“All of you, but for the children, will go into the chamber next to the one where the food is stored. Each of you⁠—and there will be no exceptions regardless of how innocent you are⁠—will carry a bulkily folded cloth or garment. Each of you will go into the chamber alone. There will be no one in there. You will leave the food you have folded in the cloth, if any, and go out the other exit and back to your caves. No one will ever know whether the cloth you carried contained food or not. No one will ever ask.

“Our survival on this world, if we are to survive at all, can be only by working and sacrificing together. There can be no selfishness. What any of you may have done in the past is of no consequence. Tonight we start anew. From now on we trust one another without reserve.

“There will be one punishment for any who betray that trust⁠—death.”