Locus of Cessation

A Locus of Cessation is a certified site within which the cessation of a catalogued subject may lawfully be performed, witnessed, and recorded. It is among the oldest classes of locus recognized by the Tower, predating the Conceptual Locus by at least eleven recensions, and it remains the only class whose designation may not be issued by a floor clerk of any rank. A cessation performed outside a certified Locus of Cessation is void in form, though — as 73c, clause 14(ii) acknowledges — it frequently is not void in fact, which has occupied the Tribunals for six hundred years.

The Locus of Cessation should not be confused with the Plane of Cessation, which is a jurisdictional rather than a physical designation, nor with the Gates of Cessation, which administer the passage of materials and obligations after cessation has been granted. The Locus is where the work occurs; the Gates are where the paperwork catches up with it.

Certification and Form

A Locus of Cessation is certified by the Cessation Corridor, acting on a petition countersigned by two Librarians and sealed with the grey seal of the seventh scriptorium. Certification fixes the locus to a floor, an aperture, and a stated radius, the radius being measured from the aperture's northern jamb and recorded to the quarter-span. The radius is not negotiable after sealing. Petitioners who discover that their subject's manifestation extends beyond the certified radius are advised to amend the subject rather than the locus, a course that has succeeded exactly twice.

Certified loci are inspected each quarter by the provisional survey, which is empowered to suspend a locus for want of maintenance. Suspension is not rare. In the winter of the year recorded as 4,112 by the corridor's own reckoning, no fewer than nineteen loci on the middle spirals were suspended in a single week after the survey found their containment margins had been eaten through by damp. The survey's report notes, in the flat manner of the office, that the loci "were not, at the time of inspection, loci in any useful sense."

Subjects awaiting certification are held under provisional tenancy and reviewed quarterly; if certification is not granted within the statutory period, the subject reverts to its primary locus and the petition is struck. Clerks are reminded that a struck petition may not be refiled within the same spiral, a rule introduced after the so-called Winter of Resubmissions (see Echo-Locus Drift for the measurement disputes arising from it).

Dispute: What a Locus Actually Holds

Two Concordances govern the question of what a Locus of Cessation contains, and they do not agree. The Third Concordance, Annex 6, holds that a certified locus contains the subject in its entirety, such that any portion of the subject found outside the radius is a separate and uncatalogued manifestation requiring its own petition. The Ninth Concordance, Annex 2, holds the opposite: that the locus contains the act of cessation and the subject's position is a matter of indifference, provided the act is properly witnessed.

"The locus is not a room in which a thing stands. It is a room in which a thing stops. The distinction has never been understood by the corridor and we do not expect it to be."

— Ninth Concordance, Annex 2, marginal note in the hand of the Recensor Ambulant

The contradiction was referred to the Tribunals in the matter of a moving subject on Floor 7,842 whose cessation was certified under the Third Concordance and then disputed under the Ninth on the grounds that the subject had stopped three spans outside its radius. The Tribunal found for the corridor, then reversed itself on appeal, then declined to hear the second appeal on the grounds that the first reversal had exhausted the matter. The corridor has since certified the floor's daily noon measurement under both annexes simultaneously, a practice the auditors have noted but not seen fit to disturb.

Interaction with Other Locus Classes

A subject's locus class does not determine whether a Locus of Cessation is available to it. Static loci are the simplest to certify, since the subject does not move and the radius may be drawn tightly; Dynamic loci require a frozen-radius certificate and a second witness at each cessation, which the corridor grants reluctantly and the survey resents. Instrumental loci, being anchored by usefulness rather than position, are certified by function: the locus must be shown to have performed the instrument's work, and cessation is permitted only where the instrument has ceased to be useful, which is a finding of the rationale rather than of the locus.

Secondary loci present a persistent difficulty. Because a secondary locus is a recurring manifestation point, cessation performed there may be witnessed as complete on the day and found incomplete on the morrow, the subject having re-manifested at the same point by the ordinary operation of the class. The corridor's standing instruction on the matter is that cessation at a secondary locus be recorded as "achieved, subject to recurrence," a formula that satisfies the record and satisfies no one else. The Right to Cessation is not understood to extend to subjects that recur; the concordances are silent on what happens to a right when its subject declines to stay stopped.

The Keeper's Grievance

Certification is witnessed by the Keeper of the Locus Roll, an office held since the ninth recension by the line of Clerk Vessin. The present Keeper has lodged a standing grievance, entered into the roll in the margin at the certification of Floor 5,209, that the corridor issues certificates bearing the Keeper's seal without permitting the Keeper to read them. The grievance has been renewed at every certification for nineteen years and has never been answered, though the corridor has twice written to confirm that it was received. The Keeper's note of the second confirmation reads, in full: "Received. Again."

Practitioners should note that the Keeper's seal is required on all certifications and that the Keeper has, since the grievance, declined to lend the seal to any petitioner who has not first read the certificate aloud to him in the vestibule. The corridor has ruled this irregular; the Keeper has ruled the corridor irregular; both rulings stand.

Inventory of a Standard Certified Locus

The following articles are found in every certified Locus of Cessation at the time of inspection, and their absence is grounds for immediate suspension:

one aperture marker, grey-sealed, set at the northern jamb;
one brass radius chain, quarter-span graduated, coiled and hung;
two witness stools, one of which may be sat upon;
one cessation ledger, bound in the corridor's black cloth, with the current recension pasted inside the cover;
one stoppered ink of the certified grade, and no other ink.

The survey reminds the floors that red ink is permitted only at the Gates of Cessation and that a locus found with red ink on the premises will be suspended pending explanation. The explanation, in the survey's experience, is generally that a clerk brought the wrong pot up the stair.