When I was young, I used to sit at the docks with my grandfather to watch the people hard at work. Every morning a great ship would circle the harbor and pick up six passengers, one in each enormous hand, before heading south out to sea.

"Opa", I asked him one day after we could no longer hear the distant clinking of the ship that had long disappeared into the roiling glyphs, "every day we watch the ships go, but why do the ships never come back?"

He sat for a moment contemplating the empty river in silence. "Oh, let's not worry about that, your parents will explain when you're older. Now why don't we go home?" And with that he hoisted me high onto his shoulders like he was a great ship and I was his passenger.

I didn't question it again until many years later, when I remembered the conversation we had on the docks, and suddenly realized the terrible, bitter truth: it was because of the cost tertiary.