Möbius Log

Definition and general principles

The Möbius Log is a bound register in which every entry faces both surfaces of the leaf at once, so that recto and verso of a given page carry the same line of text in opposite orientations. It is catalogued as a working instrument of the Fl Floralfungal Log and is administered under the Mandate of the Triple Log, which requires simultaneous recording in a Primary, a Concordant, and a Provisional register. The Möbius Log serves as the Concordant register on floors where fungal growth has been observed to cross the gutter of an ordinary book without interruption.

The Log measures 310 mm by 208 mm and runs to 1,044 leaves. Because the leaf surface is continuous, the count of pages is disputed: the binding office records 2,088 pages, while the Log Certification office records 1,044, on the grounds that a page not reachable without turning a leaf that has already been turned is the same page reached twice.

History

The Möbius Log was begun in the winter of the Long Inventory on a floor whose number the Log of Settled Geographies gives as 77 and whose number the Fourth Concordance gives as 78. The clerk of record at the time, Aldous Meriwether, entered the first line twice by accident and, rather than cancel one copy, discovered that the two impressions agreed. He reported this to the Scriptorial Office, which issued a note instructing him to continue.

By the second year the Log had acquired a reputation for settling disputes that ordinary registers could not. A passage entered on a recto could not be withdrawn without withdrawing it from the facing verso, which made silent amendment structurally impossible. The Master Log of Amendments adopted this principle in a limited form, requiring that any entry sealed in black wax appear on the opposite face in uncancelled hand. Entries so sealed are thereafter transferred to the Log of Recantations.

Reading order

The Log is read in the ordinary way from front to back until the reader reaches the last leaf, at which point the binding permits the book to be continued without lifting the hand. Readers unfamiliar with the instrument commonly report that the Log has grown shorter during consultation; this is a consequence of the return path and not of loss. The Surveyor's Log 74-A records fourteen such reports between two successive winters, all from visiting surveyors assigned to the same stairwell.

A standing rule of the scriptorium requires that no reader carry a writing implement while consulting the Möbius Log. The rule is posted at the door and has been posted at the door twice, once on each face.

Disputed status

The Fifth Concordance holds that the Möbius Log is a single document and may be cited as one. The Sixth Concordance holds that it is two documents in permanent contact and may not be cited at all without specifying which face the citation was drawn from. Log Certification has twice attempted to settle the question by issuing a certificate for each face separately; the two certificates were found to be the same certificate.

A minority position, associated with the clerk Meriwether and after him with the annotators of the Log of Unresolved Awakenings, holds that the Möbius Log has no faces and that the distinction between recto and verso is a habit of the reader rather than a property of the book. This view is recorded but not adopted. The annotators note in passing that their own position appears on both surfaces of the page on which it is written, which they regard as corroboration and which Log Certification regards as a clerical error.

The Perceptual Dilation Log reports that readers who consult the Möbius Log for more than a single sitting begin to describe the binding in terms normally reserved for stairwells, and that several have requested directions to the floor it is kept on. The requests are filed and unanswered.

Consultation

The Möbius Log is kept in a flat drawer on the floor catalogued as 77/78 and may be consulted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It may not be removed from the drawer. Photographic reproduction has been attempted three times; each reproduction came out as a single long strip and was filed under Measurement Log Gamma-7 rather than returned.

"An entry made on one face is made on the other, and a cancellation is an amendment to both. This is the whole of the instrument."

— Aldous Meriwether, note to the Scriptorial Office, reproduced in the Fl Floralfungal Log: Protocol Primer, Annex 3

See also

• Log of Self-Reference
• Log.88.IMP.Δ
• Log of the Downward Seeking
• Post-Incident Debriefing Log 891-Sigma