Omega Annex Bureau

Standing and authority

Omega Annex Bureau is the administrative body to which authority over Temporally Unfixed Paradoxes is primarily vested, under the terms recorded in Annex Omega (Omega) and administered through the standing instrument known as the Annex Omega Document. The Bureau occupies chambers on the floor variously designated 88-Omega and, in earlier recensions, simply "the Annex after the Stair," a designation that Watch 88-Omega has refused to alter since the winter of 3,044.

The Bureau's remit is narrow in wording and broad in practice. It concerns itself with paradoxes that have not yet fixed — that is, whose resolution has not been recorded by any Concordance — and with the disposition of "disputed essences," a category the Omega Annex statute leaves deliberately undescribed. In the ordinary course of Tower business, a paradox that has fixed is no longer anyone's concern, and a paradox that has not fixed falls, by default, to the Bureau's desk.

Constitution

The Bureau was constituted in 3,041 by the formal establishment of the doctrine of Metaphysical Proprietorship under Annex Omega (Omega), the annex to the Fifth Concordance. Its founding clerk, Hesper Quarrel, signed the instrument twice — once in ink and once, by an error of the scribe who copied the register, in the margin of an unrelated requisition for lamp oil. The second signature is still visible and is cited, in Concordance 501-Omega, as evidence of the Bureau's continuous seal.

Authority over the Bureau's property disputes is shared with the Omega Annex Body, which jointly administers Annex Omega Place. The two bodies have never agreed on where the shared chambers end and the private ones begin, and the dispute is settled annually by inspection rather than by ruling.

Material verification under Clause 4 of Annex C is carried out by the bureau of Metaphysical Proprietorship, which also drafts and maintains the Annex Omega Document. This arrangement means that the Bureau's own founding instrument is written by an office to which the Bureau has no formal authority, a point raised in every audit since 3,052 and resolved in none.

Series Ω and holdings

Annex Ω administers Series Ω and serves as the metaphysical proprietorship bureau for all Ω-class documents. The Bureau's holdings within this series are extensive. Among them:

• Imprint 712-Omega, registered in the Annex Omega series and held under seal since its accession.
• The Spiral Staircase Omega, which the Bureau claims as a corridor and which Annex Omega Place claims as a boundary wall.
• The standing file on The Omega Whisper event, which remains open because no fixing has been recorded.

Quodlibet Alloy is mandated by Annex Omega (Omega) for the containment of disputed essences. The Bureau keeps a standing order with the alloyers' guild and has, since 3,047, been obliged to accept delivery on the third floor regardless of where it has asked for it.

Standing disputes

The most persistent disagreement concerns the Bureau's relationship to Supplemental Protocol Omega, which is distinct from the Annex Omega Document and which the Bureau maintains it has never been required to observe. Clause Omega-3 is cited against this position; the Bureau cites Clause Omega-11 in reply. Neither clause has been amended, and both are quoted in full in every correspondence on the matter, which is why the correspondence has never concluded.

A second dispute, older and quieter, concerns Clause Omega-7, under which any document the Bureau certifies must itself be certified, and the certification of the certification must in turn be certified. The Bureau's clerk of record, Ottoline Vell, has observed that the recursion has not reached a base case in her tenure and does not expect it to.

Under Protocol 17-B Trigger, certain unfixed paradoxes escalate automatically to the Bureau upon the passage of a fixed interval. The trigger has fired four times. Twice it produced a file. Twice it produced nothing, and the Bureau recorded the absence as a finding.

Notes on visiting

Visitors to the Bureau's chambers are asked to bring their own lamp. The floor's standing light was condemned in 3,049 and has been condemned annually since; the Bureau considers the condemnation a matter for Annex Omega Place and Annex Omega Place considers it a matter for the Bureau.

Readers consulting the Bureau's holdings directly should note that the numbering of floors in this quarter is not sequential, and that the stair serving the chambers passes, without signage, the floor on which the Omega Annex itself is said to sit.