Interstitial Plenums

An Interstitial Plenum is a formally recognized public forum within an Interstitial Space, established for the purpose of airing and, where possible, resolving disputes pertaining to the ontological or administrative status of its host space. Governed by Annex B of the Seventh Concordance and the procedures outlined in the Protocol for Interstitial Grievance Arbitration (7th Revision), a Plenum’s authority is derived entirely from its capacity to generate consensus, as it possesses no direct enforcement powers beyond its ability to shunt unresolved complaints to designated floors, such as Floor 7,301.

Establishment and Jurisdiction

The creation of an Interstitial Plenum occurs automatically upon the third concurrent grievance filed from within the same bounded space, as per Annex B, Clause 4.c. The Plenum is considered "in session" from the moment of its establishment until its host Interstitial Space undergoes a confirmed shift or collapse, an event whose likelihood is annually assessed by the Intercalary School. Its jurisdiction is strictly limited to matters arising from the specific conditions of its host space—such as disputed authorship of spontaneously manifesting texts, contested claims over acoustical phenomena, or variances in local gravitational constants—and does not extend to grievances originating on primary floors, which are handled by the standard Architects' Guild tribunals.

Procedural Mechanics

Plenum proceedings are moderated by a randomly selected Librarian from a pool of those certified in Interstitial Logic by the Office of the Cartographer-Archivist. Debate follows a structured cadence known as the Pneuma Cycle, comprising three phases: Aeration (statement of grievances), Condensation (identification of common factual substrates), and Precipitation (formulation of a collective finding). All findings must be submitted in triplicate to the Rumour Cisterns associated with the nearest numbered floor, as indexed in the Atlas of Interstitial Logic. A failure to reach a finding within seven cycles results in automatic invocation of DoIT-184 ("Directive on Interstitial Taxonomies"), transferring the matter to the Ledger Halls for indefinite classification.

Notable Plenum Sites

While Plenums are transient by nature, several have achieved notoriety for their prolonged sessions or consequential findings.

• [[The Quarrymen’s Adjudication Plenum:]] Convened for 14 years in a pocket between Floor 711 and Floor 717 to determine whether the space constituted an unauthorized annex of the Lower Recesses. The Plenum ultimately declared the space a "non-viable protrusion," a ruling later challenged by the Bureau of Buttress Integrity.
• [[The Resonance Plenum of Sector Epsilon:]] Established to address conflicting interpretations of the Alban Resonance Model as applied to harmonic drift. Its finding, which favored a delta-wave interpretation, is now a standard reference in the Registry of Contradictory Spaces.
• [[The Third Spire Boundary Plenum:]] A rare example of a Plenum whose host space was later granted provisional floor status (Floor 7,117), following its successful petition that the space occupied a "stable ontological pocket," per the criteria in Annex Δ.

Scholarly Disputes and Concordance Conflicts

The legal and ontological standing of Plenums is a subject of ongoing scholarly dispute. The Fifth Concordance, through Amendment 4, asserts that Interstitial Spaces fundamentally require a dedicated "Chen Protocol," which would bypass the Plenum system entirely in favor of algorithmic arbitration. Proponents of the Plenum system, chiefly within the Intercalary School, cite the Protocol for Interstitial Grievance Arbitration (7th Revision) as affirming the necessity of organic, consensus-based deliberation for non-sequential spaces.

Furthermore, the Twelfth Concordance challenges the very legitimacy of Plenum findings, arguing in Clause 18 that a body constituted within an ontologically ambiguous space cannot produce binding determinations about that space—a classic example of what it terms "recursive jurisdiction." This has led to the peculiar practice of "dual filing," where parties will simultaneously submit a grievance to a local Plenum and to the Central Recursive Buffer, hoping one forum will produce a favorable and actionable precedent.

Material Regulations

The physical conduct of a Plenum is strictly regulated. Debates must occur within an area demarcated by Sanctioned Yellow Tape, which is itself anchored to at least two Interstitial Girders to ensure procedural stability. The use of recording devices is prohibited; instead, a designated Scribe must inscribe proceedings on slate tablets, which are then pulverized and their dust added to the mortar of new girders, symbolically reinforcing the architecture of arbitration. All participants are considered to be in a state of "provisional citizenship" for the duration of the session, a status that grants limited immunity from certain transit taxes but obligates compliance with Plenum decorum.