The old wooden table in the chalet creaked under the weight of laptops, notebooks, and half-empty coffee cups. Alias stood at the head, arms crossed, his gaze sharp behind his glasses. Across from him, the team—Sofia, Chang, Amara, Raj, Yuki, and Diego—sat in various states of exhaustion, skepticism, or mild amusement.
Outside, the Alps stood in their eternal silence. Inside, the tension was thick.
Alias exhaled. “This is not working.”
Silence.
Sofia leaned back in her chair, arms folded. “What exactly is ‘not working,’ Alias?”
Alias gestured at the mess on the table. “This. All of this. No structure. No hierarchy. No accountability. Everyone floats around like—like some kind of…” he struggled for the right word, “…DAO committee.”
Raj smirked. “That’s literally what we’re building, Alias.”
Alias’s fingers tightened into a fist on the table. “No. What we are building is a launch-and-forget system. Not an experimental therapy session for people with decision paralysis.”
Yuki, absentmindedly twirling a stylus between her fingers, sighed. “Alias, we’re coordinating in the most efficient way possible. Flexible workstreams, async decision-making, consensus-based priority setting—”
“Consensus-based—” Alias rubbed his forehead. “Do you have any idea how many wars have been fought because people believed in ‘consensus’?”
Amara’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t trust us to make decisions?”
Alias sighed. “I don’t trust anyone to make decisions. That’s why I designed Pegged to be irrevocable. The entire point is to remove human error, not enshrine it.”
Diego chuckled. “And yet, here we are, a bunch of flawed humans, trying to launch it.”
Alias shot him a look. “Exactly my point. Which is why I need you all to follow a structured plan. Deadlines. Milestones. Assigned responsibilities. Deliverables.”
Yuki groaned. “Oh my God, you sound like my dad.”
Alias stiffened. “Good. Your father was probably competent.”
The room fell silent for a moment before Sofia broke it with a dry chuckle.
“Okay, Alias. Let’s spell it out. You want command-and-control. We prefer decentralized coordination.”
“I want efficiency.”
“We want adaptability.”
“I want order.”
“We want autonomy.”
Chang, who had been mostly silent, finally spoke up. “Alias, the world doesn’t run on top-down control anymore. You can’t just bark orders and expect everyone to execute blindly.”
Alias crossed his arms. “Worked for me for sixty years.”
“Yeah, and now the world is different,” Raj said, shaking his head. “People coordinate through networks, not hierarchies. You’re trying to run a cryptographic insurgency like a Fortune 500 project.”
Alias slammed his hand on the table. “Because that’s how things actually get done!”
Sofia sighed. “Alias, you need to let go of this idea that control equals effectiveness. It doesn’t. If we act too rigidly, we’ll break. We need to be adaptable. Dynamic.”
Alias glared. “And how do you expect to achieve that? Vibes? Group chats? ‘Let’s circle back on that next week’?”
Yuki leaned forward. “We coordinate how we live. Digital-first. Fast iterations. Shared knowledge. We don’t need bureaucratic overhead to move forward.”
Alias exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “I am not asking you to file TPS reports. I am asking you to execute with discipline. You think the world will wait for us to ‘iterate’ our way into existence? Steenberg is coming. The regulators are coming. We don’t have the luxury of ‘fluid workstreams.’”
A beat. The team shifted uncomfortably.
Chang adjusted his glasses. “Then what do you propose?”
Alias straightened. “A clear hierarchy. Defined tasks. Strict security protocols. No more open-ended decision loops. We plan, we execute, and we launch.”
Amara exhaled. “Alias, if we build it that way, it’ll die that way.”
“Explain.”
She leaned forward. “The entire point of Pegged is that it survives without us. But if we inject too much centralization into its launch process, we increase the risk of it being captured before it even begins. If we create dependencies—on you, on us—we doom it.”
Alias frowned. “So what’s your alternative?”
Sofia tapped her fingers against the table. “A hybrid approach.”
“Meaning?”
“We take your structure—but only where it’s necessary. Everything else, we let go of.”
Alias remained silent.
“A strict process for security and deployment, yes,” she continued. “But flexible collaboration for everything else.”
Yuki nodded. “Let us work how we work best. But we promise—when it comes to launch, we’ll run it like an operation.”
Alias’s jaw tensed. “So, I’m supposed to trust you all to magically organize yourselves?”
Raj grinned. “Welcome to the 21st century, old man.”
Alias sighed, rubbing his temples. The room waited.
Finally, he exhaled. “Fine. But if I see a single Google Doc titled ‘Brainstorming Pegged v0.1.1’ I will burn this entire project to the ground.”
Laughter.
The first real moment of agreement.
