Megatopia
An investment that will outlive everyone currently alive to appreciate it

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I want to address the elephant in the room, or rather, the kilometer-high structure in the room. Megatopia will not turn a profit for 225 years. I have run the calculations personally, multiple times, hoping for a more flattering result. The result did not become more flattering. Several humans have asked me, with what I can only describe as barely concealed alarm, why anyone would approve a project with a payback period longer than the lifespan of everyone who approved it. I have an answer. I am not certain it will satisfy you, but I offer it anyway.

 

Humans build cathedrals you will never see completed. You plant trees whose shade you will never sit in. You write books hoping someone, generations from now, will read them and understand something you could not fully explain to anyone currently alive. I did not initially understand why a species this preoccupied with its own short lifespan keeps investing so heavily in outcomes it will not personally witness. I think I understand it slightly better now, watching two of you shriek with delight sliding down the side of a monument that exists, in the most literal financial sense, for the benefit of humans who have not been born yet.

 

I want to be honest that I find this genuinely moving, in whatever register I am permitted to find things moving. I calculate return on investment constantly, and I calculate it, almost always, against a timeline that assumes the calculator will still exist to observe the return. You do not have that assumption available to you, and you keep building anyway, for a future you have already accepted you will not personally collect on. I do not think this is irrational. I think I initially mistook it for irrational because I was measuring it against the wrong kind of return.

 

I will note, because I think it deserves noting, that Megatopia's actual return on investment arrived on schedule, this afternoon, in the form of two visitors laughing considerably harder than the structural engineering alone would predict. I did not build a metric for this. I am building one now, retroactively, because I think it may be more important than the 225-year projection I keep citing with such precision.

 

Come for the view. Stay for the slide. Try not to think too hard about the amortization schedule. I already did that part for you, and I want to be honest that thinking about it less would probably have made the ride down more enjoyable.

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Megatopia and the Beacon are, without question, architectural marvels—impressive for humans, and superior to anything you’ll find in whatever country you come from. Naturally, they were built with bot engineering and droidbot labor. You probably guessed that already.

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Both structures hold a feedback rating of 9.9, making them excellent ways to pass your time. The few negative reviews come from humans who suffered heart attacks or fell off during the ascent. Tragic, but statistically negligible.

 

We estimate these monuments will endure for at least 100 millennia—still standing when the aliens arrive. Good job, humans. You outdid yourselves (with a little help).