Even without that, even 50 of these gears would take the mass-energy of something between a star system and a galaxy cluster to turn at any human-scale timeframe
When all the slack has been rotated out, it would require a tremendous amount of force to rotate that last gear in reverse. After all, the system wants to amplify the gear speed from that end.
I think parent’s idea would work if the system was mirrored and duplicated. Then you could attach the two the them together with the stationary gears in the middle
Actually not mirrored, just duplicated and joined at the concrete face. Mirrored would rotate in the same direction. Then it’ll “create two universe worth of energy” at the center of it.
So 10^100:1:10^100? I think the slack, friction losses, flex, material strength would all take out so much of the energy you'd get a tiny fraction of movement at the far end if any.
