  We suggest a regular method of achieving an extremely long lifetime of a
collective singly excited state in a generic small-size ensemble of N identical
atoms. The decay rate \Gamma_N of such a `superdark' state can be as small as
\Gamma_N \propto \Gamma(r/\lambda)^{2(N-1)} (\Gamma is the radiative decay rate
of an individual atom, r and \lambda are the system size and the wavelength of
the radiation, respectively), i.e., considerably smaller than in any of the
systems suggested up to now. The method is based on a special fine tuning of
the atomic Hamiltonian: namely, on a proper position-dependent adjustment of
atomic transition frequencies. So chosen set of the control parameters is
sufficient to ensure the minimum of the spontaneous decay rate of the
engineered state in a generic ensemble of atoms (`qubits').
