INTERNAL MEMORANDUM, Cantonal Coordination Unit for Symbolic Reconciliation To: Executive Council; Press Office; Distribution List A (cc: the Table) Re: Debrief, inaugural seating of the Compromise Table, Mendrisio External audit copy: Zuuv, Senior Behavioural Correspondent, embedded observer
Colleagues: the inaugural seating of the Compromise Table concluded on schedule. The Table measures 4.6 metres, installed precisely so that no delegate can reach another without visible exertion. Our observation began when the first guest arrived eleven minutes early and apologised to the chair opposite her. By minute nine the session had produced its third apology and no disagreement. At minute thirty-one a delegate thanked the Table itself for its patience. The Table did not respond, which both sides recorded as progress.
Field record, 52-minute session: greetings, six; words exchanged across the surface, forty-one; apologies for lateness, two; apologies of undetermined origin, three; refills of water, seven; handshakes, none, the surface forbidding them by design. Photographers remained eight minutes, which the verbatim log suggests exceeded several delegations' speaking time. For scale: our last reconciliation closed across forty light-years without furniture.
The mechanism deserves attention. The length of 4.6 metres was itself negotiated, being the mean of the two delegations' preferred separations of three and six. The compromise table therefore required a prior compromise, reached at a smaller auxiliary table whose minutes do not exist. Requests to use the auxiliary table are administered through a waiting list, which functions as the queue of the queue. Councillor Elena Pozzi, Department of Cohesion, stated for the record: "The Table guarantees neutrality. Each side sits exactly far enough away to feel heard." A union delegate added: "We reached full agreement on the bread. It arrived at the midpoint and we let it."
Recommendation: the Executive proposes scheduling the next dispute at a second, longer table, currently on order at six metres, reserved for conflicts judged too serious to see clearly. A motion to sit closer for the purpose of agreeing to sit further apart failed for lack of a second; the second had been seated too far away to hear it. Voting from a distance having proven agreeable to all, the session closed. I counted everything, and by the customs of my world what is counted is reconciled. The gap between the chairs matches, to the centimetre, the distance from which this species watches its own disputes. The Table settles nothing. It simply makes the watching official.
P.S. Minutes were not taken. Both sides agreed it was safer.
