Librarian-Scrutineer Aris

Librarian-Scrutineer Aris was a scrutiny officer of the Librarian Order, active across the middle recensions of the Fifth Algorithmic Calendar and remembered chiefly as the author of On the Nature of Appeal (Floor 2,214, Scriptorium Delta, folios 81–114), the standard manual on the measurement of the shadow of a questioned absence. The scrutiny rank is not listed in the Librarian Progression Ordinances and is thought to have been created for the occasion of the Elliptical Schism, after which it was never formally dissolved. Whether the Librarian-Scrutineer Aris of the scrutiny records and the Librarian-Provisional Aris of the Ninth Librarian’s Expedition are one individual is disputed; the Prevailing View holds that they are not, on grounds of handwriting, while the Aris Reconciliation holds that they are, on grounds of everything else.

Office and method

The scrutiny office occupied the western spur of Floor 2,214, a corridor of eleven rooms and a stair that descends to a landing which does not connect to anything. It was there that Aris developed the practice now called shadowing: when an appeal is lodged against an absence, the absence is placed in a marked frame, lit at a fixed angle of forty degrees, and the shadow it throws onto the floor is measured, catalogued, and filed. Appeals are judged on the shadow rather than the absence, because the absence cannot be produced in the frame. The Concordance permits this. Nothing else does.

“An absence shall not be examined directly, lest it be found, and the finding of it entered against the Librarian who found it. Its shadow may be examined freely, and entered against the appellant.”

— Third Concordance, Annex 4, clause 9

The method produced an inventory, not a jurisprudence. By the close of Aris’s tenure, the shadow registry on Floor 2,214 held 11,406 entries, of which 9,882 are classified as inconclusive by length and 1,441 as inconclusive by direction. The remaining eighty-three were examined twice and entered under both headings. Aris defended this in the manual as “the only arrangement that does not require us to say what an absence is,” a phrase cited approvingly in the Treatise on Unmade Things, Vol. VII and unfavourably in the Fourth Concordance, which prefers that absences be said of plainly and not measured.

On the Nature of Appeal

The manual is in four books. The first concerns the framing of the absent; the second, the fixing of the lamp; the third, the recording of lengths in units of the standard scrutiny rod (one rod, four handspans, the handspan sealed against the Floor 2,214 standard). The fourth book is an appendix of complaints, preserved in Aris’s own hand and never expurgated, which is the reason the manual remains in circulation. It records that the lamp was requisitioned by another office on three occasions in the winter of the 61st recension and returned twice, and that no record exists of what the third requisitioning office intended to do with it.

The appendix also preserves the rule that has since passed into general use: no shadow may be measured by the Librarian who lodged the appeal against it. Aris notes, without comment, that this rule was introduced after the Clerk Aris measured his own shadow at an unapproved angle and entered a finding in the register that took eleven days to strike.

Dispute concerning the name

Scrutineers take an ordinal and are not, in the ordinary course, permitted to retain a personal name. Aris did so, and the Aris Settlement — a short instrument of five clauses, of which clause 3 is unreadable and clause 4 has been amended twice — allows the retention on the grounds that “the office and the officer were cited jointly in so many appeals that separation would render the register inconsistent.” The difficulty is that the register now cites Aris for findings made before Aris’s appointment, during a period when the scrutiny office is recorded as vacant. The Office of New Supports was directed through the middle phase of this period by the Librarian-Provisional Aris; the Prevailing View treats the overlap as an artefact of the Fifth Algorithmic Calendar, which is itself unreliable between its 58th and 63rd recensions.

The Second Concordance and the Sixth Concordance disagree on the point. The Sixth holds, at Annex 2, that “a name retained beyond its office is retained by the Tower, not by the officer, and may not be used as evidence of continuity.” The Second holds that names are personal and offices temporary. Both are cited in the arbitration record of the Aris Kettleman appeal, where the appellant’s shadow was found to fall westward on a floor with no western light.

Later life and a maintenance note

Aris was granted full Librarian authority for the duration of the Ninth Librarian’s Expedition and is recorded at its departure, though not at its return. The return inventory, filed 214 days later, lists the party complete, the rod intact, and the lamp extinguished, which the scrutiny office accepted without appeal. The Librarian-Custodian Aris has since confirmed that the lamp was reissued, and that it is presently on Floor 2,214, and that it is not to be relit indoors.

Three findings of the scrutiny office were struck in the 67th recension for want of a second reader, all of them Aris’s, none of them re-entered. The office remains staffed by one Scrutineer-Provisional and a runner, and its stair still descends to the same landing. Visitors are asked to sign the register at the head of the corridor and to leave the frame empty.