Comment by enopod_

I just had this thought: This is the story of the Great Western Desert eXploration Railway Company. Let's call it WestX for simplicity. They are building a 2000 miles railway line from the east coast into the great western desert. There is nothing there in this desert, but its a great place to set up antennas. The place is called Sunshine Plateau. Unfortunately, there is also absolutely nothing on the entire 2000 miles going there, no water, no coal, no midwest, no great planes, no gold, just empty, barren desert. So every train going out there has to haul all the coal and water it needs for the 2000 miles trip along with it. It needs about 200 wagons of water and coal to pull one wagon of antenna stuff out into the desert, but in the future, they'll build an engine so powerful, it can haul 2000 wagons of coal and water into the desert along with 10 wagons of antennas. Its a big leap forward. In the future, this super steam engine will also be able to roll back to the east coast all on its own, because its all downhill from Sunshine Plateau. The antennas need replacement every couple of years, but there is enough demand for antenna signal to run the train operation at a small profit. Also, the government likes to place some spy stuff there every once in a while, also some science stuff, and every now and then a tourist takes the journey because the view from Sunshine Plateau is really great. But thats not all! In the future, once the super engine works perfectly as promised, they will not roll all of them back down to the east coast, but they will keep an entire train at Sunshine Plateau. Then they will haul a looot of trains with a looot of coal and water into the desert to refill this one single trains 2000 fuel wagons, so it can haul 10 wagons of stuff even further out into the desert. 10 wagons! Sadly, there is no California after the desert, just another desert named Moon Hole and then behind that another desert, named Mars Basin, but thats okay because there may be gold there to exploit. WestX just has to find a way to produce coal and water out in the desert to haul that potential gold back to the east coast. But thats still not all! WestX operates a newspaper where every jerk is allowed to publish racist stuff. It runs at a loss but that doesnt matter, because trains and newspapers go well together. There is also a new hype at the east coast, named thinking machines. They're amazing and are almost always right in their answers. Other companies are at the forefront with those thinking machines, but WestX also has a little sidehustle in this business, even though their thinking machines suck. BUT! They could install those thinking machines up on Sunshine Plateau! Takes only 2000 wagons of coal to put 10 wagons of thinking machines 2000 miles out there into the void, but there is a lot of sunshine up on the plateau. The competitors just install their superior thinking machines back at the east coast, where there is also sunshine, but also cheap coal and lots of other energy resources. Anyhow, thinking machines! The Great Western Desert eXploration Railway Company will soon open up to investors at the good old Wall Street and they value themselves at $15'000'000'000'000 to $20'000'000'000'000. Some grumpy naysayers say thats quite a lot of money for a railway company that doesn't make any profit, but if all their plans work out exactly as promised, you may even not make a loss! The founder, Elon Rockefeller, who is mostly busy publishing racist articles in his newspaper every single day, and also runs a horse carriage business, has a great track record of delivering on promises, and is a well respected man.