The Midas Code

As she washed her hands in front of the mirror, she didn’t like the defeated look of the woman staring back at her. It wasn’t the wet, bedraggled hair and the lack of makeup that bothered her. She’d looked worse on many episodes of her show, and viewers seemed to like her willingness to reveal that TV hosts actually sweat and get dirty. But she prided herself on keeping a positive attitude at all times on camera, and at the moment she looked anything but positive.

She took a deep breath and stood straighter. Orr wasn’t going to beat her that easily. She was taking back control. When she returned to their seats, she found Tyler putting his phone away.

“Any news?” Stacy asked.

“That was Gordian’s president, Miles Benson,” Tyler said. “He had lunch with my father.”

“Today? When was your father kidnapped?”

“Must have been right after that. I asked Miles if anything unusual happened. He said my dad was called away on urgent business by an Army officer, but he didn’t get a good look at who it was. He’s going to question the staff discreetly and fly back here this evening.”

Stacy leaned toward him, her elbows on her knees, a pose she often took when her production crew was brainstorming ideas for upcoming episodes.

“The question is, how are we going to play along with Orr?” she said. “The Midas Touch is a Greek fable. To consider it a true story is ridiculous.”

“Sometimes legends have a basis in reality,” Tyler said with a faraway look.

“True. Some scholars believe Midas was a real person. There’s speculation that he was a king in Phrygia-part of modern-day Turkey-although he wasn’t born there.”

“Where was he from?”

“Some stories say Macedonia. Some say even farther away. No one really knows. But they say that Midas arrived as the son of a peasant at the exact moment that an oracle prophesied that the next leader of Phrygia would appear on a humble wagon. They dubbed Midas’s father king on the spot.”

“Lucky him.”

“And you’ll like this: the king’s name was Gordias. When Midas succeeded his father as king, he dedicated the wagon to Zeus for bringing him this good fortune and declared that whoever could untie the fiendishly complicated knot on its yoke would rule all Asia.”

“You’re talking about the Gordian knot. Alexander the Great was the one who solved the puzzle. Except he simply cut it instead of trying to untie it.”

Stacy smiled. “I assume your company Gordian Engine ering is named for the Gordian knot.”

“It is. The seemingly unsolvable problem with a bold solution. But I didn’t know that Midas was the one who’d tied it.”

“You learn something new every day. That’s why I love my job.”

“What happened to Midas?”

“No one knows, but there are several theories. One is that he’s buried in Turkey. Someone even claims to have found his tomb. Another theory is that he was driven out by invading Persians. The myth says that Midas offended one of the gods and was afflicted with the ears of a donkey for his crime. He fled Phrygia in shame and was never heard from again.”

“All of that makes for a great story,” Tyler said, “but you’re right that the part about the Midas Touch is absurd. Alchemists have tried to create their own version of the Midas Touch for centuries by transmuting lead into gold. They failed every time, because it’s physically impossible.”

Stacy hadn’t taken a science course since high school, so her grasp of chemistry was rudimentary at best.

“Why is it impossible?” she asked. “Maybe it’s some hidden formula that we’ve never found.”

Tyler laughed. “Unless the hidden formula involves a fission reaction, it won’t work.”

“Fission as in nuclear?”

“Lead has a higher atomic weight than gold, meaning it has more protons, so the only way lead can become gold is if it sheds protons. Removing protons from an atom’s nucleus is the definition of a nuclear reaction. I suppose you could accomplish that in a nuclear reactor, but it would be so expensive it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.”

“So you think Orr is crazy?”

“Certifiable if he believes in magic.”

“I can see why he wants you in on this. You built the geolabe. But why me? There are a thousand other PhD classicists out there.”

“My humanities studies weren’t a real priority in college,” Tyler said. “What are Classics, exactly?”

“The study of classical Greece and Rome.”

“Which is why you know Greek. Latin, too?”

“I got my undergraduate degree in linguistics. I’m fluent in Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and German.”

Tyler whistled. “That’s amazing. I wish I knew some foreign languages. Just don’t have a knack for it, I guess. Unless you count ASL. My grandmother was deaf. I also taught it to Grant.”

“Sign language counts,” Stacy said, “but I can’t sign. Just verbal languages.”

“So why Classics?”