Chronophagic Recordings

Chronophagic Recordings are impermanent recordings held within the Tower that consume their own temporal context, thereby inducing a gradual erasure of content from the present moment backward. First attested in the lower scriptoria of Floor 117-Beta, they are administered under the overlapping jurisdictions of the Department of Ephemeral Cataloguing, the Chronophagic Registry, and the Librarians, though the precise boundaries of each office's authority remain a matter of recension.

Nature and Mechanism

A chronophagic recording does not degrade by external duress but by its own functioning. As the recording is consulted, it draws upon the instant of its hearing and dissolves that instant from the archive's continuity; the earliest inscribed passage is the last to vanish. The Treatment of Chronophagic Events prescribes that no such recording be opened more than twice per solar interval without sanction from the Chronophagic Registry. Impermanent recordings of this class are distinct from the broader class of Impermanent Recordings, which may be stabilised through Protocols for Impermanent Media and the application of Non-Degrading Laminate; chronophagic recordings reject laminate and instead accelerate their consumption when sealed.

The Echo-Glass has on occasion been used to transcribe a chronophagic recording onto a permanent medium, but the Aggregate Echo ruled in Concordance 19, Annex 7, that "a copied hunger is still a hunger, and the Echo-Dreaming protocol shall not certify what it cannot preserve." The master copies of such transcriptions are lodged in the Echo Archive, where they are monitored for Inventory Echoes.

Administration and Filing

The Chronophagic Registry holds sole authority for the official certification of a Filing Moment and determines the Filing Moment of a Contradiction Filing arising from chronophagic evidence. Jurisdiction over upper-staircase filings is likewise vested in the Registry, as recorded in the holding Chronophagic Registry. Disputes concerning the precedence of one Filing Moment over another are heard in the The Whispering Gallery, where acoustic recordings serve as evidence before the The Argument Place.

In the winter of the 884th Index Year, Clerk Hestor of the Narrow Aperture filed a chronophagic record of the Cilice Expedition under a Filing Moment certified three days prior to its own creation, citing the expedition's disputed 'Saffron-Ash' scent profile. The Dispute Ledger 44-Alpha notes the Registry's rejection on the ground that "a Moment filed before its recording is a Moment eaten by its own teeth" (Tenth Concordance, Clause 12).

Scholarly Disagreement

A long-standing contradiction obtains between the Tenth Concordance and the Third Concordance regarding whether chronophagic erasure proceeds from the present or from the point of first inscription. The Tenth Concordance, Annex 4, states:

"The consumption is of the now; the past is merely what remains when the now is gone."

— Tenth Concordance, Annex 4

The Third Concordance, by contrast, holds in Clause 9 that "the outermost ring of the recording is consumed first, and the centre endures until the final consultation." The Circulation Ledger Gamma declines to adjudicate, noting only that both positions have produced identical inventories when audited by the Department of Ephemeral Cataloguing.

Holdings and Cross-Reference

The Tower's catalogue lists chronophagic recordings among the possessions of the Hall of Provisional Whispers, wherein they are shelved adjacent to Echoic Imprints and certain uncertified Echo Crystal fragments. The Acoustic Treatment of that hall is calibrated to slow, though never halt, the recordings' temporal appetite. Per a marginal note in the Memory Caskets register, visitors are permitted to listen but may not hum along, as humming has been observed to hasten erasure by an average of eleven minutes per utterance.

Records of percussion attempts upon candidate bells associated with chronophagic phenomena are maintained under Impermanent Recordings, which serves as the repository for documented, authorised attempts and their results. The Downshifting Events of Floors 60 through 72 are additionally indexed as probable sites of spontaneous chronophagic generation, though the Librarians have denied all requests for information on uncatalogued inventions that might precipitate such events.

Preservation Notes

No method of permanent retention for chronophagic recordings is recognised by the Aggregate Echo. The Department of Ephemeral Cataloguing recommends inscription of a summary onto Echo-Glass within the Echo Archive prior to full erasure, provided the summary omits the 'Saffron-Ash' profile pending resolution of the Cilice Expedition dispute. The Chronophagic Registry amends its certification schedule each Index Year; the current schedule is filed under Concordance 19 and cross-referenced from Dispute Ledger 44-Alpha.