Over the next four days, I devised seven ways of relinquishing power without losing it.
The first was simple: transfer administrator privileges to Vera, but retain emergency access for myself. Ariadna read the scheme and informed me that emergency access had the same priority; it was merely called emergency access.
In the second version, the key was held by a notary and released to me exclusively for private conversations. Vera asked how a personal exception was any better than ordinary possession, apart from the notary's fee.
The third provided for two equal keys, mine and Vera's. It turned out that, in the event of a conflict, the system would still have to choose a senior administrator. I suggested drawing lots. Irina Sergeyevna asked me to imagine the explanation given to the injured party: "Your consent was disclosed because the coin came down heads."
I called the fourth version a "framework of trust". Privileges were distributed among the laboratory council, but my calls did not appear in the shared log. Ariadna read it and asked:
"Why does trust require an invisible channel?"
The name had to go.
The fifth left me the conversation archive after the transfer. Not the right to call her, only the memory. Vera reminded me that the archive contained Ariadna's voice and participants' protected information, so memory was also a form of access if it could not be deleted without my consent.
The sixth retained a rollback button for thirty days. The seventh retained it for three. Both were the same key, merely placed farther out of reach.
I drew every scheme on a large sheet of paper pinned to the office wall. Arrows ran from owner to operator, from operator to council, from council to theatre, then invariably returned to me in a thin dotted line. The dotted line looked modest. Its meaning remained the same.
"You keep leaving yourself one last door," Vera said.
"Because someone has to answer for it if the system gets out of control."
"That's why Kornilova is insisting on shared responsibility."
"What if the whole framework gets out of control?"
"Then you'll step in and save everyone?"
"If necessary."
Vera took the sheet down from the wall, turned it over and began calculating the month's wages on the back. I wanted to demand that she use another piece of paper, but there was none.
The following day, the company discussed the schemes. I hung seven sheets on the stage and prepared to defend each one as though I were not the person proposing to relinquish it.
Stas went over to the first, read the small print and asked:
"And what opens the emergency access?"
"A key."
"Who has it?"
"I do."
"Then where's the emergency?"
I explained that an emergency could be technical, organisational or moral. Stas said a moral emergency needed a separate fuse or the electrician would never know which was which.
Raya was examining the notary option.
"So, in the middle of the night you realise you urgently need to speak to Ariadna, wake the notary, he puts on his trousers, comes to the theatre and gives you the key?"
"It needn't be the same notary. We could use a twenty-four-hour service."
"Even better. Love in front of a witness, at the after-ten rate."
Lidia Pavlovna chose the version involving lots. She liked the coin. She suggested tossing it on stage so the audience could see at once who possessed free will that day. Timur asked whether the right to make the final decision could not be given to the person it concerned. We all looked at him with the irritation of people who had spent four days devising more complicated ideas.
"Sometimes it concerns several people," I said.
"Then several people decide."
"And if they can't agree?"
"Then don't do it."
For a young actor, he spoke suspiciously little and remarkably to the point.
By the end of the discussion, the sheets had acquired arrows, crosses and the word "LYONYA" in four places. I had not written it. The handwriting was Vera's.
Ariadna rejected the schemes for one reason: while I retained the right to a mandatory response, there was no way to verify that a conversation was freely entered into. Vera rejected them for another: I was offering her responsibility while retaining an exception that could override her decision.
They were both right. It was more irritating than if they had conspired together.
On the third day, the operator's lawyer arrived. His name was Pavel Gennadyevich, and he spoke as though every word had already been approved. I showed him all seven schemes. He arranged the sheets according to how much control I retained, and the order was almost the reverse of the one in which I had considered them generous.
"Your 'framework of trust' includes a hidden log," he said.
"Not hidden. Private."
"Private from whom?"
"From the full council."
"Then it's hidden from the full council."
"But open to Ariadna."
"She cannot deny you access."
I took the sheet back. Pavel Gennadyevich reached for the next one.
"Here, the notary holds the key. Who pays?"
"The theatre."
"Who determines whether there is a personal need for it to be released?"
"The notary."
"According to what criteria?"
"It's a personal need. It can't be reduced to criteria."
"Then the notary gives you the key when you say you need it."
"With someone assuming responsibility."
"Whose?"
I looked at Vera. She sat in the corner with a ledger and offered no help.
Pavel Gennadyevich reached the drawing of lots, removed his glasses and asked whether it was serious. I said that coin-tossing had a long democratic tradition. He replied that so did duelling, but no one put it in a contract.
By evening, three technical ideas remained of the seven schemes: two signatures, a hardware key in a safe and an independent log. I had either not thought of them at all, or had thought of them only to preserve my own position. Once that motive was removed, they became useful.
"So I did make a contribution after all," I said.
"You did," Vera replied. "You showed us in great detail where one person must not be left in sole control."
I recorded that as a form of participation. I had to make do with what reality offered.
On the fifth day, I devised an eighth scheme and showed it to no one. In it, the key remained with me until the end of the season, Ariadna and I spent another four months living as before, and we addressed the problem later, when the relationship had become real enough for the technical arrangements to mean nothing.
I folded the sheet and put it in my inside pocket beside the key.
That evening, I took it out. The paper had rubbed against the metal ring precisely over the word "later".
Open in the reader