I don't like it, Master Richie. I don’t like it at all. Aside from industrial application, gems have no intrinsic value; we ascribe monetary meaning to them because they have aesthetic and cultural worth. Part of their mystique comes from their scarcity, or at least the illusion of scarcity. Sometimes this is the result of cartel propaganda; sometimes it’s due to the difficulty of extracting the item.

So if you can make them out of chemicals you’re ruining it for everyone who bought his wife an expensive diamond. And you’re certainly ruining it for the gem cartels.

I’m sure his father knew this, and when her saw what his son had done he crossed the lab in three strides and flung his arm across the lab table. But he kept the notes, just in case. It wasn’t that he wanted to make diamonds in the lab. There was the side effect of breathing the fumes of the process: levitation.