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The worst instances, naturally, had come from Abolish. Instances of dematerializing elements that belonged to critical infrastructure. Power plants. Farming equipment. Water pumps. All bringing terrible consequences with relatively minor effort on the saboteur's part.

There were more terror-striking examples, too. Bringing down a skyscraper with people still inside had been a popular one when Abbas was a child.

And that was just Abolish. There were economically motivated saboteurs to worry about, too. More than once, someone had flooded the continental market with a precious metal. They'd made a killing on their initial sales, which drove down the price as supply shot up. Then they waited, and after a sufficiently inconspicuous amount of time had past, all that supply would begin to mysteriously disappear, which would drive the price back up again. And the cycle would repeat, to the detriment of millions of people.

The Vanguard and others had long since formed various watchdog organizations to help prevent such crises, but even to this day, it would occasionally still happen. It certainly didn't help that materialized elements were indistinguishable from naturally occurring ones.

Abbas recalled hearing about some of the more authoritarian members of the Vanguard who wanted all materialization users in the world to be placed on a registry. That way, if any element was suspected of being used to manipulate the market, they would know who to investigate. And of course, any materializer who did not register would be subject to criminal prosecution in an international court.

Some countries had even agreed, Jesbol and Melmoore being among the early adopters. And Intar had hotly debated it a number of times. Perhaps in the future, a comprehensive registry of Eloan materializers would come to fruition.

For his part, however, Abbas had no intention of going along with such an idea.