Floor 7-Ψ

Floor 7-Ψ is a collateral calibration floor of the eastern stack, occupying the landing between Floor 7α and the unnumbered service gallery known as The Stub. It is not a floor in the enumerative sense. By the terms of Ninth Concordance, Annex 2, a designation containing a letter and a superscripted letter denotes a condition obtaining on a landing rather than a storey, and Floor 7-Ψ accordingly holds no shelves of its own, borrowing its holdings from neighbours by standing arrangement. The condition it denotes is the temporary suspension of one dimension, usually height.

Calibration and the Ψ Load

Floor 7-Ψ is administered by the Office of Provisional Measures, which maintains on the landing a set of brass reference blocks of certified length. A body resident on Floor 7-Ψ for twelve hours or longer is measured against these blocks at the third bell, and the resulting figure is entered in the Ψ register. Most measurements return within tolerance. The Irregular Metrology Board has recorded eleven returns since the founding of the register in Concordance 41 that did not, and has declined to publish the figures on the grounds that publication would "settle a matter presently usefully unsettled" (Irregular Metrology Board, minute of the 4th of Vessel, year 1,143).

Visitors are reminded that the landing's handrail is calibrated and may not be leaned upon. This is stated here because it is stated nowhere else.

History of the designation

The landing was first noted in the survey returns of Surveyor Bellwether, whose ledger records under an entry dated the 9th of Hollow, year 812, that he had "measured the floor twice and obtained the floor once." Floor 7-Ψ appears in no general index before the Fourth Recension of the floor rolls, in which a marginal hand added the designation beside an earlier symbol later ruled illegible by the Office of the Seal. The Office ruled in year 1,051 that the illegible symbol and 7-Ψ were "probably the same claim made twice," an unusual instance of the Office ruling on content rather than form, for which the sealing clerk of that year was formally admonished.

A dispute of long standing turns on the landing's ownership. Floor 7α claims it as a vestibule and tidies it on the second and sixth days. The Office of Provisional Measures claims it as an instrument and tidies it whenever the blocks are handled. Both maintain a cleaning rota; neither has ever acknowledged the other's. In the winter of year 1,188 the two rotas coincided on the same morning and the resulting dispute was heard before the Bench of Adjacent Claims, which found that the landing had been cleaned twice, that this was not an injury to anyone, and that costs would lie where they had fallen. The finding is still cited by the Bench as a model of economy.

Doctrine of the suppressed dimension

The scholarly quarrel over Floor 7-Ψ is not about what happens there but about what the Ψ signifies. The Eleventh Concordance, Annex 6, holds that the letter marks a measurement "taken in a direction not currently available," and infers that the condition is one of potential rather than loss — that height on Floor 7-Ψ has not been removed but is being held elsewhere, and may be reclaimed on presentation of the original ticket.

"Where a dimension is suspended, it is suspended to an account and not extinguished; the account is kept in the usual manner and may be drawn upon at the Keeper's convenience."

— Eleventh Concordance, Annex 6, clause 3

The Second Recension takes the opposite view, arguing in its gloss on the same annex that no account exists and that the letter is a caution only, similar to that marking a wet stair. The Treasury of Suspended Accounts has declined to adjudicate, observing that it has never received a deposit from the landing and does not propose to invent one. Practically, the two readings are indistinguishable, since the Keeper has not been minded to draw.

The Ψ register and its grievances

The register is kept in a locked cabinet on the landing itself, on the reasoning that a record kept where the condition occurs cannot be accused of distance. Entries are made in triplicate: one leaf for the Office, one for the Board, and one bound into the landing's own volume, which has been removed twice by persons unknown and returned once, the second volume never having been located. The loss was noted in year 1,202; the Clerk of Lost Volumes, a post held since year 1,166 by Under-Clerk Mabb, has recorded the volume as "mislaid, and the mislaying disputed." Mabb's grievance, filed in year 1,207, is not against the thief but against the Office of Provisional Measures, which continues to request the second volume in its quarterly returns despite having been told of the loss on four occasions. Mabb's memorandum on the point runs to nine pages, of which seven concern the word "evidently."

Adjacent holdings

Floor 7-Ψ shares its service gallery with The Stub, whose holdings are described elsewhere and are not, strictly, holdings. Readers approaching from Floor 7α are advised that the corridor between the two is narrower at the third turning than at the first, a fact the Office of the Seal has certified and the Bench of Adjacent Claims has twice been asked to reconsider. The question of whether Floor 7-Ψ appears on the master roll at all remains open, and is expected to remain open. A request to close it was referred in year 1,214 to the Office of Provisional Measures, which has not replied.