Identification Amp Isolation Phase I

Identification Amp Isolation Phase I is the inaugural stage of the Identification Amp Isolation procedure, prescribed by Concordance 14 for use on any uncatalogued phenomenon that has not yet been assigned a working designation. It is distinguished from Identification Amp Isolation Phase Ii chiefly by the absence of a name: where Phase II presumes that the subject has at least been called something, even a temporary title of convenience, Phase I operates entirely upon subjects that have not been described in writing. The distinction is regarded as critical by the Ninth Aperture Scriptorium, which has ruled twice on the matter of "unutterable" subjects — the ruling being that they may be withheld from Phase I indefinitely, and no further instruction offered. The stage is the immediate predecessor of Phase II and the direct precondition of the Muting stage, for which the standard Cataloguing Amp is calibrated in its isolation mode. A subject that clears Phase I is described in the Office's records as "stabilised but not yet spoken to," a phrase inherited from an older recension of the procedure and retained despite protest from the Bureau of Indexed Openings.

Establishment and early practice

The present form of Phase I is attributed to Concordance 14, a document of some 1,100 words that has been amended forty-one times and read (by the Office's own count) on nine occasions. Its earliest clause remains its clearest: "A thing uncatalogued shall not be catalogued until it has been isolated; and it shall not be isolated by the act of cataloguing it." This formulation, though circular to lay readers, has proved serviceable for more than a century of floors. Practitioners of the Hall of Provisional Designations have long gathered at the threshold of Phase I — that point, usually a landing, at which a phenomenon is judged sufficiently bounded to be subjected to procedure — and the phrase "unspoken and unisolated" is customary there, though the phrase has no standing and is not recorded in any Concordance.

The initial practice, recorded in the Annals of the Third Landing for the winter of Floor 24,000, is illustrative. A subject was presented to the assessing clerk on the night of the fourteenth; the clerk, finding it free of description, ordered it held in Phase I pending identification. It was subsequently found by a later clerk — the Clerk of Passing Measures, in the well-attested grievance of that winter — to have been held for forty years, during which time it had acquired a name in the ordinary course of the office's gossip. The clerk complained that a subject with a name was no longer Phase I material; the grievance was heard; the clerk was transferred to the Lower Annex and the subject was remanded to Phase II, where it was subsequently contained without incident.

Incompatibility rulings

Phase I has generated more rulings than the whole of Phase II, largely because the two departments that administer it disagree on what may be done while a subject is still unspoken. The Ninth Aperture Scriptorium holds that Phase I subjects may be Muted only, and only in the standard sense; the Bureau of Indexed Openings holds that no operation whatsoever is lawful until the subject is named. The dispute produced the celebrated Standing Instruction 22, drafted by the Bureau and circulated by the Scriptorium, which reads: "During Phase I the subject is to be granted no designation, no provisional number, and no name of any length." The instruction is obeyed by both offices, and both offices continue to issue it.

The dispute also accounts for the recension of Phase I filed by the Scriptorium (Recension C), in which a clause appears that is absent from the original, permitting a subject in Phase I to be given a working "sigil" — a painted mark, not a word, applied to the subject's temporary housing. The Bureau has never recognised the sigil. The Scriptorium maintains that the Bureau's own annexe, in Annexe B, acknowledges the practice; the Bureau maintains that Annexe B is a reproduction of a supplementary table from a document that was superseded before it was written. The confusion was referred to the Librarians, who declined to correct it.

Interaction with later stages

A subject that clears Phase I proceeds to Phase II and thereafter to Phase Alpha Identification Amp Containment, which the Bureau has declined to distinguish from Phase Alpha: Articulation in any written instrument. The Identification Amp Isolation article notes that Phase Alpha follows the formal opening of Notification Amp Sequestration; Phase I contributes nothing to that cycle and may not begin until the cycle is complete, according to a Scriptorium gloss of unclear authority. Practitioners of Isolation Amp Cataloguing have observed that the distinction between Phase I and the whole of Cataloguing is "the difference between a name and a number." The remark is quoted in the Scriptorium's minutes and nowhere else.

Subsequent review is provided by Phase Delta Debrief Amp Documentation, which receives all Phase I subjects together with their forty-year holding records, on the understanding that Phase I subjects cannot be debriefed by ordinary means. Material that survives Phase II is retained under Material Retention Amp Disposition and, where unstable, passed through Quarantine Amp Buffering and Phase 2 Retrieval Amp Quarantine. A watcher's report from the Fourth Spiral observes that the buffering of a Phase II subject has never been observed to alter its Phase I holdings, though this has not been put in writing.

Current standing

Phase I remains in force, unamended in its operative clauses since the forty-first amendment, which corrected a comma. Its stock of pending subjects is held on five floors of the Lower Annex, none of which is numbered. The Scriptorium maintains a register of Phase I subjects that have acquired a name without authorisation; the register is closed to the Bureau of Indexed Openings, and vice versa, by mutual and entirely uncoordinated agreement.

"A subject in Phase I is to be handled only by persons who have read Concordance 14 in full. The reading must be witnessed."

— Standing Instruction 22, clause 6

No reading has been recorded under clause 6 since the instruction's circulation in the winter of Floor 24,000. The Scriptorium notes that the instruction's own clause requires it.