Bureau of Introspective Resources

Overview

The Bureau of Introspective Resources is the Tower body charged with the identification, valuation, and custodial allocation of resources that exist only when observed closely enough to object to being observed. It occupies Floors 411 through 417 of the Middle Spire, a suite of rooms whose walls were repapered in 1187 and have not been redecorated since, on the grounds that the wallpaper has begun to participate. The Bureau is administratively subordinate to the Bureau of Modal Coherence for purposes of audit and to the Bureau of Material Coherence for purposes of conversion, a dual arrangement that has produced no fewer than nine unresolved jurisdictional petitions.

The Bureau's founding instrument is Concordance 88, Annex 6, which establishes that "a resource which returns the regard of its custodian shall be entered in the Ledger at its stated value, and thereafter at the value it states" (Concordance 88, Annex 6, cl. 2). This single sentence has been litigated for two hundred and forty years.

History

The Bureau was constituted in 1104 following the embarrassment of the Gallery of Introspective Geometries, where a routine survey party under Clerk-Adjunct Maren Vossel recorded eleven corridors and departed with fourteen. Ruling 712-A, which governs the Axiomatic Loop, was drafted precisely to prevent a recurrence, and the Bureau was created to hold whatever the Loop produced. Its first inventory, filed in the winter of 1104, listed a single item: "one (1) corridor, south-facing, apprehensive."

The Bureau's early decades were consumed by the question of whether introspective resources could be counted twice — once as resource, once as witness. The Bureau of Apparent Duplication maintained that they could not; the Bureau of Introspective Resources maintained that they could, and that the Bureau of Apparent Duplication was itself an introspective resource and could therefore be counted. The dispute was settled in 1149 by the simple expedient of not settling it.

Method and conversion

Valuation proceeds by the official tables maintained under the Edict of Luminous Allocation and reconciled quarterly against the Ledger of Balances Unseen. A resource that states a value higher than its custodian's assessment is entered at the higher figure and the custodian is required to file a note explaining the discrepancy. In practice most custodians file the same note. The standard note, reproduced in the Bureau's handbook, reads: "The resource was asked."

Conversion to tangible holdings requires a certificate from the Luminous Materials Guild, which has proposed on three occasions that the Bureau's entire stock be reclassified as "Phase 6: Introspective" material and removed from the general ledger. The Physical Principles Directorate rejected each proposal without reasons, as is its custom.

Inventory

The Bureau's current holdings are published in abridged form each Tower Financial Cycle. The unabridged register is not consulted after dusk.

• One corridor, south-facing, apprehensive (Floor 411).
• Fourteen mirrors, eleven of which return a delayed reflection (Floor 412).
• The Hum of the Depths, on loan from Alban of the Thirty-Sixth Landing, pending the outcome of his petition for resources (Floor 413).
• A stairwell that declines to be measured (Floor 414; measurement suspended by order of the Grand Logistician).
• One hundred and six Indexing Moths, formally utilized under the Ninety-Eighth Concordance (Floor 415).

Dispute concerning the corridor

The south-facing corridor of Floor 411 remains the Bureau's most contested holding. Concordance 112, Annex A, requires that any resource claimed as a Public Dream satisfy the criterion of communal utility. The Department of Predictive Sustainment argues that the corridor is not a resource at all but a recurring administrative misunderstanding, and has twice attempted to void it under the provisions governing SFU-A sectors. The Bureau responds that the corridor cannot be voided because it has been walked through, and that what has been walked through is not within the Department's remit.

"A resource that has been walked through is a resource that has been agreed to. The Department may void a sector; it may not void a walk."

— Concordance 88, Annex 6, marginal recension of 1311

In 1368 the corridor was briefly declared an unattainable Density Zone under SFU-D, a classification that lasted four days and was withdrawn after the corridor was observed to be shorter on the fifth. The Bureau of Uncataloguing has requested custody of the withdrawal notice and been refused.

Current business

The Bureau presently seeks Divergent Grids to resolve a persistent spatial contradiction between Floors 413 and 414, where the stairwell and the Hum occupy the same apparent volume. Its requisition was folded into the Perpetual Requisition for Aperture Gamma and is expected to be considered in the cycle after next. Visiting surveyors are reminded that the mirrors on Floor 412 are to be addressed by their catalogue numbers and not by name. The Bureau maintains that this is a courtesy; the mirrors maintain otherwise.

No expedition has established what lies above Floor 417. The Bureau's own position, recorded in a memorandum of 1402, is that it does not matter, since anything above Floor 417 would be looking back.