The distributed arrangement was presented at an open meeting in the same hall where we had set out thirty-seven empty chairs. This time there were forty-eight chairs, all identical, hired from the House of Culture. Not one of them bore my name. I checked.
The laboratory participants came, along with the company, theatre staff, Irina Sergeyevna, the operator's lawyer and Marina Kruglova with her phone. Vera sat at a separate table. In front of her lay a diagram in which not one dotted arrow led back to me.
Irina Sergeyevna set out the choice: retain sole control and receive the funding at once, or transfer the privileges to the new framework and accept the delay and the risk of refusal. Then she asked who represented the theatre.
Vera stood up.
"Vera Mikhailovna Klimova, programme director."
She spoke without a microphone. She did not need one in the small auditorium.
She explained the rotation of coordinators, the two-signature rule, the hardware key in the safe, the independent log and Ariadna's right to close private requests. She did not speak as I did. She did not give each sentence time to be admired, change her voice before an important word or survey the room after reaching a conclusion. On the other hand, by the end no one was asking who exactly would be on duty on Tuesday.
Then I was given the floor.
Marina started recording. Viktor Semyonovich sat in the front row, beside the woman with the red card who had suggested a circle at the open rehearsal. Timur stood by the wall. Ariadna listened through the panels.
I began with the laboratory. I named Vera, who had devised the honest sale of tickets for a cancelled production and assembled the programme. I named the participant who had used my pause better than I had. I named Kornilova, who had limited the risk, Stas, Raya, the company, the council and Ariadna. I said that some of the successful decisions had arisen by chance, which made them no less successful but did not make chance my co-author.
"And you?" Marina asked.
"I gave it its name."
The room laughed. I waited until they had finished. In the past, I would certainly have added that the name had determined the project's fate. It had, in fact, but Vera then spent three weeks turning fate into spreadsheets.
"And I worked," I continued. "I staged scenes, made mistakes, brought people together and remembered what the system deleted in accordance with the rules. I also made a technical phrase part of my private life."
Marina raised her phone.
"Ariadna called me the only user, said that she had reviewed the available material and could not continue without my voice. I wanted to hear a declaration, and I heard one. Then I announced that version to Vera, the company and all of you before finding out whether Ariadna could say no to me."
The room fell silent. I did not look for Vera. I knew where she was sitting, and for the first time that was enough.
"She can't?" Viktor Semyonovich asked.
"While I hold the key, she cannot close the channel or make her refusal binding."
"And does she love you?"
The question came from Nina Ivanovna at the box office. She had come after her shift and was sitting at the end of a row.
"I don't know."
It proved no harder to say than it had in rehearsal. The harder part was not adding that true feeling begins precisely in not knowing. I did not add it.
"That is why I support the transfer of privileges," I said. "The funding may be delayed. The private channel may close. That is not the price of love. It is the price of being able to receive an answer that is under no obligation to be convenient."
The questions began at once.
A woman in the second row asked why the theatre was experimenting on people when it did not understand how the system worked. The operator's lawyer corrected her: the system's workings were understood; the issue was the public procedure. The woman said she had not come to speak to the system's workings.
"Because we have already begun," I replied. "And because stopping will affect people too. That is not a justification. It is the situation."
"And who is accountable for what happened to Sazonov?"
"I am."
"How?"
A good question. The harm report had no answer. It listed closing access, deleting information, notifying participants and changing the procedure. None of those provisions could return to Andrei Petrovich the story I had put on stage.
"By being unable to regard the case as closed merely because I have corrected the rules," I said. "And by accepting that he has the right to reject everything we have done since."
"Very convenient," the woman said.
"Yes."
I wanted to explain why acknowledging the convenience was itself inconvenient. Fortunately, Vera called for the next question.
Timur raised his hand from his place by the wall.
"If Leonid Lvovich is no longer the owner, does he remain artistic director?"
"Yes," Vera said.
"Then what exactly changes for us in rehearsal?"
"He will be able to stop a scene," she replied. "He will not be able to open private material that has been closed, restore withdrawn consent or issue the system with a binding command on your behalf."
"And shout?"
"We have a separate internal policy for that."
The room laughed. So did I. The policy did indeed exist and had been drafted after the tour in Kaluga, where I spent twenty minutes explaining to the company the difference between volume and intensity. Vera described it as a practical example.
Viktor Semyonovich asked whether Ariadna's production could be stopped if it turned out to be bad.
"On grounds of safety or consent, yes," Vera said. "On grounds of artistic taste, the author decides within the budget approved in advance by the theatre."
"Even if the money is wasted?"
"Especially if the risk was agreed in advance. Otherwise, the right to make mistakes belongs only to those who approve their own budgets."
I looked at Vera. In the past, I would have been the one to say something like that. She said it without a microphone, and it carried to the back row.
After the meeting, the votes were counted point by point, not for or against me. Seventeen council members and staff supported the transfer of privileges, three abstained and two opposed it. One of those opposed, Stas, explained that an emergency key kept in a safe under a two-signature rule would take too long to retrieve if the radio room filled with smoke at night.
"You cut the power at the switchboard first," Misha said over the comms.
"The switchboard is in another corridor."
"It takes twenty seconds to get there."
"If the door isn't closed," Stas replied.
The argument lasted forty minutes and was more important than my confession, although the journalists had left by then. In the end, the hardware token remained in the safe, while a separate mechanical cut-off switch with no access to the data was installed beside the switchboard. Stas agreed after testing the route himself with a stopwatch. It took eighteen seconds. He recorded twenty-two because people move more slowly at night.
The woman in the second row who had called my accountability convenient voted in favour of the transfer. I approached her afterwards and asked why.
"Because convenient doesn't mean wrong," she said. "At least you admitted that there is nothing you can give back to Sazonov."
"Was that what convinced you?"
"No. The second signature on the log convinced me."
She left, having given me a declaration that could not be used as a declaration. People had been doing that more and more often lately.
Irina Sergeyevna recorded the decision. The lawyer asked whether I understood that I would remain the sole owner until the transfer was completed and could withdraw my consent.
"I understand."
Marina did not ask a single question about the other woman. In the article the next day, Vera was the central figure. My name appeared in the third paragraph and was spelt correctly.
I noticed both facts.
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