Petitions of Apparent Isness (Form PAI-series)

The Petitions of Apparent Isness (Form PAI-series) are the primary instruments by which a potential subject is presented to the Office of Perpetual Affairs for consideration as a catalogue entry. A Petition of Apparent Isness does not assert that a thing is; it asserts only that a thing appears to be, and requests that the Office rule on whether the appearance is sufficient for cataloguing. The distinction is maintained with some ferocity. A perfected petition in the PAI-series is a precondition for any subject entering the holdings, and no floor is considered catalogued until its PAI-series file has been closed and indorsed.

The series runs from Form PAI-1 (single subject, apparent but uncorroborated) to Form PAI-19 (subject apparent only to a named witness, now deceased). Forms PAI-1 through PAI-7 are the working range; PAI-8 and above are filed in the Subbasement of Unanswerable Petitions by standing instruction and are, in practice, not read.

Origin and recension history

The PAI-series was codified in the winter of Y204 SCE, following the Fourth Concordance, Annex 2, which held that "a thing may be entered in the register on the strength of its appearance, and its being deferred indefinitely without prejudice to the entry." The wording was drafted by the Secretariat of the Office of Perpetual Affairs over nine sessions and was adopted unchanged, which is itself a matter of record, since the Secretariat's drafts are usually amended at least twice before they leave the Scriptorium.

The first recension (Y204–Y267 SCE) required the petitioner to describe the subject in the negative — that is, to list what the subject was not — on the reasoning that apparent isness could not survive a positive description. This proved unworkable. Petitioners produced lists running to forty and fifty pages, and the Office found itself maintaining files whose contents consisted almost entirely of things the subject was not. The Second Recension of Y268 SCE reversed the requirement and permitted positive description on Form PAI-3, where the subject is described by up to three attributes and no more. The three-attribute limit has been observed since, and the Office has twice refused petitions describing a subject in four attributes, on the ground that "a fourth attribute begins to resemble a claim to being."

Composition of a petition

A valid petition requires the subject to be named or, if unnamed, given a provisional designation; a statement of the appearance; and the seal of the floor on which the appearance occurred. It must be accompanied by the appropriate indorsement from the Bureau of Registry and, where the subject appears to duplicate an existing holding, by a Declaration of Apparent Onomastic Coincidence before the cataloguing session closes. A Apparent Duplication Event noted on Form Π-44 may not be corrected after the session has closed, a rule that has caused considerable difficulty and at least one Apparent Concordance Contradiction.

The petition is filed in triplicate. The second copy is returned to the petitioner, stamped, and is the only copy that carries any weight in a dispute, the first and third being held by the Office and the Bureau respectively and being subject to correction without notice. Petitioners are advised to keep the second copy dry; the ink used by the Office runs badly in the lower floors, where the damp is constant.

The Grael dispute

The most cited dispute in the PAI-series concerns a clerk of the Forty-First Granary Floor, E. Grael, who in Y312 SCE petitioned on Form PAI-5 for the cataloguing of a stairwell that appeared, by his account, only when the lamp was carried past the third landing and not otherwise. The Office accepted the petition. The Bureau of Registry objected, on the ground that a stairwell that appeared only under a carried lamp failed the corroboration clause of the Fourth Concordance, Annex 2. The Office replied that corroboration applied to the subject and not to the conditions of its appearance, and cited the Ninth Concordance, Clause 14, which it read as distinguishing the two. The Bureau, in a memorandum of Y313 SCE, described this reading as "an extension not contemplated by the drafters."

"The appearance of a thing under a condition is still an appearance of the thing; the condition is a circumstance, and circumstances are not catalogued."

— Ninth Concordance, Clause 14

The stairwell was entered provisionally and remains so. Grael petitioned four further times for it to be entered finally, each time on Form PAI-5, and each time was refused on the procedural ground that a provisional entry cannot be petitioned for final entry while the Bureau's objection stands. He is recorded as having requested, in Y319 SCE, that the objection be resolved or that the stairwell be removed, and as receiving no reply. The correspondence occupies two shelves.

Conflicts between Concordances

The Sixth Concordance, Annex 7, requires that every PAI-series petition be supported by two independent witnesses to the appearance. The Eleventh Concordance, Annex 1, holds that a single witness is sufficient where the subject is "of a kind commonly observed but not commonly recorded." The two have never been reconciled. The Office of Perpetual Affairs applies the Sixth in its ordinary sessions and the Eleventh on the Floor of Provisional Entries and on the floors below it, and the choice of which to apply is made by the presiding clerk at the opening of the session and entered in the minute. A petitioner may request a particular Concordance, but the request is not binding and is seldom granted; the Office has stated, in a memorandum of Y388 SCE, that the practice "serves to distribute the burden of proof across the floors."

Scholars of the College of Recensions disagree about whether this was always the practice. Archivist R. Halloway argues that the split dates from the Lateral Shift of the Unanswerable Petitions and is a consequence of the loss of the lower registers; the College's Reading of Y401 takes the view that the split is older and that the Sixth and Eleventh were drafted for different floors from the outset.

Reassessment and amendment

A petition that has been refused may be re-presented without a new appearance, provided the petitioner submits a Form RV-9 ontolological reassessment petition within the same administrative year. Where the refusal concerned the scope of the entry rather than its existence, the petitioner may instead submit a Form 44-Δ Petition for Ontological Clarification or Extension. Petitioners frequently submit the wrong form. The Office does not return incorrect forms; it files them under the correct series and notes the error in the margin, and the petitioner is not informed. The margin note is the only record of the error and is not disclosed except by order.

Forms PAI-1 through PAI-19 remain in current use. The Bureau of Registry has twice recommended their consolidation with the Forms Amp Petitions and twice been declined; the Office's minute of Y447 SCE records that consolidation "would require a petitioner to know what he is petitioning for, which is contrary to the purpose of the series."