Floor 87 (the Palimpsest Galleries)

Description

Floor 87 (the Palimpsest Galleries) is a gallery level of the Tower, catalogued under a designation that has been the subject of three standing corrections. The floor is a long, low corridor of vitrines in which earlier versions of Tower documents are displayed in the state of partial erasure in which they were recovered. It is distinct from, and must not be administratively confused with, the headquarters of the Guild of Palimpsest Readers on Floor -33 or with the seat of the Adherents of the Palimpsest at Floor 1212. Its holdings are of a different order: not procedural records or disputed grievances, but the physical waste products of writing — scraped vellum, cancelled drafts, and sheets recovered from fires that the record does not name.

The floor's own inventory, compiled in 3E:1189, describes 214 vitrines, of which 191 contained material at the time of survey. The remaining 23 are marked "awaiting transfer" and have been so marked for longer than any clerk currently assigned to the floor has held the post.

Nomenclature and the designation dispute

The number 87 is not in dispute; the name attached to it is. The floor appears in the Fourth Concordance as "the Palimpsest Galleries," a name that implies a relationship to the two better-known Palimpsest floors. The Register of Gallery Names, maintained by the Office of Nomenclature, records the same floor as "the Vellum Galleries (Minor)" until 3E:1174, after which the entry is struck through and replaced with "the Palimpsest Galleries (87)" in a different hand.

This matters because Concordance 88-C — which governs the twin-floor recognition procedure — pairs floors by thematic designation. A reader petitioning under 88-C to treat Floor 87 as a thematic twin of Floor 442 would be doing so on the strength of a name that the Register itself struck through. Two such petitions have been filed. Both were returned unopened.

The designation of a floor follows its holdings, not its hopes.

— Fourth Concordance, Annex 12

Holdings

The collection is strongest in materials dating from the middle recensions. Notable items include:

• Vitrine 41: a copy of the Procedural Palimpsest from which the glossing hand has been scraped away, leaving only the guide-lines.
• Vitrine 77: a page of the Palimpsest of Omitted Causes recovered as a single line of text, the remainder of the sheet having been consumed.
• Vitrines 112–118: a run of vellum supplied by Floor 8047, never inscribed, displayed as an illustration of the medium prior to use.

The relationship to Vellum Galleries is a frequent source of cataloguing error. Floor 87 receives material from Floor 8047; it does not supply it. Conflating the two has produced at least one mis-shelving incident, recorded under Crisis of the Receding Galleries.

The erasure question

Whether the erasures visible on Floor 87 were performed deliberately or are the ordinary consequence of reuse is contested. The Interpretivist School, working from Floor 1212, holds that an erasure is a form of writing in its own right — a statement about what was judged unworthy of keeping. The Guild of Palimpsest Readers, from Floor -33 ('Palimpsest'), holds that an erasure is the absence of a statement and cannot be read.

Neither position has been adopted by the Librarians. The matter is recorded as open in the Concordance index and has been listed as open since 3E:1152.

Visiting

The floor is open to readers on the third and seventh of any month. Materials may not be touched with a gloved hand; the gloves interfere with the raking light used to make the scraped text legible.