Initial Triage of Attributes

Definition and scope

Initial Triage of Attributes is the first-stage assessment applied to an attribute upon its entry into the Tower's administrative purview, conducted before the attribute is granted any standing beyond provisional tenancy. It is a distinct, though procedurally dependent, subset of Initial Triage as a whole: where Initial Triage governs all incoming subjects — apertures, documents, furniture of disputed function — the Initial Triage of Attributes concerns only those subjects classified as attributeal, that is, properties presenting without a host. The procedure is administered by the Division of Initial Apportionment on Floor 412, principally within The Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy.

The distinction matters administratively because an attribute without a host cannot be shelved in the ordinary sense. A bound attribute may be assigned a location; an unbound one must first be told what it is. This telling is the work of the triage.

Procedural basis

The procedure is governed by Triage Protocol Alpha and, for attributes specifically, by Protocol Alpha's Clause 3 (Initial Resonance), which establishes that an attribute may be identified by the qualities it transmits prior to attachment. Deterministic Codex sets out the principles under which that identification is recorded. In practice, a subject arriving at the Central Intake Apertures on Spiral 7-Gamma is received, marked with an Aperture Mark in the Floor 412 Vestibule, and — if found attributeal — routed to the Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy for resonance assessment.

Where the attribute arrives already bearing a claim of prior tenancy, the matter is referred to Petition Triage rather than resolved in situ. This referral is the source of most delays.

Resonance assessment

Under Clause 3, the assessor establishes the attribute's resonance class: the degree and manner in which it announces itself to unattached observers. Three classes are recognised. Class Alpha attributes resonate continuously and are difficult to isolate; they are sorted by categorical isolation into the standard provisionary stacks. Class Beta attributes resonate intermittently and are transferred to the Thirteenth Vestibule for further sorting before a provisional shelf-mark is issued. Class Gamma attributes resonate only when directly addressed, and are held in the Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy until an assessor can be found who is willing to address them.

Provisional Logging records each assessment against the subject's provisional shelf-mark, assigned by a Librarian-Provisional at the moment of first sorting. A shelf-mark issued under Provisional Reality — the practice by which an attribute is treated as provisionally determinate for administrative purposes — carries an expiry term of forty days, renewable once. Attributes failing to be actualised within that term are referred to the Custodial Office of Actualizations.

Disputed classifications

The principal scholarly dispute concerns attributes that present as both host-bound and unbound at the moment of receipt. The Bureau of Phenomenal Triage holds that such attributes must be triaged twice, once under each reading, with the resulting shelf-marks held in parallel until one is abandoned. The Bureau of Phenomenal Integration disputes this, holding in its annex to the Twenty-Second Concordance that parallel shelf-marks constitute an attribute that has, in effect, been given a host — the shelf itself — and therefore falls outside initial triage entirely.

"A mark struck twice upon the same subject is not a mark; it is a hesitation, and hesitations are not catalogued."

— Clerk of Irreconcilable Directives, marginal note, unattributed recension

The Triage Subcommittee for Ambiguous Architectonics has, on three separate occasions, declined to rule. Its standing position is recorded in the Manual of Apposite Channels, which directs such attributes to the Auditory Permit Office for a period of quiet, on the grounds that resonance assessments conducted during administrative noise are not admissible.

Historical incidents

In the winter of the Long Recension, an incoming Class Beta attribute of considerable age passed through Spiral 7-Gamma without receiving an Aperture Mark, owing to a shift change at the Floor 412 Vestibule that was recorded nowhere in the rota. The attribute was subsequently assigned a provisional shelf-mark by a Librarian-Provisional working from memory, and that shelf-mark was cited as precedent for eleven years before the Division of Initial Apportionment formally disowned it. The disownment is preserved as an annex to Codex IV.

More consequentially, the Mismatch of Winter 9-Rho produced forty-seven attributes that resonated only in the presence of one another. The triage of that cohort required the temporary suspension of categorical isolation on Floor 412 for nine days, during which time no attribute in the Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy could be reliably identified as a single subject. The resulting shelf-marks from that period remain, by Concordance ruling, valid but flagged; they are the origin of the flagged-mark convention still used by the Bureau of Phenomenal Integration.

Notes on visiting

Visitors to Floor 412 are reminded that the Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy is not a public reading room, and that attributes held there under provisional status may respond to being looked at directly. Observation is permitted from the marked line only, and only during hours when an assessor is present. There is no seating.