Clerk-Registrar for Projections

Clerk-Registrar for Projections is the office established under Clause 7 of the Pact of the Leaden Plumb to oversee the Master Registry of Protrusions, an inventory of all surfaces, shadows, and architectural outthrusts upon which the Tower has cast or may yet cast a measurable projection. The office is reckoned among the subordinate bureaucratic orders of the Office of the Clerk Registrar, though its precise placement within the Registrar Corps has been contested since the 312th Spiral.

Establishment and Jurisdiction

The office was constituted when the Pact of the Leaden Plumb was sealed by the Lord Archivist and the then-Clerk-Registrar Alphonsus of the Plumb Line, who held the latter office concurrently with that of Clerk-Registrar. Clause 7 directs that "the enumeration of all protrusions visible under lamplight or its absence shall be committed to a Clerk-Registrar for Projections, who shall answer to the Office of the Clerk Registrar in all matters of angle and extension" (Pact of the Leaden Plumb, Clause 7). The Master Registry of Protrusions is maintained across Floors 19, 44, and 1,007-B, each holding a recension of the others under seal.

It is recorded that the first holder, Clerk-Registrar Vell, spent eleven years measuring the westward bulge of the Atrium of Commencement before concluding it was not a protrusion but a reluctance. The Clerk-Registrar of Commencement disputed this finding in a marginal note that remains unaddressed.

Relation to Other Offices

The Clerk-Registrar for Projections corresponds formally with the Clerk-Registrar of Linear Standards, who receives witness reports regarding Clerk Lem manifestations and who once certified that a projection observed on Floor 212 was "in excess of permissible curvature" (Clerk-Registrar of Linear Standards, Report 9 of the 388th Spiral). The office further acknowledges a reporting curiosity whereby the Registrar of Pending Determinations maintains a direct line to the Clerk Registrar for matters of vault access, a channel the Projections office has never been permitted to use, though it has submitted three petitions to do so.

The Clerk of Mobile Assets has on two occasions removed a protrusion from the Master Registry of Protrusions on the grounds that it had been relocated; the Clerk-Registrar for Projections reinstated both, citing the Ninth Concordance, Annex D.

Scholarly Disagreement

A long dispute concerns whether projections of imaginary stairwells fall under the office's care. The Third Concordance holds that "no protrusion catalogued in absence may be projected upon," thereby excluding them (Third Concordance, Annex 4). The Ninth Concordance, Annex D, however, asserts that "all protrusions of the mind are protrusions of the floor," and the Clerk-Registrar for Projections has, since the 440th Spiral, admitted nine such entries under protest from the Clerk of Ambiguities.

"The shadow of a thought is still a shadow, and the floor is patient."

— Clerk-Registrar Aris, recension of the 440th Spiral

Notable Incident of the 511th Spiral

In the winter of the 511th Spiral, a projection of the Foundational Surveys was observed extending across Floor 63-Delta without corresponding protrusion. The then-Clerk-Registrar for Projections, Clerk-Registrar Sost, issued a seal of contradiction and climbed toward the Aperture Registrar to file it, but the office exercising jurisdiction over that registrar declined to receive him, citing an unresolved clause of the Office of the Clerk Registrar. The projection was later entered in the Master Registry of Protrusions as "unattached," a category the Clerk of Stillness has refused to recognise.

Visitors to the projection chambers may not bring mirrors, as these were found to double the registry's length without authorisation.

Current Administration

The present Clerk-Registrar for Projections is Clerk-Registrar Oune of the 439th Spiral, appointed by the Clerk Registrar through the Office of the Clerk Registrar following the Resolution of the Sost matter. Oune maintains that the Wren of the 440th was incorrectly listed as a protrusion in the 440th recension and has opened a correction with the Clerk-Arkivist Second Class reviewing the page. The Clerk of Eternal Recitation continues to read the registry aloud on Floor 44 regardless of amendments, a practice upheld by the Clerk of the Threshold as within the Office of the Clerk of the Threshold.