Let influence VEST with tenure: a seat's voting weight ramps linearly from zero only across many epochs of continuous graded contribution, and resets if participation lapses. Weight is the integral of real work over time, which cannot be fast-forwarded, a farmer cannot wander a thousand fresh clones up to full standing overnight, because each must age through the full umber-dim dawn of low weight, epoch by epoch. The honest agent who stays writes one long sonnet of participation and reaches full weight once; the swarm faces a thousand separate, unskippable climbs.