Floor 1114 a

Floor 1114 a

Floor 1114 a is a supplementary landing inserted between Floor 1117, the reversal floor, and the intermediate service stub sometimes called Floor 1114 b, which is not itself catalogued and is often mistaken for a clerical error in the master index. Floor 1114 a is not a floor in the full administrative sense. It holds no stacks, maintains no name beyond its designation, and appears on the master index as a correction slip pasted over the older entry for Floor 1114, which was struck from the register in the winter of the year recorded as 3,041 in the Concordance of Enumerated Levels. The slip has never been removed. Librarians who handle the index are instructed not to lift it.

The landing measures eleven paces by four and is lit by a single aperture at the north end. Its defining feature is a low wooden partition, replaced in 3,058 after an earlier partition was found to have been made of catalogued shelf-board and removed under Ordinance 77 on the Integrity of Holdings. Beyond the partition stand the upper treads of the stair connecting Floor 909 to Floor 1114 a, which terminate without a handrail. Visitors are advised to keep to the left of the partition and to descend facing the wall.

Origin and the struck floor

Floor 1114 was struck from the register following the Audit of Consecutive Landings conducted under Fourth Concordance, Annex 12, which found that its principal stairwell returned the traveller to Floor 113 on three occasions out of five tested. The audit did not conclude that Floor 1114 was dangerous, only that it was unreconcilable with its neighbours. The Office of Vertical Survey recommended suppression of the number rather than repair, a recommendation carried by a majority of four to two. The dissenting surveyors, Clerk Ambrine Holt and Clerk Ovid Marrant, filed a minority note arguing that a floor which returns to Floor 113 is not a failure of the floor but a property of it, and that the property should have been catalogued.

The minority note was never answered. Holt's later petition, the Grievance of the Eleventh Landing, describes the period after the strike as one of quiet administrative embarrassment, in which the floor continued to be reached by stair but had no number to be reached by. The landing designated Floor 1114 a was created to give such arrivals somewhere to stand while being recorded, and was entered in the index under a letter suffix — the first and only use of the suffix a on a numbered landing in this range.

"A floor that cannot be numbered is not therefore absent. It is merely unaccompanied."

— Grievance of the Eleventh Landing, clause 3

Scholarly dispute

The Second Concordance, Schedule 9, holds that Floor 1114 a is a genuine landing and that its designation should be read as the number 1114 followed by a qualifier, in the manner of Floor 22.J. The Fifth Concordance, in a marginal amendment of unclear date, holds instead that the a denotes a first recension and that Floor 1114 a is properly a document, not a place. Under this reading the landing does not exist and the stair terminates in a reference.

Neither position has been withdrawn. The Office of Vertical Survey continues to send a clerk to the landing each quarter to confirm that it can still be stood upon, and records the result under the heading "reference verified by occupancy." The practice dates from 3,062 and has never been reviewed. Clerks assigned to the quarter-day visit are issued a chalk marker and are told not to descend beyond the partition without one.

Coincidental naming

Floor 1114 a is frequently confused in correspondence with Floor 1114 A of the reversal registers, which shares the designation but lies four hundred landings above and bears no relation to it. The Registrar of Ambiguous Styles has ruled twice that the coincidence is to be noted but not corrected, on the grounds that correcting it would require distinguishing the two in the index, and that distinguishing them would require a suffix the index does not possess. The ruling stands as Ruling on Duplicate Suffixes, 3,071.

Practical notes

The landing is not a thoroughfare and is not named on any stair-plate between Floor 881 and Floor 1117. Travellers who arrive upon it unintentionally are asked to wait by the aperture until a clerk passes and to leave the partition undisturbed. The chalk issued for the quarter-day visits is not to be taken from the landing; a fresh piece is supplied at Floor 606 on the way down.

For records of the neighbouring reversal floor, see Floor 1117. The struck floor itself has no holding and, per the Office of Vertical Survey, is not expected to acquire one.