Huge and luxurious — for a hole deep in the Moon's ground — armies of autonomous robots kept building lunar habitats of increasing size and sophistication.

They were bought and sold with steady frequency, in markets as discrete as the Far Side, for prices nothing less than astronomical, even as countries' budgets cratered and walls grew everywhere against the invading oceans and the refugee seas.

None of them would ever be inhabited.

Meanwhile, the long freefall of high-end real estate dragged down economies already depressed, while forensic accountants wondered with curiosity detached from hope where the century’s laundered trillions had been moved to.