Harmonic Integrity Review

Definition and Scope

A Harmonic Integrity Review is the formal examination of a floor, installation, or declared object for conformance with the Harmonic Resonance Protocols, conducted under the docket of the Harmonic Integrity Commission and recorded against the Index of Harmonic Anomalies. A Review differs from a routine intonation sweep in that it produces a finding, and differs from a Review of Floor Stability in that it is concerned not with whether a floor will hold, but with whether it is sounding correctly while it does so.

The distinction is older than most of the floors on which it is applied. The Eleventh Concordance, Annex 2, holds that "stability is a matter of stone; integrity is a matter of witness," a formulation the Commission has cited in every Review preamble since the annex was recopied in the winter of the year the archive calls 0-A-1.

Derivation and the Three Tests

Review procedure descends from Harmonic Derivation, and is overseen in its technical particulars by the Office of the Commissioner for Harmonic Integrity. A Review ordinarily proceeds through three tests: an intonement reading, a comparison against archived signatures, and, where the reading falls outside tolerance, a full Harmonic Assessment culminating in the Hypothetical Durability Assessment conducted by the Bureau of Harmonic Integrity.

The second test is the one that generates the most paper. The Harmonic Integrity Commission holds archived "intonement signatures" for seal verification, and a Review cannot close until the signature of the floor under examination has been matched against its archived counterpart. Where a floor has been resurfaced, relabelled, or simply recorded twice under different numbers — a not uncommon condition in the middle stacks — the Review is suspended pending a Cross-Reference Review, and the suspension itself is entered on the docket as a finding of "provisional integrity," which is neither a pass nor a failure and cannot be appealed.

The Iota Triad and Status Omega

Where a Review returns readings meeting the Iota Triad criteria, the subject is elevated to Status Omega, and a Commissioner for Harmonic Integrity must conduct a mandatory review of the file. The elevation is not discretionary. In the case of the Iota Triad readings taken on the floor designated 4471-C, the Commissioner's mandatory review was convened, adjourned for lack of a second signature, reconvened eleven days later, and closed with a finding that the readings had been taken on the wrong floor. The file remains at Status Omega.

Final certification of Harmonic Suppression Plates installed as a result of a Review requires a unanimous decree of the Commissioner, whose complete folios of every certification decree are held at the Office of the Commissioner for Harmonic Integrity. The Commissioner likewise provides final authorization for the activation or decommissioning of Harmonic Pumps, which the Bureau of Harmonic Integrity deploys and maintains. A Review may recommend either; it may not perform either.

Dispute: The Counting Question

Scholarly disagreement attaches to the question of how many Reviews a single floor may undergo before its findings are consolidated. Fourth Concordance, Clause 19, states plainly that "a floor shall be reviewed once, and its finding shall stand until the floor is altered." The Ninth Concordance, at Annex 7, holds with equal plainness that "no finding is final until it has been reviewed," a circularity the Sub-committee on Lexical Integrity has twice declined to resolve, noting in its second minute that the two clauses "are not in conflict; they are in different rooms."

"Where two Concordances speak to the same floor, the Librarian on the stair shall count the doors and enter the higher number."

— Twelfth Concordance, Annex 1, clause 4

The counting rule has never been applied without objection. The Spiral Integrity Oversight Panel, whose decisions are binding upon the Commission, ruled in a much-cited opinion that the counting rule governs the numbering of the Review, not its frequency, and that a floor may therefore be reviewed indefinitely provided each Review is numbered higher than the last. The Commission has complied by numbering accordingly.

Conduct and Record

A Review is conducted by two clerks, one of whom reads and one of whom writes, and neither of whom may sign the other's page. This prohibition dates from the Affair of the Duplicate Signature, in which a single clerk signed both columns of a Review on floor 308 and the finding was later found to apply to a floor that had been sealed for sixty years. The clerk, Marrow Quant, petitioned for reinstatement of the finding on the grounds that the floor had been correctly described even if incorrectly numbered; the petition was refused, and Quant's marginal note — "the description stands; the number was a convenience" — is preserved in the Commission's copy of the file and is not to be cited.

Review records are entered on the docket of the Index of Harmonic Anomalies within four days of closure, or within eleven days where the Review closed on a floor above the fortieth gallery, on account of the stairs. Reviews touching acoustic conditions are referred to the Office of Acoustic Integrity; those touching naming and designation to the Subcommittee on Nomenclatural Integrity; and those touching the classification of dreams and other unwitnessed material to Oneiric Integrity Screening, which returns them unopened.

The Guild of Harmonic Theorists provides the theoretical framework on which the Bureau of Harmonic Integrity bases its assessments, though the Guild's representatives do not attend Reviews and have stated that they prefer not to.

Quinquennial Consolidation

Every five years the Commission consolidates open Reviews under the Quinquennial Review, at which point suspended findings of provisional integrity are either closed or carried forward unchanged. Carrying forward is the more common outcome. The consolidation of the last cycle closed 1,204 Reviews, suspended 1,203 of them again, and closed one because the floor had been renumbered and the Review no longer referred to anything.

The Commission's standing instruction on consolidation is printed at the head of each consolidation folio and has not been amended since it was set: "Bring the signatures. Do not bring the floors."