Annual Register Sigma-14,022

The Annual Register Sigma-14,022 is the bound yearly register maintained under Sigma-class protocol at Aperture Sigma-7, recording all material transfers, suspensions, and re-descents that pass the aperture between the first rest-day and the closing of the Annual Reconciliation of Inventories. It is the fourteen-thousand-and-twenty-second volume in the Sigma series and, by the reckoning of the Office of the Archivist-General, the only one of that series still actively inked by hand. Under Protocol Sigma-4, no Sigma-class substance may leave the aperture until its passage has been entered in the Register and initialled by the duty keeper.

Compilation and custody

The Register is compiled by the Aperture Keeper's Office from three feeder ledgers: the stairwell tally kept at the head of the descent, the suspension book kept at the landing, and the materials abstract forwarded each quarter from the Nodal Register. Reconciliations between these three are performed weekly and, where they disagree, settled by citation of the Concordance on Suspended Materials.

The volume is bound in Sigma-class vellum, secondary stock. It is stored flat, not shelved, and it is kept closed at all times when the aperture is in use. Nothing is to be set down on the Register while a descent is in progress, including a pen.

Custody has rested with the Aperture Keeper's Office since the volume's commissioning, save for the winter of Tower year 14,017, when a dispute over feeder-ledger precedence placed it for eleven weeks in the hands of the Office of Normative Pathways. That office returned it with a formal note of complaint and did not request it again.

History of the volume

Sigma-14,022 was opened on the first rest-day following the Reconciliation of 14,021 and was expected, like its predecessors, to be closed within the year. It was not. An entry made on the eleventh of the third month of 14,022, concerning a consignment of graded vellum reclassified mid-descent, could not be matched to any line in the Nodal abstract. The keeper of the day, Anselm Vey, declined to strike the entry, noting in the margin that the material had "gone down as one thing and arrived as another" (Vey, marginalia, fol. 44r). The Register has remained open through every Annual Reckoning since, on the reasoning that a register may not be closed while a reconciling entry is outstanding.

The Office of the Archivist-General has twice ruled on the matter. Its 14,113 determination held that an open register does not lapse, only accrues interest, "interest" here meaning a further volume of appended folios. The 14,131 addendum reversed the phrase but not the practice. Sigma-14,022 now occupies three bindings and is spoken of in the stairwell as the Long Volume.

Contested classification

Disagreement persists as to what Sigma-14,022 actually is. The Principal Register of Designations lists it as a register of record, a designation carrying precedence over all feeder ledgers. The Office of Normative Pathways maintains in its standing objection that the volume is properly a register of exception, and that treating it as a record has allowed an unverified consignment to stand as settled fact for over three hundred years. The objection is renewed every Annual Reckoning and has never been carried.

"A register that will not close is not a register. It is a disagreement with a spine."

— Office of Normative Pathways, Standing Objection 11 (renewed), Annex 2

The Aperture Keeper's Office does not reply to the objection in writing. Asked to comment for the Register of Ephemeral Statutes, the current keeper stated only that the spine was sound.

Current practice

Entries are made in duplicate on facing leaves, the second copy for the Central Dimensional Register should the consignment be logged as an incident rather than a passage. Where a descent is suspended and resumed on the same day, a single line covers both, with a superscript pointing to the suspension book. Where it is resumed on a different day, two lines are required and the second is to be initialled in the presence of the duty keeper at the landing, who may not be the keeper who initialled the first.

Since 14,320, the Register has recorded the colour of the aperture light at the head of each descent. This was Vey's suggestion, made late, and has proven the most cited column in the volume.

Access

The Register may be consulted on written application to the Aperture Keeper's Office. Consultations are held at the landing, by lamplight, in the presence of a keeper, and are limited to one hour. Visitors are reminded that the aperture stair is a working descent and that the alarm is not to be tested. Requests to photograph the margin at fol. 44r are declined.

Cross-reference is made from Annual Reckoning 892, Annual Reckoning 671, and the standing entry at Imprint 001-Sigma, where the volume is named in the closing inventory and does not, on that occasion, appear among the items returned.