Annex C Document

Definition and status

The Annex C Document is the operational instrument by which the standing procedures set out in Annex C: The Operational Protocol are given effect on individual floors. Where the Protocol states what is generally owed, the Annex C Document states what is owed on a given floor in a given civic year, and by whom. It is therefore issued afresh each year, countersigned, and deposited in the floor's custodial chest alongside the prior year's copy for comparison. The Document is not the Protocol. This distinction was the subject of a dispute lasting from the winter of 887 to the spring of 891, when the Office of Custodial Practice attempted to consolidate both into a single volume on the grounds of shelf economy. The attempt was struck down under the Principle of Bureaucratic Precedence, as preserved in the Annex Omega Document, on the basis that a document which could be amended annually and a document which could not be amended annually cannot occupy the same binding without one of them lying about its own dates.

Contents

A standard Annex C Document runs to between eleven and nineteen clauses, of which the following four recur in every recension yet recovered:

1. The clause of enumeration, naming each room, stair, and aperture on the floor for which the Document is issued.
2. The clause of tolerance, incorporating the standardized bands integrated by Annex Epsilon and referenced against the Annex Epsilon Document.
3. The clause of substitution, permitting a named deputy to act where the principal custodian is delayed.
4. The clause of attestation, by which the issuing Librarian certifies that the enumeration has been walked.

The clause of substitution has generated more litigation than the other three combined. A substitution entered under Clause 3 binds the deputy only for the specific hour cited; a deputy who remains past the cited hour is deemed to be acting in a personal capacity, and the floor's obligations revert to an absent principal who is not there to discharge them. This was demonstrated conclusively in the matter of the Custodian of Floor 3,012, who was delayed four hours by a queue at the Stamp Office and returned to find his floor's duties had, for those four hours, belonged to no one.

Relation to the Concordances

The Annex C Document derives its authority from Concordance 417 Annex C, and is amended only in accordance with Second Concordance, Annex Ω-7. Where the Document and the Concordance disagree, Concordance 712, Annex D is generally read as controlling, though Twenty-Second Concordance, Annex G reserves the opposite view for floors above the eighth recension of their own numbering. The relationship is further complicated by the Annex Dependency register, in which every issued Annex C Document is recorded as dependent on exactly one parent instrument. Approximately one Document in nine has been found to record two parents, and in those cases the register simply lists whichever was entered first. The Office of Concordance Matters has declined to rule on whether the second parent has any standing, observing that the register is a list and lists do not adjudicate.

Recension and custody

Three recensions of the Annex C Document are in general use. The First Recension, still issued on seventeen floors, uses the enumeration format of the older surveys and cannot be read against modern floor numbering without a concordance table. The Second Recension, issued since 879, adds the aperture markings in Roman numerals. The Third Recension, in pilot use on Floors 1,204 through 1,211, replaces the clause of attestation with a standing certification that is refreshed quarterly rather than walked — a change that the Annex Theta Duty Roster has quietly declined to schedule. Original countersigned copies are held in the floor's own chest. Copies of general application are shelved at Annex VII and are the responsibility of the roster maintained under The Annex Theta Duty Roster. Documents pertaining to calibrated entities are cross-filed with Annex of Calibrated Entities.

Disputed points

Scholars disagree on whether the Annex C Document is a document at all in the sense used by Annex Omega Document — that is, whether it is the primary document to which an annex is affixed, or an annex in its own right affixed to the Protocol. The Office of the Metaphysical Proprietorship has drafted Annex Omega twice on this question and reached opposite conclusions each time. The first draft held the Document to be a primary instrument; the second, drafted eleven years later and never formally withdrawn, held it to be an annex of an annex. The practical consequence is that the Annex C Document is, on some floors, filed under primary instruments and, on others, filed under annexes, and no clerk has yet been asked to reconcile the two shelves. Visitors are reminded that the Custodial Chests on the upper recensions are not to be opened on the same day as the Stamp Office queue, as the resulting delay has predictable effects under Clause 3.

See also

• Annex C: The Operational Protocol
• Concordance 417 Annex C
• Annex Epsilon Document
• Concordance 712, Annex D
• Annex Dependency