Entry 12,455

Definition and scope

Entry 12,455 is a Primary Entry in the Standing Catalogue, recorded under the floor currently designated 4,118-C and administered by the Office of Ordinal Scrutiny. The entry catalogues a subject described in the folio as "the last item to be entered before the numbering scheme was abandoned." The subject matter of the entry has been contested since its acceptance, and the Tower holds three non-reconciled descriptions of it across two recensions.

The identification code 12,455 follows the standard form for a Ledger Entry, though the numerals themselves are not sequential with any neighbouring entry and were, under the terms of Resolution 12, entered twice — once as Primary and once in the mirror ledger held at floor 3,902. The two records have never been compared directly, as the mirror ledger has been under conservation since the winter of the Long Reassignment.

History of the entry

The entry was raised by Sub-Curator Aldous Vell, who served in the Office of Ordinal Scrutiny for nineteen years and is remembered chiefly for this filing. Vell's covering memorandum, dated to the third thaw after the Reconciliation of Shelves, states that the entry was necessary because "the numbering scheme had reached a figure no one wished to continue writing." The figure given in the memorandum — 12,454 — does not match the figure under which the entry was accepted, and no correction slip survives.

Following acceptance, the entry was assigned to the Spiral Athenaeum for cross-reference, then recalled within a fortnight on the grounds that the Athenaeum's index could not resolve a number containing a comma. The entry was re-filed under a flat numeral, then restored to its comma form after the Second Concordance ruled that commas were structural. It currently bears the comma.

Contested subject

Three descriptions of the entry's subject appear in the record:

• The recension of the Office of Ordinal Scrutiny describes it as "an index of items not held."
• The recension of the Hall of Unresolved Queries describes it as "the item which the index does not hold."
• The recension held by Entry 891-Sigma in its procedural annex describes it, without further explanation, as "the same thing twice."

The discrepancy has been the subject of an Eponymous Dispute recorded in the Dispute Ledgers since the second recension was filed. The dispute has produced four rulings and no conclusion; the fourth ruling, issued under Entry 440, Sub-clause 9, ordered all three descriptions to stand simultaneously, which has been the working arrangement ever since.

Under Ordinance 4, the entry's medium — a bound folio of deacidified rag, 218 × 141 mm — was assessed as permanent on the grounds that it had been left, deliberately, in a corridor subject to seasonal damp. The assessor's note records that the folio "had already begun to soften at the corners by the time of inspection, which was considered sufficient."

Relation to the catalogue's own apparatus

Because the entry claims to be the last numbered item before the abandonment of the scheme, it functions within the Referential Catalogue as a terminus rather than a subject. Several later entries cite it as their precedent for using unnumbered designations, which has the effect of making Entry 12,455 the origin point of a numbering system it is itself said to have ended.

The Inventory of Proposed Holdings contains a duplicate proposal, undated, for the same subject under the figure 12,455 with no comma. This proposal has never been acted upon and is not considered a second entry; it is considered a second proposal for the first entry, which the Standing Catalogue regards as an ordinary administrative redundancy.

Access and consultation

The folio may be consulted in person at floor 4,118-C on any day the corridor is not being aired. Readers are asked not to hold the folio open at more than ninety degrees, and not to return it damp.

"The figure is not the last figure. It is only the last figure anyone was willing to write down."

— Sub-Curator Aldous Vell, covering memorandum to the Office of Ordinal Scrutiny