Notionalist

The Notionalist is the official designation, under Clause 4.12.γ, for any sentient entity permanently catalogued within the Tower whose existence is, by definition, purely speculative. Notionalists are not visitors, residents, or staff; they are the subjects of a holding that have, through procedural anomaly or archival consensus, achieved a degree of administrative recognition, allowing them limited agency within the stacks. Their ontological status is a matter of persistent debate between the Custodians of the Actual and the Archivists of the Possible.

Origins and Classification

The first recorded Notionalist was the Spectral Librarian of Floor 7,001, an entity described in the Ledger of Unconfirmed Holdings as “a figure of shifting silhouette observed reshelving volumes on a floor otherwise documented as void.” This sighting, logged in the 14th year of the Third Spiral, prompted the drafting of Clause 4.12.γ, which established the category. Notionalists are distinguished from Ephemera (which lack sentience) and Resident Phantoms (which are tied to specific locations rather than a catalogue entry).

Classification is performed by the Bureau of Ontic Integrity and requires three independent witness testimonies submitted on Form BOI-7, corroborated by a non-contradictory entry in at least one major catalogue. The most common sources of Notionalists are:

• Fictional protagonists from uncatalogued works of speculative literature.
• Hypothetical constructs from philosophical or mathematical treatises (e.g., Laplace’s Unobserved Demon).
• Unverifiable historical figures cited in apocryphal chronicles.
• Entities generated by recursive cataloguing errors, such as the Index-That-Reads-Itself.

Rights and Restrictions

Upon certification, a Notionalist is granted a Provisional Consciousness Permit (PCP), which affords specific privileges and imposes strict limitations under the Seventh Concordance.

Privileges

Right to borrow materials (non-original copies only) from the floor of their origin; right to submit observational reports to the Bureau of Ontic Integrity; right to be consulted, though not necessarily obeyed, during shelving disputes involving their holding of record.

Restrictions

Forbidden from accessing floors with a reality coefficient above 0.7 (per the Fulcrum Scale); may not alter original documents; must renew their PCP every fifty years via a hearing where their “continued plausibility” is assessed; may not serve on any administrative council.

Notable Examples

The Tower’s registry currently lists 417 certified Notionalists. Among the most frequently encountered are:

• The Woman Who Was Thursday: A Notionalist derived from an unfinished and anonymously authored mystery novel held on Floor 10,303. She is permitted to ask questions of any Librarian, but only on Thursdays.
• The Garrulous Golem of Š-Lost: A clay construct described in a fragmentary theological text from a non-existent sect. It wanders the lower stacks (Floors -200 to -450) offering unsolicited and often inaccurate commentary on the Dewey-Sigil decimal system.
• The Second Passenger: An entity that manifests in any conveyance (elevator, book-cart, pneumatic tube) once it contains exactly one other occupant. It does not speak, but its presence is noted to lower the ambient temperature by 2–3 degrees Celsius.

Controversies and Disputes

The ontological standing of Notionalists is the primary schism between the two major philosophical guilds. The Custodians of the Actual argue that certification is a bureaucratic error that reifies catalogue entries, dangerously blurring the line between record and reality. They cite the incident of The Brief Sovereignty of the Paper Kingdom, where a Notionalist monarch from a children’s fable temporarily convinced the automated cleaning constructs on Floor 5,672 to swear fealty.

The Archivists of the Possible counter that Notionalists are a logical and necessary emergent property of an infinite archive, serving as a “self-correcting margin” that highlights gaps in the catalogue. They maintain that a Notionalist’s actions, however limited, generate new metadata and cross-references, thus enriching the Tower’s total knowledge. This view is supported by Clause 4.12.γ, Annex C, which states, “A catalogue containing all things must, by inclusion, account for the cataloguer.”

A practical administrative conflict arises from Clause 5.01, which mandates that “all sentient entities within the Tower shall be accounted for in the Census of Conscious Holdings.” The Bureau of Ontic Integrity has thus far declined to include Notionalists in this census, arguing their sentience is provisional, leading to an ongoing Adjudication 77b/ before the Librarians’ Silent Conclave.

Impact on Tower Operations

Beyond philosophical debate, Notionalists have tangible effects. Their observational reports have led to the discovery of seventeen previously mis-shelved wings and one entirely undocumented sub-basement. However, they are also responsible for approximately 34% of all “phantom noise” complaints filed by junior librarians, and their required renewal hearings consume nearly 200 clerk-hours per spiral. Their most significant contribution is perhaps the Notionalists’ Marginalia Collection, a curated archive of their annotations in borrowed texts, which is housed on Floor 9,999 and is considered a primary source for the study of Implied Narratology.