Floor 117 (The Whispering Gallery)

Floor 117 (The Whispering Gallery) is a designated auditory cataloguing floor of the Tower, entered in the master stack as a subsidiary whispering gallery under the general rubric of Whispering Gallery. Its number, 117, bears no reconstructed relation to the sequence of Floor 22 or Floor 14,112 ("The Whispering Gallery"), and the Census of the Whispering Stacks lists it as "present, unverified, and repeatedly mis-shelved."

Topography and Access

Floor 117 is reached by the Whispering Stair from Floor 116 and by a sealed aperture from The Whispering Gallery of Floor Ξ-12, though the latter connection is disputed by the Office of Aperture Rectification, which holds that the aperture opens only on the third night of each Tower-winter. The gallery proper consists of seven concentric railings around a central void in which unanswered catalogue requests are deposited. The Gallery of Unfinished Symphonies, though architecturally contiguous with the Whispering Gallery on Floor 22, has no confirmed extension to Floor 117; the Whispering Gallery Procedural notes only that "any symphony begun on 117 must conclude on a floor not yet numbered."

Administrative History

The earliest recension concerning Floor 117 is the The Whispering Gallery of Floor 112, Annex B, which cross-files a procedural letter dated Y198 SCE from Clerk Othmar Venn to the Census of the Whispering Stacks. Venn complained that "the echoes on 117 return petitions in the wrong dialect of the archive," a grievance that precipitated the Case of the Whispering Gallery and a ruling by the The Whispering Gallery Precedent that echoes "shall be considered authoritative unless contradicted by a higher concordance." In Y203 SCE the floor was briefly evacuated during the The Pre-Dawn Evacuation of the Whispering Codices, though no codices from 117 were recorded as present.

Scholarly Disagreement

The status of Floor 117 under the Third Concordance and the Second Concordance is contested. The Third Concordance, Annex 4, states: "Floor 117 is a lawful whispering gallery and its silences are binding." The Second Concordance, Spiral 9, Clause 2, counters: "No floor numbered between 100 and 120 shall be held to whisper; any perceived utterance is a cataloguing error." The Office of Reconcilement has issued no settlement, and librarians customarily cite both in alternating order when disputes arise on the floor.

"The contradiction is not a flaw but the floor's native acoustics."

— The Whispering Gallery Precedent, Recension 3

Holdings and Notable Specimens

Floor 117 houses the Silent Banner of the Lesser Stacks, distinct from the Floor 22's The Silent Banner of the Whispering Galleries kept in Vestibule 4. Specimen S-07, initially recovered from the Whispering Gallery on Floor 422, was briefly transferred to 117 in Y211 SCE before being returned owing to "incompatible reverberation," per the Whispering Gallery Procedural. The Barometric Gallery maintains a standing loan of one pressure-sealed index to Floor 117, renewed each Tower-spring.

Visiting Conditions

Access to Floor 117 is permitted to any clerk bearing a concordance seal, with the exception that no visitor may hum while crossing the second railing, as established by the Third Concordance, Annex 4. The Receding Reference Desk is not present on Floor 117; its absence is recorded as the only point of agreement between the First Concordance and the Fourth Concordance. Maintenance of the floor's echo-chambers is performed by the Census of the Whispering Stacks on a schedule that the Whispering Gallery Procedural describes as "frequent enough to prevent silence."