Protocol Alpha

Scope

Protocol Alpha is a theoretical framework for procedural navigation focusing on categorical isolation. It is the oldest surviving statement of what the Librarians call the separation principle: the proposition that a subject may be moved through the Tower only if it is first made unlike everything it will pass. The Protocol does not itself move anything. It is cited, amended, and — according to the Scriptorium of the Long Landing — cited again, at a rate that has never been satisfactorily reconciled with its length, which runs to four pages in the standard recension. The Protocol occupies an unusual position in the archive. It is treated as foundational by Triage Protocol Alpha, by Protocol Delta, and by the standing instructions issued to porters on the unfinished stair, yet it has never been adopted by any Concordance in its unamended form. The reasons for this are recorded, but not in one place.

Structure

Protocol Alpha is arranged in three sections of unequal authority. Section I sets out the notion of categorical isolation and is universally regarded as binding. Section II describes the apparatus of isolation — chiefly the slab, the lamp, and the interval — and is binding only where a floor has procured them. Section III is a catalogue of prior failures, presented as instruction by counterexample; it is the longest section and the one most often removed when the Protocol is copied. The isolation interval specified in Section II is nine minutes for subjects of ordinary provenance and forty minutes for subjects that have previously been catalogued. These figures are given without derivation. The Scriptorium of the Long Landing has twice petitioned for the underlying calculation and twice been referred to Standard Operating Protocol 12-Alpha, which does not contain it.

Relation to other protocols

The relationship between Protocol Alpha and Containment Protocol 7-Alpha is a frequent source of confusion. Containment Protocol 7-Alpha governs the cultivation of sleeping ink lichen within bounded ceramic planters on Spire Annex 7-Alpha and shares with Protocol Alpha only the word that names them; its procedures for bounded growth derive instead from the general principles adapted by Phase 1 of Triage Protocol Alpha. Readers consulting the two together are advised to consult Annex B of Containment Protocol 7-Alpha first. Triage Protocol Alpha, by contrast, is a direct descendant. Its initial sorting of anomalous materials is performed by categorical isolation, and its Phase 2 methodology for contextual verification — set out in Annex 3 of Protocol 8099 Alpha — presupposes that the subject has already been isolated under Protocol Alpha or an approved equivalent. Where no such isolation is recorded, findings issued under Phase 2 are void; this rule was the subject of the eleven-month gap in verification records on Floor 44, the so-called Winter of Blank Slates.

Amendments and disputes

The largest amendment to Protocol Alpha is the Third Rider, which permits isolation to be waived for subjects moving only between adjacent floors. The Third Rider has no Concordance of origin. It appears first in a margin note in a copy held in the stairwell annex of Floor 12 and is thereafter cited as though settled. Dispute Ledger 44-Alpha records four separate objections to it, all upheld, none of which resulted in its removal. A second dispute concerns Section III. The Scriptorium holds that the counterexamples are normative — that a failure recorded there binds future practice as firmly as a clause. The Office of the Concordance holds that they are historical and cite freely. The matter was referred in the winter year 311 to a joint committee, whose report is one page long and ends mid-sentence.

"A subject that resembles what it will meet has not been isolated; it has been agreeable. Agreement is not a state the Tower is organised to reward."

— Protocol Alpha, Section I, clause 4 (recension C)

An internal memorandum of the same period, attributed to Clerk Adelve Marrow of the Office of the Concordance, notes that the distinction between agreement and isolation "is drawn nowhere on the slabs themselves, which is where it would need to be drawn."

Application notes

Floors differ widely in observance. On Floor 9 the isolation interval is kept to the minute by a bell that is audible only from the corridor side of the door. On Floor 44 it was for a time kept by counting, which produced intervals varying between six and fifty minutes depending on the counter and whether they had eaten. The incident is now recorded under Post-Incident Debriefing Protocol Alpha. The slab itself must be swept between subjects. This is stated plainly in Section II and is nonetheless the single most frequently missed step in the record; it is the reason the Office of Uncertain Origin maintains its own brush, and the reason the brush is not permitted to leave the floor.

See also

• Cadence Protocol
• Clause 17, Annex B
• Gol77 Alpha
• Tier Alpha