knocking the bottom out of the Coltan mineral market, since it is responsible for so much unrest in the areas affected. Any profits go into said Trust.

See about ways to support R&D companies - I’ve got one stone, and am one person. If they can make advances, they can help many more in a repeatable fashion.

Cloaking and Teleporting? Line of site transmutation? How evil does someone have to be before killing them (turning to stone) is a good act?

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

Sleel, you put a llllllooooottttt of thought into your post. I’ll try to be worthy in my response.

@Sleel

Is the interface verbal, mental, or what? Do I just think what I want to do? Does it store information for me? Is it heavy? Can I comfortably carry it around everywhere in my pocket, or on a lanyard around my neck or something?

I imagine the stone as being about the size & mass of a Blackberry. The interface is mental, but you must be holding it in your hand (gloves are permissable.)

Can the stone be keyed to me, or can anyone use it? If it’s still set to login: admin, password: password, can I set a root password, or link it to me personally in some way? That would make some nice insurance so that whoever finds out about it doesn’t try to kill me and take it for themselves. I’m assuming that the stone would keep said immoral individual or organization from doing anything nasty with the stone itself even after I was eliminated, but that would be cold comfort for my corpse. Personality keying or something similar would help keep them from torturing me for the code, so I’d like that if possible.

Well, it’s a consumer product from MagicSoft, and the limitations I described in the OP are, except for the moral limitations, mostly like the difference between Windows Vista Basic & Vista Premium. So yes, I imagine you can give a root password.

I don’t think that’d keep you from being killed for it, though. I think the average Black Ops agent, mob boss, or terrorist is not going to believe the stone can only be used only for beneficent purposes and is going to judge anyone who has it is too dangerous to confront directly–so if they try to take it at all, they’re going to go for a long distance kill shot.

Can I set up auto programming, so that incoming masses above a certain velocity in a radius of, say, 5 meters, get transmuted to oxygen? Or can I set up pattern recognition so that weapons, harmful substances, etc. get automatically transmuted to something harmless?Hmm… I’d bet that autoprogramming like Same thing with the teleportation; can I set hotkeys so that I’ve got pre-programmed jumps to several different locations? I’m a little nervous about preserving the integrity of my precious skin and bodily fluids, and paranoid enough to think of all kinds of ways that others could find around the minimal protections laid out already.

Had I thought of the autoprogramming option that you mention in the first sentence above, I’d have written that MagicSoft put stuff like that in the Premium edition you can’t access. But I didn’t, so I’ll say yeah, all that is possible. But I think most of it is obviated by the cloaking & teleportation features. And I wouldn’t trust the Stone to protect me against poisons in any event; That’s too broad a category.

Oh yeah, how good is the cloaking? Is it selective, i.e. can I get it to cloak itself independent of me so that I can appear to not have it but be normally visible? Proof against sight and surveillance equipment, but how about sound, touch, infrared detection, ultraviolet, background x-ray scatter, etc? Can I set the cloaking and forget it, or does it go off after a certain amount of time? The best way to keep the stone from getting stolen or from people trying to force me to use it for their purposes is to keep them from knowing that I’ve got it. Plus, I’m thinking that I’ve got to be able to sleep sometime, and if the cloaking is not pretty darn foolproof I’m eventually going to get caught that way.

I think I wrote somewhere above that among the first things you must do is make a lair–actually a series of lairs–that can be accessed quickly only through teleportation. Since nothing prevents you from using the teleportation and invisibility in concert, you’d want to always go invisible first, teleport second, and never hint to anyone that you can 'port.

Or, instead of all the sneaking around, I can arrange a press conference and give a live demonstration of my transmutation abilities, keeping the stone itself and the cloaking, teleportation and other capabilities secret, because while transmutation is scary enough the other stuff would be more than enough to have the black helicopters on their way in minutes. Plus, see above paranoia and desire for backup insurance. I could declare myself to be politically neutral, ask to be put under UN protection, and start doing some of the things I outlined above, but a hell of a lot faster due to international cooperation.

I suspect the KNOWLEDGE that anyone has the ability to do unlimited transmutation would be nearly as disruptive to the world economy as the current housing crisis. It makes gold worthless.

Honestly, I think I’d look up someone altruistic, brilliant, and already wealthy beyond dreams of avarice – say Warren Buffett – reveal my powers to HIM ALONE, and get his advice.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@tirial

Cloaking and Teleporting? Line of site transmutation? How evil does someone have to be before killing them (turning to stone) is a good act?

You’d have to ask the Stone, of course, but I wouldn’t trust that repeated inquiries in such an area wouldn’t trip a security measure. It’d be like opening threads in Cafe Society on downloading free movies.

[Sleel]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

Sleel, you put a llllllooooottttt of thought into your post. I’ll try to be worthy in my response.

Gee, can you tell I read a lot of SF and have written some short stories of my own? I’d love to know how this sucker powers itself or effects the transmutation (probably one and the same) but I’ll leave that as an unsolved mystery. I’m sure as heck not going to try to take it apart to see how it works.

I imagine the stone as being about the size & mass of a Blackberry. The interface is mental, but you must be holding it in your hand (gloves are permissable.)

Cool, then I can make myself a gauntlet or something, or just stick it in my pocket, and not have to really worry too much about the weight and bulk. I never want to have it be inaccessible, so some kind of custom carry with skin contact might be necessary.

How tough is this thing? Is it like regular consumer electronics, to the point where I’m going to have to worry about getting it wet or dropping it off the table, or is it on the ruggedized end of things, i.e. waterproof and reasonably shock-proof, though it would be inadvisable to play catch with it? I guess it’s probably too much to hope that it has an unobtainium case with a transparent aluminum display.

Well, it’s a consumer product from MagicSoft, and the limitations I described in the OP are, except for the moral limitations, mostly like the difference between Windows Vista Basic & Vista Premium. So yes, I imagine you can give a root password.

<sigh> Well, I guess it was too much to hope that it would be a semi-intelligent security system, but giving it a password would help. I could see if it has options for challenge protocols, so that if the wrong password is given it will teleport itself to a prearranged location, with or without me. That should be possible considering that most computers can be set to lock out access or run a macro triggered by a failed password attempt. At least then I can set up a backup plan and disaster protocol in case I’m, er, incapacitated or dead. Too bad I don’t have an honorable nemesis to bestow this mess on if I snuff it.

I don’t think that’d keep you from being killed for it, though. I think the average Black Ops agent, mob boss, or terrorist is not going to believe the stone can only be used only for beneficent purposes and is going to judge anyone who has it is too dangerous to confront directly–so if they try to take it at all, they’re going to go for a long distance kill shot.

Had I thought of the autoprogramming option that you mention in the first sentence above, I’d have written that MagicSoft put stuff like that in the Premium edition you can’t access. But I didn’t, so I’ll say yeah, all that is possible. But I think most of it is obviated by the cloaking & teleportation features. And I wouldn’t trust the Stone to protect me against poisons in any event; That’s too broad a category.

The kill shot is what I was thinking of when I mentioned the high-velocity masses. A mass of nitrogen moving at 1000+ fps would barely be felt at a couple of meters distance as it dissipated into the air. I’m sure that if they tested enough they’d find something that would work, that was outside the parameters I set up, but the first attempts with regular rifles or tranq darts would let me know that they were at that stage already. Between invisibility, teleportation, martial arts training, and the abrogation of projectile weapons (by other people; I’d program it to allow me to carry and fire my own weapon ;)) I’d have a pretty decent chance of not getting killed or taken in most conceivable circumstances.

Yeah, I know that there are way too many bioactive substances that could have an effect, but setting up protections against the most common ones would help. At least most of the gasses would be nullified if I can set it to sample the air on a regular basis.

I think I wrote somewhere above that among the first things you must do is make a lair–actually a series of lairs–that can be accessed quickly only through teleportation. Since nothing prevents you from using the teleportation and invisibility in concert, you’d want to always go invisible first, teleport second, and never hint to anyone that you can 'port.

Setting up safe points and a pre-programmed jump to a trauma hospital are very good ideas. The problem with both invisibility and teleportation is that you need privacy to do either without accidentally revealing that you can do that. And really, one looks like the other. Simply disappearing would make onlookers suspect either/or was possible and they’d try to guard against both. Given the sophistication of surveillance equipment, it would be very hard to know for sure that I was ever actually unobserved, and so I’d have to use either of those abilities only in emergencies, or cloak in a secure location and never drop it when I went out.

Even then, I’d probably have to be paranoid about picking up tracking devices or leaving traces. Call me devious, but if I were trying to catch someone who could slip surveillance like nothing, I’d probably set up a trap meant to mark him with something, or force him to leave traces that could be analyzed. Coating all surfaces in the target area with a mildly radioactive dust, distributing electronic micro-tags that might be picked up on a shoe tread without notice, or simply find something that caused footprints to show up would nullify the invisibility, reveal the teleportation ability, and make capture easier even if it wasn’t possible with that trap.

I suspect the KNOWLEDGE that anyone has the ability to do unlimited transmutation would be nearly as disruptive to the world economy as the current housing crisis. It makes gold worthless.

Honestly, I think I’d look up someone altruistic, brilliant, and already wealthy beyond dreams of avarice – say Warren Buffett – reveal my powers to HIM ALONE, and get his advice.

That is a good point. It would probably be a good idea to downplay the extent of your abilities by saying that you can only output a few different substances, or even just one, say, turning anything into water, but you “can’t” do gold, etc. Besides, if the morality circuits on the stone are relatively intelligent, it may not allow you to transmute sufficient amounts of anything that would significantly disrupt world economies.

The second is also a good idea. I didn’t mention it, but I would most definitely make finding a trustworthy advisor like Buffett a top priority. I have no illusions about my ability to run businesses the way I’d need to get the secret scenario working properly.

[tirial]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

You’d have to ask the Stone, of course, but I wouldn’t trust that repeated inquiries in such an area wouldn’t trip a security measure. It’d be like opening threads in Cafe Society on downloading free movies.

What about the movies made for free distribution?

Seriously if there are a few people out there the world would be a better place without, you could start with the worst (those likely to kill millions) and when the stone fails the first time you know you’ve reached the limit and stop trying.

Of course, if the stone comes with an operator’s manual, or you can ask it basic questions, getting a rough idea of the limits before you try it shouldn’t be that hard.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Sleel

How tough is this thing? Is it like regular consumer electronics, to the point where I’m going to have to worry about getting it wet or dropping it off the table, or is it on the ruggedized end of things, i.e. waterproof and reasonably shock-proof, though it would be inadvisable to play catch with it? I guess it’s probably too much to hope that it has an unobtainium case with a transparent aluminum display.

MagicSoft isn’t THAT cheap. Clearly it’s an unobtainium & transparent aluminum.

<sigh> Well, I guess it was too much to hope that it would be a semi-intelligent
Setting up safe points and a pre-programmed jump to a trauma hospital are very good ideas. The problem with both invisibility and teleportation is that you need privacy to do either without accidentally revealing that you can do that. And really, one looks like the other. Simply disappearing would make onlookers suspect either/or was possible and they’d try to guard against both. Given the sophistication of surveillance equipment, it would be very hard to know for sure that I was ever actually unobserved, and so I’d have to use either of those abilities only in emergencies, or cloak in a secure location and never drop it when I went out.

Even then, I’d probably have to be paranoid about picking up tracking devices or leaving traces. Call me devious, but if I were trying to catch someone who could slip surveillance like nothing, I’d probably set up a trap meant to mark him with something, or force him to leave traces that could be analyzed. Coating all surfaces in the target area with a mildly radioactive dust, distributing electronic micro-tags that might be picked up on a shoe tread without notice, or simply find something that caused footprints to show up would nullify the invisibility, reveal the teleportation ability, and make capture easier even if it wasn’t possible with that trap.

I think I’d have decided, very early on, to NEVER use the Stone’s transmutation abilities unless cloaked, and to generally arrive at thhe spot I’m going to transmute by teleportation.

Honestly, I think the main use I’d put the Stone to is building capital for a dummy corporation–probably a series of them, in fact-- that hire on to do the good works without ever admitting how they’re done.

[Malacandra]

@Civil_Guy

That’s sort of what I was thinking, along with the idea of mass-production of nanotubes and the like. While H2 and O2 are not strictly elemental (I think?), are they permitted?

(They are the pure element. The natural state for a number of elements is two-atom molecules - merely being molecular is no disqualification from being elemental. And the natural state for a mass of elemental metal is even less “atomised” since there are a bunch of electrons not especially bound to any one nucleus. One allotropic form of sulphur is S[sub]8[/sub]. Pretty much the only elements that are monotomic to any meaningful extent are the noble gases.)