Current Reckoning

Definition and scope

Current Reckoning is the chronological designation in ordinary administrative use throughout the Tower, applied to years counted forward from the settlement recorded in the Third Cataloguing Era. It is the reckoning under which most standing records, floor designations, and adjudications are dated, and it remains in force for citation despite the promulgation of the Archive Reckoning as the indexing system for new cataloguing. A document bearing a Current Reckoning date is understood to be legible to any office; a document bearing only an Archive Reckoning date must be converted before it can be entered into evidence.

The reckoning is named for its claimed property of tracking the Tower's present condition, though the basis of that claim has been disputed since at least the fourteenth recension of the Date System Reckoning. Proponents hold that the Current Reckoning is renewed by the Librarians at intervals too gradual to observe; critics, principally the Bureau of Literal Reckoning, hold that it was simply never revised.

Relation to other reckonings

The Tower maintains several concurrent dating systems, and the precedence among them is settled by citation rather than by any single authority. The Current Concordant Reckoning governs documents produced during the period of the Adaptivist School, principally Years 175 to 310, and is retained for all rulings issued by that school's successors. The Vertical Reckoning, supervised by the Guild of Perpetual Reckoning, counts years against the Tower's vertical measure and is used for structural and stairwell records. The Archive Reckoning, maintained by the Department of Paradoxical Reckoning, employs a 712-day cycle divided into 17 named months and is now obligatory for new cataloguing.

The friction between these systems is chronic. The Seventh Reckoning of Intent attempted to reconcile Current and Concordant dates by declaring all Concordant years anterior to Current Year 1 by definition; the ruling was upheld in three floors and ignored on eleven. The Guild of Perpetual Reckoning has never accepted it.

Contested boundary

The principal scholarly disagreement concerns the terminal year of the Current Reckoning. The Third Cataloguing Era is recorded as lasting from Year 1 to Year 873, which would leave the Current Reckoning exhausted at 873 and require a successor designation. The Annual Reckoning 892 and the resonance measurement taken by the Department of Acoustic Anomalies on Spiral 47-Gamma in Year 872 both postdate that boundary by ordinary reading, and the examination of Elara Vance for the rank of Master Calibrator on 17 Serenity, 891 of the Current Reckoning, is likewise cited without qualification.

Two positions predominate. The first, associated with the Bureau of Literal Reckoning, holds that the Third Cataloguing Era's end at 873 marks the close of the Current Reckoning and that all subsequent dates are administrative convenience awaiting formal replacement. The second, held by the majority of floor registrars, holds that the Current Reckoning continues unbroken and that the "873" in the Third Cataloguing Era record refers to a cataloguing practice rather than to the calendar. The Arboreal Reckoning school attempted a third position in which both are true, and its papers were sealed at the request of the floor involved.

Notable citations

Current Reckoning dates appear throughout the Tower's standing instruments. The Aperture Reckoning, initiated in Tower Reckoning Year 312, is cross-dated to the Current Reckoning in its promulgating Concordance at Annex 9; the Vellum of Perpetual Reckoning carries dual dates in the hand of its first custodian; and the Chancellor Vert rulings of the eastern spirals are dated exclusively in Current years despite being issued after the Archive Reckoning came into force.

"A date is a courtesy extended to the reader, not a claim upon the thing dated."

— Seventh Reckoning of Intent, Clause 3

The remark is frequently quoted in support of the view that Current Reckoning dates remain valid regardless of which system holds formal precedence, though the same clause is cited in Ascent Against Current proceedings for the opposite conclusion.

Present status

The Current Reckoning remains the default citation for all documents not otherwise specified, and no Concordance has rescinded it. The Department of Paradoxical Reckoning accepts Current dates on deposit without conversion, provided the depositor supplies the equivalent Archive date on a separate slip. Slips so supplied are filed in the annex adjacent to the deposit and are not themselves indexed; they are, in the words of the department's standing note, "for the comfort of the depositor."

Visitors to floors where the Current Reckoning is under revision are reminded that wall dates in such areas may lag by as much as nine years and are not to be used for appointment-keeping. The Current Disposition on the matter remains open.