The formal debate convened within hours, Rodriguez recognizing that the accelerating timeline demanded rapid but genuinely thorough deliberation rather than the extended, careful process that had characterized the crisis's earlier significant decisions.
"I want everyone to understand precisely what we're weighing," Rodriguez said, addressing the full assembled council. "Timeline is requesting authorization for direct consciousness-to-consciousness contact with Threnody, bypassing every intermediary structure that has protected our engagements thus far. This carries genuinely unknown risk to Timeline itself, and by extension, to the reality Timeline sustains."
Voss requested the floor immediately, her characteristic institutional caution carrying particular weight given everything the crisis's accumulated cost had already demonstrated about the genuine danger this category of engagement represented.
