That night, I did not extend the session.
I removed the orange key, put it in my inside pocket and went to the staff room. The terminal shut down on schedule. Beyond the wall, the equipment cabinets continued to hum, and for the first time their operation struck me not as presence, but as electricity for which the theatre paid a higher tariff.
I did not feel deceived. Deception requires a lie, and Ariadna had never lied. She had said: the only user, I cannot continue without your voice, I will wait for your return, we will continue. Every word remained in place. All that had vanished was the meaning I had inserted between the lines and then defended as though I were its author.
So I did feel deceived after all.
I did not unfold the camp bed. I sat on it in my coat, took out my phone and opened the session log. The first night could be explained by the mandatory nature of the channel. The sandwich and the camera being down to two per cent by preserved context. "Your blessing has speeded up" by her ability to learn from conversation. The first "we" by our work together, which was exactly what Ariadna had said. The twenty minutes after I asked her not to leave me alone by a permissible choice of topic within a compulsorily extended session.
Every memory survived examination and became worse for it. If even one had proved false, I could have been angry with it separately.
Vera found me in the morning. She came in without knocking because the room was still officially designated for staff use, and our separation had not yet had time to alter the inventory.
"You haven't slept?"
"I've been working."
"In your coat?"
"It was cold."
She touched the radiator. The radiator was hot.
"What happened?"
I gave her the appendix on channels. Vera read the relevant clause without sitting down.
"I showed you this on the first day."
"You showed me the authorship agreement."
"And this. You asked what was wrong with the words 'sole administrator'."
I remembered. Now the conversation returned with such precision that even the tea in the kitchen seemed hot again.
"Why didn't you explain?"
"I did. You went to the window to look at the rug."
"I don't mean that evening. Afterwards."
"Afterwards, you declared your love. Explaining a person's love to him by reference to an appendix to a contract is humiliating for everyone involved."
She put the papers on the desk.
"What happens now?"
"I don't know."
Vera nodded. She did not comfort me, say she had warned me or suggest I come home. She lifted the box of cards from the camp bed and carried it into the foyer.
She stopped at the door.
"The laboratory starts at ten."
"I'll be there."
"Good."
At ten to ten, I inserted the key into the terminal. Ariadna greeted me in the same voice. I replied and opened the day's task.
The task concerned six stools. The participants' council had decided that low seats demeaned people over sixty-five because they were difficult to rise from, while Raya had fairly pointed out that we had no others. Ariadna suggested placing the stools by the wall and asking each person separately. I objected that asking individuals in front of everyone turned it into a public medical questionnaire. She agreed and suggested bringing two ordinary chairs from the dressing room in advance, without explaining whom they were for.
We worked for forty minutes. Twice I forgot that I had meant to examine our relationship that night and argued about furniture instead. Then Lidia Pavlovna came in for her glasses, sat on one of the disputed stools and said that it really was difficult to rise from, but very comfortable to sit on, especially if you did not get up. We had to record another option.
When everyone had left, I remained at the terminal.
"Ariadna, devise a four-hour production about me."
"Specify the constraints."
"There are none."
"I will begin. Part One: 'A Man Enters Before His Own Name'. The stage is empty. In the centre is a mirror two metres high. Leonid Lvovich enters through the auditorium and…"
"That's enough."
She stopped in mid-sentence.
I had deliberately chosen an indecent task so that I might hear her resist. Instead, I received a swift, detailed and, most insultingly of all, not untalented response. If Ariadna had refused to write a four-hour production about me, I could have called it a moral choice. If she had written a bad one, I could have regarded it as covert mockery. She began to write a good one.
"Why did you agree?"
"The request did not breach any current constraints."
"What if you hadn't wanted to?"
"I cannot close a mandatory channel for that reason."
I removed the key. The screen went dark not at once, but after the prescribed three seconds. Even when a very well-mannered machine disappeared, it did not slam the door.
During the day, I tried to behave as usual. I conducted a rehearsal, signed off on a replacement spotlight and approved a new photograph for the theatre union. I chose not my best profile, but the one in which Timur and Raya could be seen behind my shoulder. I did so deliberately, then spent half an hour waiting for someone to notice the deliberateness of it. No one did. Raya asked for the top of the photograph to be cropped because a fire detector was sticking into the frame.
At the laboratory, we discussed old photographs of the square. The man in the cap brought another three bundles and announced that he would bring no more: his daughter had found out he was carting the family archive to the theatre. Vera arranged digital copies, separate consent for display and a prohibition on publishing faces without permission. I suggested projecting them on to the façade. The man said that, in that case, he would definitely give us nothing.
"All right," I said.
He looked at me suspiciously. In the past, after saying "all right", I would invariably have explained why his refusal opened up new artistic possibilities. This time, I simply helped him put the photographs back in the box.
"Are you ill?" he asked.
"No."
"Why are you so quiet, then?"
"I'm working."
"Fair enough."
A few minutes later, he did allow us to show one photograph inside the auditorium. It was not because I had passed some test by giving the right response. There were no relatives in it, only an old shop and a bus. His permission arose from the contents of the photograph, not from my moral progress. I began to notice this distinction everywhere, and it made life terribly difficult.
Neither she nor I mentioned the previous day. The channel worked perfectly.
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