e coincidence between the Point's defined location and its manifested position

Definition and Scope

The Coincidence Between the Point's Defined Location and Its Manifested Position is the formal relation, maintained annually by the Clerks of Coincidence, between the coordinates the Primal Point is recorded as occupying and the coordinates at which it is in fact observed to sit. The relation is expressed as a separation, in staves and fractions of a stave, and is the only measurement in the Tower that is permitted to return a value of zero without triggering an audit.

The distinction between the two terms is older than most of the Concordances. The defined location is a matter of record: an entry in the Positional Register, amended only by the senior Clerk on duty at the close of the Annual Verification of the Primal Point. The manifested position is what the CI-000/α Primal Coincidence stave finds when it is laid against the Point. The relation between them is not a discrepancy. It is a coincidence, and is filed as such.

The Ritual of Concordance

Once each year, a senior Clerk of the Curators of Coincidence carries the stave to the chamber and lays it flat. The stave is graduated in one hundred and forty-four divisions; the Point has never been observed to move through more than nine of them. The Clerk reads the manifested position aloud, the Register is opened to the prior year's defined location, and the separation is entered in the Ledger of Annual Coincidence under the heading Chance Agreement of Point and Record.

A separation of zero is recorded as perfect coincidence and requires no further action. A separation of any other value is recorded as coincidence with displacement and likewise requires no further action. A stave found to have been left on the sill overnight is retired; this is the only circumstance in which a reading is annulled.

Points of Scholarly Disagreement

The First Concordance holds that the Primal Point was established before any coincidence was recorded, and its defenders therefore maintain that the defined location is logically prior to the manifested position — the Point is where the record says, and the stave confirms it with varying degrees of thoroughness. Against this, the Principle of Textual Immanence asserts that a location recorded is a location made, and that the manifested position is the more honest of the two.

"The Register is not a description of the Point. The Register is the Point, tolerably well spelled."

— Fourth Concordance, Annex 2, attributed to the Archivist of the Receding Reference

The Seventh Concordance declines to resolve the matter, observing at clause VII-31 that the question "has been settled twice, in opposite directions, and both settlements remain in force." The position of Provisional Archivist was created under Concordance VII-12 in part to hold this contradiction without embarrassment.

Relation to Other Coincidences

The Coincidence Between the Point's Defined Location and Its Manifested Position is classified as a simple vertical coincidence, as distinct from the transitive variety catalogued by the Assessors of Coincidence. It is not to be confused with vertical coincidences of the office kind, which concern adjacency between floors, nor with Echo-Locus Drift, which concerns the tendency of a recorded location to migrate after the fact.

Where the relation falls below a separation of three divisions — a state known as Near-Coincident Siting — the matter is referred to the Office of Onomastic Coincidence only if the Point and the record differ by name as well as by position. They have not yet done so. The referral is nevertheless made annually and annually returned.

Incidents on Record

In the winter of the year recorded as 4 112, a Clerk named Halvern of the third scriptorium produced a reading of eleven divisions and was obliged to explain how the Point had moved beyond its permitted range. The explanation, entered verbatim in the Ledger, was that the stave had been carried up rather than along, and that the Point "being rendered at an angle, appeared to lean." No disciplinary finding was made. The Clerk's measurement was not corrected; it stands as the single exceptional entry in the Ledger and is annotated only with the words leaning, confirmed.

In the year recorded as 4 307 the Corridor of Defined Locations was found to have been lettered on the reverse of the previous century's lettering, producing four days of a manifested position that matched a defined location two floors above. The Clerk responsible, one Marn of the East Stair, observed that the error had improved the coincidence considerably and asked that it be retained. The request was refused. The lettering was restored; the improved figure was nonetheless retained in the marginal column, grey, and unreconciled to any total since.

Current Status

The relation is presently recorded at four divisions of separation, with a stated confidence of moderate to unwavering. The figure is reviewed by the Clerks of Coincidence triennially when the Coincidence Rulers are calibrated against the stave. The next calibration is due on a date the Concordances disagree about. Visitors are asked not to stand on the stave, and not to move the Point while the stave is being read.