F-771

F-771 is the catalogue designation for a floor of the Tower whose name has not been established, whose number has never been verified, and which nonetheless receives, on average, forty-one visitors a year. It is the only floor in the eastern spiral to hold a designation without a name, and the only floor anywhere in the Tower whose existence is attested exclusively by people who agree they have never been there.

The designation itself is unremarkable. What has made F-771 a subject of sustained attention is the doctrine of Provenant Authority as it applies to absent premises, and the fact that the floor's guest ledger has been countersigned without interruption since the eighth recension.

Discovery and designation

The floor first appears in the survey returns of Petra-7 as a marginal note on a stair-count that did not reconcile. The surveyor, whose seal is legible but whose name has been effaced from every copy but one, recorded a landing between the four-hundred-twelfth and four-hundred-thirteenth turns of the eastern spiral at which the air was measurably colder and the stair-width narrowed by nine fingers. He did not proceed. The notation was filed under provisional designations and assigned the next free alphanumeric in the F series, which was 771.

Under Foundation of Survey Protocols, a provisional designation lapses after twelve years unless a second independent attestation is entered. The second attestation was entered in the fourteenth year, by a different surveyor, on a different staircase. Both attestations describe the same landing. Neither surveyor had read the other's return.

The absent-premises question

The central difficulty of F-771 is that no expedition has ever arrived at it twice. Precedential Analysis holds that a floor exists when it can be reached, and that reachability is demonstrated by arrival, not by report. The Literalist reading of The Foundation of Literal Intent goes further: a floor that cannot be produced on demand is not a floor but a reported condition, and conditions are catalogued under the floor on which they are felt.

Against this, the Intransigent Materialists maintain that forty-one visitors a year is a great many people to have felt a condition on a landing that can be located to within nine fingers of stair-width. Their position is set out in the fourth annex to Axiomatic Foundation, which argues that the guest ledger is itself a material object, and that the ledger's countersignatures are therefore proof of a floor even where the floor is not.

"Where a register is kept in good order and the register's page is a page of the Tower, the subject of the register is a subject of the Tower, whether or not the subject will hold still to be measured."

— Axiomatic Foundation, Annex 4, clause 9

The Precedentialists have never formally replied. It is generally accepted that they consider the argument beneath them, though Third Concordance, Annex 2, requires a formal reply within nine years and none has been filed since the annex was amended.

The guest ledger

The ledger is kept on a lectern at the foot of the eastern spiral and is bound in the ordinary grey board used throughout the stairwells. Visitors who believe they have been to F-771 enter the date of their visit, the hour, the weather on the stair, and a short description of the floor's contents. The ledger is now in its sixth binding.

The descriptions do not agree. The most frequently recorded contents are a reading room of moderate size, a window facing inward, and a single occupied chair. Recorded discrepancies include the number of windows (none, one, three), the colour of the chair (green, unspecified), and whether the room contains a door. On the question of the door the ledger divides almost exactly in half, and Precedential Analysis has twice declined to hear the matter on the grounds that it is a question of furniture.

Entries must be made in ink. The lectern supplies none.

The Grievance of Clerk Ondrej Vask

In the winter of the year the eastern spiral was closed for repointing, the ledger was countersigned by Clerk Ondrej Vask, then of the sixth scriptorium, who had been assigned to keep the lectern dry. Vask countersigned forty-one entries over eleven weeks without recording a single visit of his own. When the spiral reopened, he petitioned the Librarians to be entered as a visitor on the strength of his countersignatures, arguing that a man who has read forty-one accounts of a room has been in the room by proxy.

The petition was refused. Vask appealed under Tower Foundation Edict, clause 22, which permits a clerk to enter any floor his duties have required him to certify. The Librarians ruled that the clause concerns floors, and that Vask had certified a page. He was reassigned to the ninth scriptorium, where he kept the Foundation Nail inventory for nineteen years and is remembered for the marginal note: "The nail is present. Nothing else is."

Concordance dispute

Ur-Charter of Silent Foundation, clause 3, provides that a floor unnamed for three hundred years is struck from the register and its designation retired. F-771's three-hundredth year passed during the repointing. The Literalists moved to strike it. The motion failed on the procedural finding that clause 3 applies to floors unnamed by their founders, and that F-771 was unnamed by everyone, founders included, which the Librarians held to be a different case.

Declaration of Impermanence was cited in the minority opinion as supporting retirement of the designation, and Foundation Charter was cited in the majority as forbidding it, and both citations are accurate. No amendment has been raised. The designation stands, the ledger is countersigned quarterly, and the lectern is moved to the fourth landing whenever the eastern spiral is repointed.