Atrium G 7 — The Tower

Atrium G 7 is a downward-oriented assembly chamber on the eastern string of the seventh gantry, entered from the Grand Atrium by the stair that begins behind the sealed door marked with its number. It is not an atrium in the contemplative sense. It has no ceiling above three and a half spans, no seating, and no source of light that anyone has been able to locate; the chamber is uniformly lit and the light has been measured, attributed, and formally given up on.

The name is a designation, not a name. The letter is thought to refer to the gantry it abuts and the numeral to the gantry count from the eastern spine; the space between them is unexplained and is conventionally printed narrow, as it appears in the founding survey. Atrium G 7 has been governed, since the matter was settled in the winter of the year recorded as 3,041, by a single standing instruction painted at the head of the entry stair.

Governance and the Standing Instruction

The instruction reads: Speak while descending. Say nothing on the way up. It is attributed to Atrium Administrative and is enforced by the doorkeepers of the seventh gantry, who keep a tally of breaches in a ledger of uncommon length. The tally is not used for anything, which the doorkeepers have noted in the ledger's margins without receiving a reply.

The instruction is unusual in that it is not a Concordance. Third Concordance, which governs most of the eastern gantries, is silent on the chamber, and the seventh gantry's wardens have repeatedly petitioned for the rule to be regularized. Atrium Administrative has declined each petition on the grounds that the instruction is self-evident and does not require a document.

The following is reproduced from the entry stair, in the hand of the gantry wardens:

"Speak while descending. Say nothing on the way up."

— Painted instruction, head of the entry stair, Atrium G 7

Acoustics

The chamber's acoustics were first documented by Clerk Merrivale Aund in 3,044, who descended with a lantern, a notebook, and a list of forty-one test phrases. Aund found that speech made while descending is returned to the speaker at a delay of roughly three steps — long enough that a sentence and its echo do not overlap, short enough that a sentence and its echo are plainly the same sentence. Speech made on the ascent is not returned at all.

Aund proposed that the chamber be renamed for this property and submitted the form. The Curators rejected the proposal, not on the merits, but because the form was filed under the wrong gantry. Aund's grievance — that the gantry letter and the gantry number had been transposed on every copy of the form in circulation — was upheld by a review panel nine years later, by which time Aund had transferred to the Œdicentric Calibration Atrium and declined to return.

Measurements and the Glasswrights' Objection

The chamber's humidity is low and stable, and for eleven years it was used as a comparison standard in the calibration of instruments maintained by the Glasswrights' Atrium. The comparison was discontinued after the Curators of the Grand Atrium of Reference observed that the chamber's dimensions had changed between two surveys four years apart, without any work having been recorded or requested. The chamber is understood to be one span longer than it was. The Curators have not ordered a third survey.

Atrium of Authority took an interest in the discrepancy, and sent two inspectors. The inspectors' report was thorough, and concluded that the chamber had lengthened; it was filed as inconclusive because the chamber had not been measured to the standard required for a finding of lengthening. The report is still cited whenever the question is raised, usually in the wrong direction.

"The chamber was measured. The chamber was measured again. The second measurement differs from the first, as recorded in Annex B, and the difference is of no consequence, as recorded in Annex C."

— Inspection report of the Atrium of Authority, filed with Atrium Administrative, Annex A

The Question of Orientation

There is no scholarly agreement on what Atrium G 7 is oriented toward. One reading, common among the gantry wardens, treats the downward direction as the instruction's subject: one faces the stair while descending because the stair is the direction of travel, and one faces it on the way up for the same reason. The alternative reading, advanced by the archivists of the unspoken, holds that the chamber is oriented toward the ascending direction, and that speech on the ascent is not returned because the chamber has already consumed it. This reading is not supported by any measurement and is opposed by the Œdicentric Calibration Atrium, which has said so twice.

A third reading exists, attributed to a single anonymous petition and preserved only in summary, which proposes that the chamber is oriented toward neither the stair nor the ascent but toward the wall at the head of the stair, and that the wall is where the echoes go. The doorkeepers' ledger notes that the wall at the head of the stair has been repainted twice, and that the echoes were not affected.

Access and Restrictions

Atrium G 7 is open on all gantry days. The stair holds nine persons at once and no more, a limit installed in 3,057 after a party of eleven attempted the descent together; the party was removed in two trips and the limit has not been contested. Instruments may be carried down and must be carried back up. Nothing may be left in the chamber, with one exception: the surveyors' chalk mark at the far wall, dated 3,049 and renewed without authority whenever it fades, is considered part of the chamber rather than an object within it, and may be left.