Floor 5,307

Description

Floor 5,307 is a subjacent floor of the Tower, catalogued since the early recensions of the Second Concordance as a holding of unfinished errands. It lies, per Ordinance of Vertical Precedence, between Floor 5,306 and Floor 5,308, though the Librarians have never been able to confirm this adjacency in person; the stairwells serving the 5,300 band have been under Concordance suspension since the Winter of the Sealed Landings.

The floor is entered theoretically. Its holdings — described in the Register of Unattended Business as "matters begun in one office and concluded, if at all, in another" — are catalogued from requisition slips rather than from inspection. Visitors are received on Floor 5,306 and shown a chair.

Contents

The floor's shelf-stock is arranged not by subject but by the office that failed to complete it. The most frequently cited classifications are:

• Correspondence begun and never sealed (Subsection Alpha, 411 items).
• Keys cut for doors that were never installed (Subsection Beta, 89 items, including 12 described only as "warm").
• Requisitions for materials the requisitioning clerk subsequently transferred to another floor (Subsection Gamma, uncounted; the count is itself an outstanding requisition).

A fourth classification, Subsection Delta, was added following the Incident of the Impatient Ledger and contains appeals that have been filed twice. It is kept in a separate room and the room is kept in a separate room.

Disputed status

Whether Floor 5,307 exists in the ordinary sense has never been settled. The Third Concordance, Annex 11, states flatly that "a floor requiring no attendance requires no floor," which was read for three centuries as a statement of budgetary relief. The Fifth Concordance, Annex 3, reverses this by declaring that "the unattended business of the Tower is the business of the Tower still," implying the floor's continued and somewhat accusatory existence.

The Office of Adjacent Confirmations has, on eleven separate occasions, issued a Finding of Adjacency for Floor 5,307 and has, on eleven occasions, withdrawn it. The eleventh withdrawal, dated to the winter before last, notes only that "the stairwell declined to be counted." A twelfth Finding is pending and is expected to be issued in a band of floors that has not yet been numbered.

Administration

The floor has no resident custodian. It is supervised nominally by the Keeper of Unfinished Business, a title held by the same unnamed party since the reign of the Fourth Concordance and regarded within the order as a punishment posting. The Keeper's correspondence is filed on Floor 5,306 in a drawer marked for Floor 5,307; the drawer is emptied annually into a second drawer on Floor 5,308, from which it is not retrieved.

Under Ordinance of Standing Inventory, the floor is required to submit an annual count of its holdings. The count for the last four years has read, in full: "as before." This has been accepted by the Chamber of Counts four times and questioned once; the question was filed and remains unanswered on the floor itself.

Notable holdings

Among the floor's better-known items is a single unclaimed umbrella, catalogued under Subsection Beta despite lacking a corresponding door, and a complaint concerning the temperature of Floor 140 that was filed in the wrong century. The Curator of Misfiled Seasons has twice attempted to reassign the latter to Floor 412, where it is warmer, and has twice been overruled by the umbrella's classification.

The floor also holds the original draft of an Ordinance that would have made the 5,300 band sequential. The draft is unsigned. It is believed to be the only copy.

Visiting notes

Tea is not permitted on the stairwells between Floor 5,300 and Floor 5,400; this was enacted after the Incident of the Impatient Ledger and has not been revisited. Readers wishing to consult the floor's stock should file a request with the Office of Adjacent Confirmations, allow six weeks, and then file the same request again.