Concordance 812, Annex C

Scope

Concordance 812, Annex C is the third surviving annex to the Eight Hundred Twelfth Concordance and governs the renumbering of floors whose numbers have already been renumbered. It is a short document — eleven clauses and a schedule — but it is cited with unusual frequency, largely because it is the only annex in the corpus that explicitly authorizes a floor to hold two numbers at once. The Annex is catalogued under the shelfmark 812/C and is held in the Annex of Second Thoughts, where it is available for consultation on weekdays before the fourth bell.

Provisions

The operative clause is Clause 3, which establishes what the Tower's archivists have come to call the double-marking principle:

"A floor renumbered under this Annex shall retain its prior number as a shadow number, entered in the margin in the scribe's own hand, until such time as the floor is renumbered again."

— Concordance 812, Annex C, Clause 3

Clause 4 extends this: if a floor is renumbered a third time, the shadow numbers accumulate rather than replace one another. Clause 5, rarely quoted, notes that "the accumulation shall be considered orderly" — a phrase that has itself become the subject of annotation. The Schedule attached to the Annex (Schedule 1, "Of Floors Currently Holding More Than One Number") runs to forty-one entries and is updated by hand. It is the Schedule, rather than the Annex proper, that most offices consult daily.

Relationship to other annexes

Concordance 812, Annex C is frequently compared with the Second Concordance, Annex D, which outlines provisional holding protocol for Annex 19b and which adopts a similar logic of retained prior designations, though only in a provisional capacity. The comparison is not always flattering to the newer document. A clerk of the Office of Marginalia noted in an unsigned memorandum that Annex D's provisional framing is "at least honest about its own uncertainty," whereas 812/C "asserts the double number as settled law and then leaves the reader to reconcile it with a floor that has, in fact, only one staircase." The relationship with Seventh Concordance, Annex Q is more strained. Annex Q adopted Annex Δ's schedule of supersessions wholesale, and that schedule does not recognize shadow numbers at all; it treats each renumbering as a clean break. Where the two documents are applied to the same floor, the Tower's practice has been to follow 812/C in the margin and Annex Q in the catalogue, which produces records that satisfy neither.

Disputed readings

There is a long-standing disagreement over Clause 7. The clause reads: "The prior number shall not be spoken aloud within the stairwell, save by the custodian." Two readings are in circulation. The first, favored by the Office of Nomenclature, holds that the prohibition is ceremonial — a matter of keeping the stairwell quiet during survey work. Under this reading, the clause carries no penalty beyond a reprimand. The second reading, argued most forcefully by the redactor known only as the Second Hand, holds that the prohibition is ontological: speaking the prior number aloud within the stairwell risks the floor reverting to it. The Second Hand's commentary, appended to the 812/C recension held at the Annex of Withheld Conclusions, cites three incidents from the Survey of Floors 300–400 in support. None of the three incidents are described in detail, and the Survey itself is not extant. The Eight Hundred Twelfth Concordance, in its main text, does not mention shadow numbers at all. Whether Annex C is interpreting, extending, or contradicting its parent document has never been settled; the Office of Concordances has twice declined to rule, citing pending consultation with Concordance 712, Annex D on the question of annexal independence.

Practical notes

Floors currently listed in Schedule 1 include the fourth floor of the Gallery of Provisional Names (marked 4, 4a, and, since the winter of the long inventory, 4b) and the stairhead serving the Medical and Metaphysical Annex. Custodians are reminded that shadow numbers are to be entered in graphite, not ink, so that they may be rubbed out when the floor is renumbered again; a floor found carrying shadow numbers in ink is treated as having been renumbered in violation of Clause 9. Visitors are permitted to read the Schedule but not to copy it. The prohibition is not explained anywhere in the Annex; it appears first in the marginalia of the fourth recension and has been observed ever since.

See also

• Eight Hundred Twelfth Concordance
• Second Concordance, Annex D
• Seventh Concordance, Annex Q
• Concordance 712, Annex D
• Annex of Withheld Conclusions
• Medical and Metaphysical Annex