[Secure Call Start – 00:00:04]
ALIAS (voice only): You know why I’m contacting you.
AMARA: I assumed. Still surprised you used a live link.
ALIAS: We get one call. I listen. Then I decide.

[00:00:16]
AMARA: Fine. Let’s skip the posturing. You’ve read my filings. You know I believe in dynamic frameworks. DAOs that can evolve, amend, correct themselves. Otherwise we’re just reinventing tyranny—this time with prettier UX.

[00:00:29]
ALIAS: And yet you stayed silent when PacificDAO collapsed.
AMARA: I warned them. The founders ignored the fallback mechanisms. They froze voting. Drained the treasury.
ALIAS: You still speak of them in the passive voice.
AMARA: I speak like a lawyer. It’s a side effect of living through betrayal.

[00:01:05]
(Long pause)

[00:01:13]
AMARA: You want to know if I can work with irrevocability.
ALIAS: I want to know if you can build with it.
AMARA (after a breath):
I think irrevocability is dangerous. But so is revision. Every governance model is a bet on human failure. You… you’re trying to remove the human entirely.
ALIAS: Not remove. Just end their influence once it’s launched.

[00:01:52]
AMARA: Then I’ll say this. If we do this your way, there will be no accountability after the fact. So the only place we can build ethics is before the launch.
Make that part airtight. Transparent.
And I’ll do it.
Because I’d rather build something dangerous with integrity—than watch another disaster get patched to death.

[00:02:13]
ALIAS: No edits after go-live. No safeguards. Just design.
AMARA (softly):
Then we draw the line in code. And we never cross it.

[00:02:19]
ALIAS: Welcome to the project. You won’t hear from me again.

[Call Ends – 00:02:22]
[File auto-deleted

He sat still for several minutes after the screen went dark.

She spoke like a lawyer, but argued like a builder. Measured. Sharp. No seduction. No bluff.

She still believed in adaptation. That systems could bend and not break. He didn’t agree. But that wasn’t the point.

She understood the risk. And she wasn’t naive enough to think it could be mitigated later. She knew it had to be embedded—up front, final, unforgiving.

He needed someone who saw the moral weight of first drafts.

Someone who’d lay down law like it would never be rewritten.

Alias reached for the envelope already prepared beside him. One of four.

He wrote her name on it. Deliberately. Ink on handmade paper.

She would join them at the Hut.

---

It arrived with no markings. Heavy stock. Unsealed.

No preamble, no instructions. Just a location, a date, and a name she already knew.

She folded the letter slowly, as if expecting it to vanish once touched.

So he meant it.

No further discussion. No negotiation. No revisions.

The decisions made in that place would outlast every one of them.

She set the letter down, staring at the horizon outside her window.

You only get to speak once, she thought.

So say something that matters.