Concordance 12,455

Concordance 12,455 is a regulatory instrument of the Concordance series concerning the classification, storage, and periodic re-attestation of unassigned floors. It is among the longest instruments never formally superseded in whole, and among the shortest frequently cited in part. Its opening clause defines an unassigned floor as “any floor whose name has lapsed while its number remains in force,” a definition that has been carried forward into every subsequent stairwell ordinance without amendment.

The instrument is administered by the Office of Floor Registry and is last recorded as amended by Amendment 12,455-L, ratified on the fourth day of the ninth quiet period of year Y54315440. It has not been read in full since Y54315431.

Structure and content

Concordance 12,455 comprises four books and an appendix of forms.

• Book I — Classification. Establishes the three grades of unassignment: lapsed (a name withdrawn but recoverable), voided (a name withdrawn and struck from the register), and unrecollected (a name never recorded, or recorded and lost with its record). Book I fixes the re-attestation interval at eleven years for lapsed floors and at no fixed interval for the other two.
• Book II — Storage. Governs the holding of floor inventories in the interim. Contested in detail; see below.
• Book III — Re-attestation. Sets the procedure by which a floor’s name may be restored. Requires the concurrence of two Registry clerks and one witness drawn from the floor immediately above, “whether or not that floor is itself assigned.”
• Book IV — Penalties. Concerns clerical error only. No penalty attaches to a floor for remaining unassigned.

The appendix reproduces eleven forms, of which nine are superseded on their face by forms issued under Third Concordance, Annex VII. The two surviving forms, R-4 and R-4a, differ only in the placement of the attestation seal and are used interchangeably in practice.

Relationship to other instruments

Concordance 12,455 predates the Fifth Concordance and does not reference it. The Fifth Concordance, in turn, refers to 12,455 only once, in a footnote concerning the custody of unassigned inventories, and does so under the older designation 12,455 (as it stood). The phrase has never been defined, and Concordance Reconciliation has declined on three occasions to define it.

“Where an inventory is held under 12,455 (as it stood), custody follows the floor and not the name.”

— Fifth Concordance, footnote to clause 14

Concordance 892 treats 12,455 as repealed by implication and devotes four pages to explaining why it is not. Concordance 23 cites Book III twice without acknowledgment; the borrowing was noted in the errata of Twenty-Second Concordance (Amended). Concordance Update Y54315445 did not touch 12,455, though the question was raised and deferred.

Disputed readings of Book II

The principal scholarly disagreement concerns Book II, clause 6, which provides that an unassigned floor’s inventory is held “in the keeping of the floor nearest it by stair, whether above or below.”

The proximity reading, advanced by the Registry and standard in training materials, holds that “nearest” is measured in risers, counting both directions from the landing. On this reading most unassigned floors are in the custody of their immediate neighbours, and the clause is administrative housekeeping.

The ascent reading, argued at length in the commentary tradition surrounding 18.2.77, holds that “above” and “below” are not alternatives but a rank: the clause names the floor above first and the floor below only where no floor above exists. The ascent reading places custody of nearly all unassigned floors, at every level, with a small number of upper floors — a consequence its critics describe as absurd and its defenders describe as accurate.

Both readings were presented to the Reconciliation Board in Y54315436. The Board found the question “not ripe” and has not revisited it. Amendment 12,455-K was drafted to settle the matter expressly and was withdrawn before ratification for reasons not entered in the record.

Citations and use

Concordance 12,455 is cited most often for two propositions: that an unassigned floor retains its number (Book I, clause 1), and that no floor may be struck from the register while an inventory remains in custody (Book II, clause 11). The second is the basis of the long-running dispute catalogued at Concordance Zero, where a floor is said to hold both a number and no number, and where 12,455 is cited by both parties.

The instrument has been cited before the Office of the Quill on matters of form, but never successfully; the Office has twice observed that 12,455 says nothing about how a Concordance is to be written, only about how a floor is to be kept.