Floor 117 ("The Names of Rooms That Were Never Built")

Floor 117 is the floor catalogued under the name "The Names of Rooms That Were Never Built." It is a long, low gallery of thirty-one bays, entered by a single service stair from Floor 116 and exited, if at all, by a landing that terminates in a painted door. The floor holds no rooms and no plans of rooms. It holds names.

Floor 117 is not to be confused with the Registry of Un-Rooms, which stores designs, nor with The Architecture of Unbuilt Rooms, which stores reconstructions. Floor 117 stores only the designations that were assigned to unbuilt chambers before those chambers were abandoned, and it stores them in the order in which they were assigned, which is not the order in which they were abandoned.

Holdings and arrangement

The gallery's contents are inscribed on slips of vellum of a single size, 11 by 7 centimetres, filed upright in glazed cases. Each slip bears one name and, beneath it, a reference to the floor on which the room was meant to stand. The earliest slip in the collection, dated 2E:309, reads simply Febrifuge Parlour and cites a floor number now assigned to a stairwell. Later slips grow longer and more administrative. A representative selection from the eastern bays:

• Airing Room, Second Intention (Floor 604)
• Chamber of the Quiet Ledger (Floor 2,201)
• Third Waiting Room, Provisional (Floor 88)
• Room For the Reading of Nothing (Floor 117 itself; see below)

The arrangement is strictly chronological and no finding aid has ever been prepared. The Keeper of the Slips, a post held since 3E:0941 by the same family, maintains that the absence of an index is itself the catalogue, since anyone wishing to look up a name already knows it and therefore does not need one.

The Room for the Reading of Nothing

Among the slips is one referring to Floor 117. It records a chamber named Room For the Reading of Nothing, intended for the reading of nothing in particular, and scheduled for construction in the autumn of 2E:1184. The room was never built. The slip remains, filed under its date.

Whether the slip should have been removed is the subject of an unresolved dispute between the Registry of Un-Rooms and the floor's own keepers. The Registry argues that a name whose room was never built belongs to the Registry, by Concordance 23, which reserves to itself "all surviving designations of unconstructed chambers." The keepers of Floor 117 cite Concordance 41, which reserves to itself "the names of rooms that were never built, wherever inscribed," and which is four recensions later.

"The name survives the room. The room does not survive the name. It is therefore the name that must be filed, and the room that must be released."

— Concordance 41, Annex 2, clause 7

Both Concordances remain in force. The slip remains on Floor 117. No visitor has ever reported reading nothing in it, though several have reported reading nothing, and one Clerk of the Second Desk, Marrow Vell, submitted a report in 3E:1202 stating that she had read nothing for an hour and forty minutes and had found it "of no particular length."

Relation to architectural ghost theory

Students of Architectural Ghost Theory have long treated Floor 117 as a control case, on the reasoning that if a floor-plan can persist after its chamber is de-catalogued, a name ought to persist after its room is abandoned, and the two ought to correspond. The correspondence has never been demonstrated. Plans on record and names on record disagree at a rate of roughly one in four, a discrepancy first tabulated by the surveyor Orris Tame in 3E:1168 and never explained.

The most widely cited attempt at explanation is Protocol XVII, which requires that any named-but-unbuilt chamber be treated as though both built and unbuilt until its status is confirmed by two independent Librarians. Under Protocol XVII the names on Floor 117 are simultaneously in force and void, which permits their retention but not their use. The practical consequence is recorded in a marginal note by the then-Keeper: "No room on this floor may be referred to by name in correspondence, on account of the correspondence."

The Crisis of the Unbuilt Stair

During the Crisis of the Unbuilt Stair, conceptual encroachment was reported on Floor 117 in its most acute recorded form. Keepers described hearing, in the western bays, the distinct sound of a door being opened in a room that had never been built, followed by the sound of it not being closed.

An investigative party from the Registry of Un-Rooms spent eleven days on the floor in the winter of 3E:1189 and produced a report of 340 pages, of which 337 concern the party's own accommodation. The remaining three pages recommend that the slip bearing Room For the Reading of Nothing be removed, sealed, and re-entered into the Registry as a Tier-3 Hypothetical. The recommendation was accepted by the Registry and refused by the floor. The slip has not moved. A chair is kept by the case for the convenience of anyone wishing to sit and confirm this.

Access and a note on the landing

Floor 117 is open to holders of a Reader's Warrant during the hours the service stair is unlocked, which is generally between the ninth and the fourteenth hour and which is not announced. The painted door on the eastern landing opens onto the wall behind it and has done so since its painting in 2E:1107. Visitors are asked to close the door behind them. It is not a door, but the keepers have found the request useful.