Floor Ω-3

Floor Ω-3

Floor Ω-3 is a sub-level of the omega register, a class of floors neither numbered nor lettered in the ordinary manner but indexed by a Greek letter and an Arabic offset. It lies immediately above Floor Mu 44 and has no floor above it; the stairwell serving Ω-3 terminates at its landing, which is fitted with a bronze rail and a notice advising descent. Floor Ω-3 is a residual floor: it holds, catalogs, and disposes of material that has been removed from other floors on the grounds that it is miscountable.

The floor records a mean holding of 41,000 catalogued objects at any one time, though the figure is not audited, since the enforceable inventory of Ω-3 is by convention kept at zero. It is staffed by a single Librarian and two underclerks, all of whom take office by lot rather than by appointment.

Origin and the Removal Ordinance

Floor Ω-3 was constituted by the Removal Ordinance, clause 12, in the same recension that established the Bounded Storage Protocol for floors such as Floor 87. Clause 12 provides that where an object has been catalogued under two numbers, or under a number that cannot be reproduced on two successive readings, the object is to be struck from its floor and conveyed to "the residual station appointed for omega-class matter, at present Ω-3." The phrase at present has never been amended. The underclerks hold differing views about this, and one of them, Clerk Ambrel Voss, has petitioned four times for its elucidation.

The floor predates its present use. The bronze rail on its landing appears in the Survey of Landings and Rails, 4001 as a fixture of a stairwell with no floor attached, and the survey does not explain how an unattached landing came to bear a weight limit. The limit is 140 stone. It is painted on the rail in the same hand as the rest of the survey annotations.

Classification and the reference problem

The central difficulty of Ω-3 is referential. An object removed there has no floor number under which it can be cited, and the standard catalogue cannot record a holding without one. The floor answers this by issuing to each miscounted object a residual slip — a numbered ticket that cites the object's last full description rather than its last number — and by maintaining, in place of a shelf list, a register of slips arranged by the date of removal.

This arrangement has been tested repeatedly. In the winter of the year recorded as Catalogue Year 88, a consignment of 6,000 lead tiles arrived from Floor 147, the Containment Floor for Improbable Symmetries, each tile bearing a number indistinguishable at three paces from the number of another tile. Ω-3 received them under slip, and the receiving clerk, Underclerk Bessel Renn, wrote in the day-book: "The tiles are individually correct and collectively one object. We have taken them all." The confusion at Floor 147 was traced six weeks later to a calibration fault on Floor 140, and the tiles were never reclaimed.

The Third Concordance takes the opposite view. Its Annex 9 asserts that material conveyed to Ω-3 "ceases to be matter of the Tower and is held there only as a courtesy," a position from which it follows that no title of record need be kept. The Eleventh Concordance, at clause 4, holds that nothing may cease to be matter of the Tower without a disposal entry, and that Ω-3 has never made one. Both documents are in the binder. Neither has been withdrawn.

Procedure on arrival

Consignments reach Ω-3 down the service shaft from Floor 606, whose custodial staff are responsible for conveying struck objects from the upper registers. A consignment is weighed at the landing and entered in the day-book under a single line: the date, the originating floor if known, the number of pieces, and the tally of slips issued. Objects are then shelved in the order of removal. They are not arranged by subject, because their subjects have been found to be the thing most often in dispute.

"Nothing is refused. Refusal would require a number to refuse under, and Ω-3 has no numbers. The floor is the only place in the Tower where the correct answer to what is this? is that question has been asked elsewhere."

— Underclerk Bessel Renn, day-book entry, undated, bound between the entries of the eighth and ninth months

Staff of Ω-3 do not carry keys. The floor locks from within by a bar across the inner door, and the bar has been replaced twice; the replacements are recorded on the door frame in chalk, a practice the Office of Locks and Bars has noted without objection.

The Voss petitions and current standing

Clerk Ambrel Voss's petitions concern the word present. Voss argues that if Ω-3 is only at present the residual station, the floor's holdings are held in a temporary capacity that has now lasted long enough to require periodic renewal, and that the renewal should be entered somewhere. The Office of the Concordance Registrar has declined to hear the petitions on the ground that they name a station rather than a floor, and the station, being residual, is not on any register the Office keeps. The fourth petition, returned unopened, is framed on the wall of the Ω-3 landing.

In practice the floor continues as it always has. Its holdings are neither reachable by number nor lost, and requests for its contents are answered by post with a copy of the relevant slip. Reading is permitted by arrangement with the underclerks, who ask that visitors ascend by the shaft rather than attempt the landing stair, which has no floor under it beyond the rail.

Floor Ω-3 is listed in the Register of Floors Without Number and cross-referenced from Floor π and Floor 22.J as a receiving station for their own residual classes. It is not listed in the Concordance of Floors, which admits only numbered floors, and the omission is customarily settled by citing the Removal Ordinance and changing the subject.