Hypothetical Mineral #331

Hypothetical Mineral #331 is the catalogue designation for a mineral body held in the Lower Reading Room of the Bureau of Hypothetical Durability, where it occupies a plinth of grey basalt and a column of its own in every register that has since had cause to mention it. It has no observed colour, no measured hardness, and no recorded cleavage, and it is catalogued nonetheless. Under The Principle of Hypothetical Load, an object need not be present in order to be durable; #331 has been absent, consistently and without interruption, since its acquisition in Year 402 of the Unbroken Catalogue.

The specimen is not a hypothetical mineral in the sense of a mineral that might exist. It is a mineral whose existence has been assessed and deferred, and the distinction is maintained with some heat by the Bureau. Hypothetical Durability Assessment Class Θ (Negligibly Hypothetical) was assigned to it on 14 Ember 402 and has never been revised upward, a restraint the Bureau attributes to procedure and its critics attribute to embarrassment.

Acquisition and first description

#331 entered the collection as part of the residue of the Incident of the Whispering Mineral, though the connection is documentary rather than physical. The specimen was logged in the accession ledger of the Lower Reading Room by Assistant Registrar Mern Ossivant, whose entry reads, in full: "Received. One mineral. Present condition: not determinable. Recommend assessment." Ossivant was subsequently transferred to the Office of Hypothetical Geography, where he is recorded as having filed no further accession entries and several complaints.

The plinth was cut before the specimen was examined. This is standard practice in the Lower Reading Room, where the plinths are ordered in advance and the holdings are expected to arrive or not. Number 331's plinth bears a brass plate with the designation, the date, and the words held in trust for the catalogue, a formula that has since been amended twice and is no longer permitted on new plates.

The Assessment of Year 402

The original Hypothetical Durability Assessment was conducted over three sessions by Assessor Vellin Cray, who reported that the specimen resisted every test applied to it by the simple expedient of not being available for them. Cray's working notes, preserved in the Bureau's annex and cited in nearly every subsequent dispute, record the difficulty plainly:

"The specimen was struck four times with the reference hammer. On each occasion the sound returned was that of the reference hammer striking the plinth. I am unable to determine whether this indicates considerable durability or none at all, and the form does not provide a third column."

— Assessor Vellin Cray, working notes, Bureau of Hypothetical Durability annex, folio 88v

Cray's solution — to assess the plinth and enter the specimen as its condition — was rejected by the Court of Hypothetical Jurisdiction in Year 404 on the grounds that a plinth is a fixture and a mineral is a holding, and that the two may not be assessed as one another merely because they occupy the same address. The rejection established the principle still cited in such matters, that adjacency is not identity. It also left #331 without a completed assessment for eleven years.

Conflicting Concordances

Disagreement over the holding's status is largely a disagreement between two documents. The Fourth Concordance, Annex 2, provides that "a specimen whose presence cannot be established shall be catalogued at the lowest durable class and shall not be reassessed except upon petition of a Librarian of the Third Bench." The Ninth Concordance, Annex 7, provides with equal clarity that "no specimen shall be catalogued at a lower class than its assessed load requires, and absence shall not be construed as lightness."

Since #331's assessed load under The Principle of Hypothetical Load is considerable, and its presence under the Fourth Concordance is nil, the two annexes cannot both be satisfied. The Bureau has resolved the matter by maintaining two entries: a public entry at Class Θ, and a sealed entry at Class Ω (Virtually Actual) filed with the Compendium of Hypothetical Anomalies and consultable only by officers of the Bureau of Hypothetical Frameworks. Both entries are accurate. Neither is complete. The Hypothetical Durability Protocol, 7th Revision is silent on the case, and the 8th Revision has been in draft since Year 431.

Displays, inspections, and the prohibition

The plinth is displayed. Visitors to the Lower Reading Room are permitted to view it during the hours the lamps are lit, and a small painted line on the floor marks the distance from which viewing is permitted. Visitors may not place objects on the plinth, and may not remove the small quantity of dust that accumulates there, which is catalogued separately as #331a and assessed annually by the Bureau.

Attempts to establish the specimen's presence by indirect means have been frequent and uniformly inconclusive. In the winter of Year 419 a junior clerk, Orra Fenn, weighed the plinth before and after a supposed movement of the holding and recorded a change of two drachms, which she attributed to the mineral and the Bureau attributed to a draught. Fenn's figures were entered in the register with a marginal note in the Registrar's hand: draught. She is not recorded as having pursued the matter.

The most persistent difficulty is that the specimen's hypothetical durability, whatever its value, is measured under standards that assume the specimen is somewhere. The Accord on the Standardization of Hypothetical Lumens was amended in Year 423 to permit measurement of a holding by the light it does not return, a method that has produced consistent readings for #331 across four decades. Critics note that it has also produced consistent readings for an empty plinth, and that no one has proposed a test capable of distinguishing the two.

Present position

#331 remains on its plinth and in its two entries. The Bureau's standing position, restated in its annual return without alteration since Year 412, is that the specimen's hypothetical durability is not in question and that only its actual durability has yet to be assessed. The plinth was recut in Year 446 to correct a levelling fault, and the brass plate was transferred to the new stone in the presence of two witnesses. The mineral was not consulted. A note in the work order records that it raised no objection.