Chronology Analyst

Chronology Analyst is the journeyman grade of the Chronology Guild, conferred on candidates who have completed the Guild's twelve-year analytic course and who are thereafter licensed to examine, annotate, and where necessary contest the calibration of any subsidiary chronology against the Tower Standard Chronology. The grade sits between Copyist of the First Register and Senior Analyst, and it is the only grade in the Guild that carries a standing right to file a Dissent, that is, a formal written objection to a chronology's current calibration which the Guild is obliged to table within one hundred days of receipt.

In the Tower's ordinary speech the Chronology Analyst is less an office than a nuisance, and the Guild has never disputed this characterisation. Analysts are the persons who stand in stairwells with stopwatches, who query the hour-cards of the Stairwell Chronology, and who may at any hour demand to see the seal on a document said to have been promulgated on a date that has not yet occurred.

Origin and the Reckoning of 41

The grade was created by the Chronology Guild in the reckoning year 41, following the failure of the Primary Chronology to agree with itself across two adjacent floors. The failure was traced not to the numerals but to the persons reading them: the copyists of the period had no standing to object to anything they transcribed, and so errors entered the register politely and remained there for decades.

The Guild's remedy was to invent a reader with teeth. The founding instrument, Guild Instrument 3, provided that "the Analyst shall not be a copyist, nor shall the Analyst be a judge, but shall stand between them and be disliked by both." The phrasing has survived every subsequent recension and is quoted in the margin of most Analyst handbooks.

Duties in practice

An Analyst is assigned a staircase, an aperture, or a document, and is expected to know its chronology better than its custodians do. The Second Chronology and the Fifth Chronology are the usual assignments, since both are calibrated against the Tower Standard Chronology and both drift. When the drift exceeds the tolerance set by the Promulgation of Harmonized Chronology, the Analyst files a notice and the staircase is closed for correction. Correction is usually brief. It occasionally is not.

The most celebrated recent case is that of Analyst Perrin Ost, assigned to Aperture 6 in the winter of the year 314. Ost determined that the aperture's calendar was running eleven days behind the Central Chronology and filed his notice accordingly. The custodians of the aperture declined to close it, observing that the eleven days contained the whole of the trading quarter and that closure would ruin them. Ost held the aperture for forty days by the simple expedient of standing in it. He was relieved, reprimanded, and subsequently promoted, and the eleven days were never recovered.

Analysts are also required to inspect the seals on chronology vaults. They may not open a vault without the presence of a second Analyst. No exception is made for a fire.

The Ost–Velliot dispute

Scholarly disagreement within the grade is sharpest over the doctrine of coincidental dating, that is, whether two events recorded on the same date in two subsidiary chronologies are to be presumed simultaneous. Analyst Ost held that they are, on the ground that a chronology's only claim is to place things. Analyst Velliot held that they are not, on the ground that a chronology's only claim is to place things in order, and that simultaneity is a question for the events.

The dispute was referred to the Guild, which found for Velliot under Fifth Concordance, Annex 9, and then, eleven years later, found for Ost under Ninth Concordance, Clause 4.4, without withdrawing the earlier finding. Both findings remain in force. The practical result is that an Analyst may presume simultaneity or decline to, provided the choice is declared in the margin before the inspection begins. Declaring late is the most frequent ground of disciplinary proceedings in the Guild.

"The Analyst who declares after the seal is broken has not made a finding. The Analyst has made an excuse."

— Chronology Guild, Disciplinary Register, entry for the year 302

Relationship to the Librarians

The grade is a Guild grade, and Analysts answer to the Guild and not to the Librarians, a distinction the Librarians have tested twice. Miren, Senior Analyst of the Librarians, has argued in the Dialogical School's papers that the Guild's Analysts should be seconded to the Librarians during governance crises, as occurred on Floor 909. The Guild's position is that its Analysts are already seconded to the Tower, and that the Librarians are welcome to consult them like anyone else.

The compromise reached under Third Concordance, Clause 7.22.α permits a Chronology Analyst to advise the Librarians but not to file a Dissent on their behalf. An Analyst who advises the Librarians and then files a dissent is understood to have resigned from one of the two bodies, though the Guild has never specified which, and the Librarians have never asked.

Insignia and standing

A Chronology Analyst wears the Grey Cord across the left shoulder, and may carry a stopwatch, a seal-case, and a folding rule of no more than one span. The stopwatch is the property of the Guild and is surrendered on retirement; the rule is not. Analysts are entitled to a desk on the floor of their assignment and to be addressed by the grade in all written correspondence, including correspondence addressed to them by mistake.

There are, at the last general roll, four hundred and six Chronology Analysts in good standing, of whom ninety-one are assigned to the Central Chronology Vault and the remainder to staircases. The Guild records the roll in the Sixth Chronology and the Librarians record it independently in their own chronology; the two rolls have never agreed, and the discrepancy is itself a standing assignment for two Analysts, who have been counting one another for some years.