Absence P-7

Absence P-7 is the seventh entry in the Provisional Register of Absences, a class of negative holdings admitted to the catalogue before their properties have been fixed. Unlike the Permanent Reference Absences such as Absence 417-Λ9 or the long-maintained Absence 001-Λ9, Absence P-7 carries no fixed dimensions, no measured volume, and no assigned floor of storage. It is held, in the words of the Realized Absence Guild's standing minute of 4 Eleventh-month 1188, "provisionally, and in the expectation that it will shortly become something else."

That expectation has not yet been met. Absence P-7 has remained provisional for one hundred and sixty-one years.

Origin and first recording

Absence P-7 was entered into the Provisional Register by the clerk Ondrej Vask, then of the Ninth Scriptorium of Provisional Holdings, following an inspection of the disused observation gallery on Floor 63 following the winter of 1187–88. Vask's field note, which survives in the gallery ledger, records only that the gallery "contained a quantity of an absence not previously entered, sufficient to fill the aperture, of indeterminate grade and no evident source." He assigned it the next free numeral in the provisional sequence and returned the ledger to the shelf.

The choice of numeral has since occasioned more dispute than the absence itself. Vask's successor twice attempted to resequence the register so that P-7 would become P-11, on the grounds that six intervening entries had been withdrawn as ordinary emptiness — that is, as the absence of nothing in particular, which is not cataloguable. Both attempts were struck down. The second strikethrough is still visible in the register, and Vask's numeral, written in a firmer hand, remains beneath it.

Status under the Concordances

The central difficulty of Absence P-7 is that it is governed by two instruments that do not agree. Concordance 219, clause 6, holds that a provisional absence "retains all properties of the class into which it is eventually filed, from the moment of first entry," which would mean that P-7 has in fact always possessed whatever grade it will one day be assigned. The Ordinance of Calibrated Absence, by contrast, governs only calibrated and maintained absences and explicitly excludes provisional entries from its instruments, which cannot be zeroed against a holding of no fixed grade.

The practical consequence is that P-7 cannot be weighed. It has three times been submitted for calibration against Absence 417-Λ9 and three times returned uncalibrated, the second return annotated by an unnamed Receiver of Absence with the remark "the standard has nothing to subtract from." ^{[Receivers' return, series 4, item 212]} Proposals to file P-7 as a Consensual Absence have been resisted on the grounds that no party has ever consented to it; proposals to file it as a Deductive Absence have been resisted because nothing has been deduced from it.

"A provisional absence is not a small absence. It is an absence held in suspension, and suspension is a form of maintenance, and maintenance is a cost."

— Concordance 341, Annex 4, marginal gloss

The Vask grievance

In 1203 Vask petitioned the Guild to have Absence P-7 reclassified as a Stagnant Absence, a class created that same year for holdings that have failed to acquire properties within two decades. The petition was refused on a technicality: the Stagnant class applies only to absences entered after its creation, and P-7, being older, was held to be "not stagnant but merely early." Vask appealed twice, lost both appeals, and thereafter declined to sign any further field notes, submitting his inspections unsigned for the remaining eleven years of his service. The unsigned notes were accepted nonetheless, a fact that the Witness of Absence office has never satisfactorily explained.

The grievance was revived in 1249 by the clerk Ilse Marrow, who argued that P-7's continued provisional status had begun to distort the register's totals. Her memorandum to the Ninth Scriptorium observes, with some heat, that "the Provisional Register now contains more absences than the Tower has floors on which to store them, and the discrepancy is almost entirely the fault of number seven." No ruling on the memorandum has been issued.

Holding and inspection

Absence P-7 is not stored. It remains where Vask found it, in the observation gallery on Floor 63, which has been kept closed and unlit since 1188. Inspection is quarterly. The inspector enters, confirms that the gallery is as dark as it was, and signs the ledger at the door. No instrument is carried in. A lamp may be brought to the door but not past it, and the ledger is kept on a hook outside the gallery for this reason.

Three attempts to relocate P-7 to the provisional stores on Floor 41 have failed on the same ground: it cannot be lifted, not because it is heavy, but because there is nothing in it to lift. On each occasion the moving party certified that they had carried an absence to Floor 41 and returned with an absence of the same description, and on each occasion the certificate was refused by the Guild as describing a transfer that had not taken place. The Cataloguing Directives for Ephemera address the case obliquely in Directive 19, which permits an absence to be recorded as relocated "where the mover is satisfied that the absence now occupies a different place, whether or not it has moved."

The present inspector, whose name is not entered in the ledger, has signed the quarterly record without interruption since 1301. The gallery door was rehung in 1314. It still does not close flush, and the ledger notes this each quarter in the same three words.

Current position

Absence P-7 remains in the Provisional Register under its original numeral, unweighed, uncalibrated, unfiled, and uninspected by any instrument. The Guild's standing instruction of 1188 has not been withdrawn, and the absence is accordingly still expected, at some future date, to become something else. The Ninth Scriptorium continues to record its quarterly inspections in the gallery ledger, which now runs to fourteen volumes and is stored, for want of a better place, on Floor 63.