Floor 8,818

Floor 8,818 is a declared floor of the Tower, entered from the north stair between Floor 8,817 and Floor 8,819, and is the only floor in the upper eight-thousands whose name, number, dimensions and existence are each maintained by a separate office. It is chiefly known for the Registry of Declared Floors, the Standing Committee on Unclaimed Storeys, and the Dispute of the Two Eighteen, a disagreement over its numbering that has been in continuous session since the winter of the year recorded in the Tower as 4,402.

Visitors are asked not to count the windows aloud while on the floor. This instruction is posted at both stairheads and is not explained there.

Description

The floor is circular and measures one hundred and forty paces in circumference at the inner wall, a figure first recorded by the surveyor Osric Vane and never subsequently revised. Its shelving is arranged in four concentric rings, of which only the outermost is catalogued. The inner three rings are described in the survey as "present, and of a height consistent with shelving," and no further inventory has been attempted since.

A single reading desk stands at the centre. The desk is chained, per Concordance 212, to the floor beneath it, which is itself unchained and may be lifted. The purpose of this arrangement is recorded in the annex and is not otherwise discussed.

The light on Floor 8,818 arrives from above and from no aperture that has been located. Floor 9,011 has formally declined responsibility for it. Floor 17,451 has accepted responsibility for it and has never acted on the acceptance.

The Dispute of the Two Eighteen

The floor's number is not in dispute. Its name is. The Registry of Declared Floors entered the floor as Eighteen Hundred and Eighteen, on the grounds that the figure written on the stairhead plaque had been read at an angle by the clerk Marisel Thurn, who transcribed it in the winter of 4,402 and whose transcription is the earliest surviving record. The Standing Committee on Unclaimed Storeys entered the same floor one month later as Eight Thousand Eight Hundred and Eighteen, on the grounds that the floor is situated where it is situated.

Both entries remain open. Concordance doctrine offers no resolution: Third Concordance Annex 4 holds that "a name once entered shall not be vacated for the convenience of arithmetic," while the Eleventh Concordance Clause 9 provides that "no floor shall be known by a number its stair does not give." The Registry cites the first; the Committee cites the second; each has declined to cite the other's.

"The plaque was read. Reading is an act of record. The record stands whether or not the reader stood at the correct angle."

— Marisel Thurn, memorandum to the Registry, 4,402

Thurn later appended a note conceding that she had been standing on the landing at the time rather than the stair, but did not withdraw the entry. The Office of Stairhead Inscriptions has since ruled that plaques are to be read from below, a ruling which postdates the transcription by nine years and cannot be applied to it.

Holdings and access

The floor's catalogued holdings are modest and entirely concerned with floors. The outer ring holds the working papers of the Registry from 4,388 to 4,461, the closed file of the Committee on Unclaimed Storeys, and a bound set of Floor Mu 44 returns which does not belong there and which no office will claim.

Entry is by the north stair only. The south door of Floor 8,818 opens onto Floor 730, and the Committee has ruled that this is a coincidence of construction rather than a second entrance, and that persons arriving by it have not in fact arrived. Those persons are nonetheless issued a visitor's slip.

Later history

In 4,477 the Committee attempted to close the matter by re-entering the floor under both names and striking neither, a manoeuvre known afterward as the Double Entry of 4,477. The Registry accepted the re-entry and then declined to recognise the striking, on the grounds that nothing had been struck. Both offices continue to correspond about it quarterly.

The floor has been surveyed twice more, in 4,502 and in 4,619. Both surveys returned the circumference as one hundred and forty paces. The second survey added a note that the inner rings appeared to have been disturbed since the first, and the note was struck by the Committee before filing.

See also

• Registry of Declared Floors
• Standing Committee on Unclaimed Storeys
• Floor 8,817 Floor 8,819
• Concordance 212