Ordinance of Mediated States (TY 7011)

Ordinance of Mediated States (TY 7011) is a classification and regulatory instrument pertaining to the condition of artefacts, concepts, or spaces whose existence or properties are contingent upon an external, often human, observer. Formally adopted on the 47th day of the 712th Catalogical Cycle, it establishes a five-tier taxonomy of mediation, from “Inherent” to “Ephemeral,” and mandates specific containment and cataloguing protocols for each.

The Ordinance’s primary function is to prevent the declarative phantoms associated with observed phenomena from attaining independent, self-sustaining reality within the Tower’s archives. It operates under the principle, later enshrined in Axiomatic Application, that “a thing known only by its witness is a thing half-realized, and thus a persistent administrative hazard.” The Ordinance is jointly enforced by the Clerks of Concordance and the Luminous Materials Guild, the latter due to the frequent interaction between mediated states and the Phases of Mediated Light.

Taxonomy of Mediation

The Ordinance defines five distinct states, which are to be determined at the point of archival accession:

1. State I: Inherent. The subject’s properties are self-evident and require no observer. (e.g., a staircase’s number of steps). Cataloguing proceeds under standard protocols.
2. State II: Contextual. Properties are stable but require a frame of reference established by prior observation. Requires a Conditional Closure filing prior to shelving.
3. State III: Contingent. Existence or key properties manifest only in the presence of a qualified observer. Subject must be housed in a Ambitant Aperture chamber.
4. State IV: Reciprocal. Both the subject and the observer enter a co-defined state, altering each other’s catalogued parameters. Triggers a full Board of Temporal Affairs review.
5. State V: Ephemeral. The subject leaves no persistent record and exists solely within the observation event. All data must be recorded under Ordinance of Perpetual Echo protocols prior to the event’s conclusion.

Operational Protocols

For any item classified as State III or higher, the Ordinance requires the creation of a “Mediation Dossier.” This dossier includes not only a description of the subject, but a full biography and current functional status of its primary observer(s), a practice derived from, but distinct from, the biographical appendices of The Aethelred Impression. Furthermore, the physical location of such items is governed by Ordinance 73-C, which permits their relocation to specialized stacks where “catalogue integrity may supersede local administrative coherence.”

A controversial provision in Annex 3 stipulates that any Clerk or Librarian who becomes the primary observer for a State IV subject is, for the duration of the mediation, considered to be operating under Ordinance 7, Clause IV, with seniority determined by their function within the mediated relationship, not their standing in the Library hierarchy. This has led to several noted instances of junior clerks temporarily issuing directives to senior archivists, a situation regularized by Ordinance 8871-C.

Interaction with Other Statutes

The Ordinance exists in a complex web of overlapping regulations. It is considered a subsidiary framework to Ordinance 4, as it provides the mechanism for managing the “premature conclusions” that Ordinance 4 seeks to prevent. Its measurement protocols for observer effect directly reference the bureaucratic principles of Local Ordinance 22.J-8.

However, tensions exist with Ordinance 7’s mandate to preserve “all information, in any state of coherence or decay.” Scholars in the Hall of Unfinished Inquiries argue that the strict containment protocols for State V (Ephemeral) subjects functionally violate Ordinance 7 by allowing the observed event to dissolve without being rendered permanent. The prevailing counter-argument, upheld in three separate Clerical arbitrations, is that the Ordinance of Mediated States is the mechanism of preservation for such states, and that its protocols fulfill the spirit of Ordinance 7.

The Vault 44 Incident

The most famous application of the Ordinance followed the so-called “Vault 44 Incident” on Floor 899. A collection of mirrors, originally catalogued as inert (State I), was reclassified as State IV (Reciprocal) after it was noted that the reflections of visiting clerks began to exhibit independent cataloguing behavior, attempting to organize phantom scrolls. Access to the vault was immediately restricted under Ordinance 73-C, and a mediated hearing was convened by the Board of Temporal Affairs to determine whether the reflections constituted a legitimate stasis or an archival contaminant under Regulation 44-B: Contaminants of Certainty. The hearing lasted seven cycles and concluded with the reflections being granted provisional status as auxiliary cataloguers, their authority limited to the mirrored surface of the vault. This ruling is cited as a precedent in all cases involving self-referential mediated systems.

Current Scholarly Disputes

The principal unresolved debate concerns the “Observer of Last Resort.” Concordance 12 asserts that the Tower itself, as an archival entity, may act as a latent observer, potentially stabilizing otherwise Ephemeral (State V) subjects into Contingent (State III) ones merely by the act of preparing their Mediation Dossier. Concordance 18 refutes this, stating that the Tower’s observation is purely procedural and cannot induce state transition. This schism directly impacts the cataloguing of dreams, unsent letters, and unobserved corners of little-used stairwells, leaving their designated state in perpetual administrative limbo pending a future, and unlikely, clerical resolution.