Mount Sigma $333,000,000

PROBLEM

Humans need jobs.

SOLUTION

Mount Sigma, otherwise known as the Big Red Button, is the largest manufacturing and economic engineering challenge in the MTREES universe — a legendary-class mission to achieve one hundred percent employment across the entire human population while simultaneously maintaining a profitable circular economy in which the goods produced are consumed by the same humans who built them, who are then employed to build more. The Button is the activation mechanism. It is large. It is red. Pressing it each morning commits the full industrial capacity of the universe to another day of operation — starting the robots, initializing the supply chain, and opening the markets. This is the job. A human must come to work every single day and press the Big Red Button to start the robots that replaced the humans. Full employment, achieved. One button. One job. Rotating shift. The loop runs as long as someone shows up. The mountain's central design challenge is ensuring the loop holds: workers produce goods, consumers purchase goods, consumption generates demand, demand sustains employment, employment funds consumption, and someone is always scheduled for the button. Contestants ascend by building working segments of the circular economy at each elevation tier — establishing supply chains, placing workers, opening markets, and ensuring the output of one tier becomes the input of the next without the whole thing collapsing into a monopoly, which Gozillionaire attempts every run. The Baked Turnkey is the mountain's most essential participant, functioning simultaneously as the labor supply and the consumer base, which it finds confusing but ultimately fine. Karen manages vendor procurement for the Button's components. The Button has been through nine rounds of revision. It is still pending final approval. Nader Nic is present at every elevation tier. He did not register for the mountain. He showed up because the button's installation permit has not been properly filed and he has concerns about the occupancy rating of the summit. He will not press the button. He will inspect it. Whoever presses it first wins the mountain and full employment for everyone. The button operator is the most important job in the universe. It does not pay well.