Provisional Annexes

Provisional Annexes are administrative zones of The Tower whose boundaries, functions, and inventory remain unconfirmed pending a definitive survey that has not yet been scheduled. They are distinguished from Annex Theta and from standard Annexes not by size or location but by status: a Provisional Annex is, in the language of the Annexes of the Third Concordance, "held in trust against its own description." There are, by the most recent consolidated count of the Prefect of Juridical Annexes, one hundred and nine Provisional Annexes in active standing, of which forty-one have never been entered and eleven have been entered twice by different expeditions that did not meet.

Origin and codification

The category was not foreseen. The Annexes of the Third Concordance divided the Tower's administrative space into Void Annexes, Organic Annexes, and the standard classes, and assumed that every Annex could be assigned to one of these. Within four years of ratification, surveyors in the eastern risers reported corridors that could not be classified without first being measured, and could not be measured without first being classified. The impasse was referred upward three times before the Prefect of Juridical Annexes issued the ruling that created the class: that where classification and measurement each depend on the other, the Annex shall be designated Provisional and held open, and "the order of priority shall not be resolved by the surveyor, whose task is to walk the floor and not to decide what floor it is" (Prefect of Juridical Annexes, Ruling 19 of the Session of Grey Rain).

The designation was understood, at the time, to be temporary. It has since outlasted six revisions of the Standard Measurement Protocol (SMP-Δ), which permits certain Provisional Annexes to be invoked as exceptions to its own measurement rules — a provision that has never been invoked in writing but is invoked verbally on most survey days.

Registration and the bracket practice

A newly encountered Provisional Annex is registered in the open series by a two-part number, the first part assigned on encounter and the second on confirmation; since confirmation does not occur, nearly all entries in the register carry a second part of zero. Clerks refer to these as "bracketed" designations, and it is a small point of etiquette in the registry never to ask a colleague for the unbracketed form.

The register is maintained on Floor 1188, in a room whose door is narrower than its window. The window was installed first. Registrars are permitted to decline entry to any party carrying more than two lanterns.

"Annex Provisional 407/0 was entered on the eleventh of the month of Stills, found furnished, found occupied, and found — on the return of the party by a different stair — to contain no furniture and no occupant, nor any mark of either. The party's own footprints were present throughout."

— Register of Provisional Annexes, entry 407

Dispute: closure and the Penumbral question

The chief scholarly contention concerns whether a Provisional Annex may ever be closed. The Provisional Tribunal Protocol provides a multi-phase process for adjudicating disputes between administrative annexes, and its fourth phase permits a tribunal to declare a matter "provisionally closed," a phrase whose meaning depends entirely on which Concordance one reads. Concordance 204 holds that provisional closure is a form of closure and carries the force of it. A competing reading, drawn from the Annexes of the Third Concordance and its schedules, holds that provisional closure merely suspends the question, and leaves the Annex in standing.

The disagreement is not academic. Warden Elara Sind has vigorously contested interpretations that allow provisional closure for Penumbral Annexes, arguing that closure by suspension would empty the register without answering a single question in it, and that the Tower would then possess "a hundred and nine empty lines and the reputation of having tidied" (Elara Sind, Memorandum to the Prefect, 3rd draft). The Prefect of Juridical Annexes has not ruled, and is not expected to.

A related dispute concerns the Algorithm of Shifting Annexes, which some clerks believe applies automatically to Provisional Annexes seeking transfer to Supporting Annexes. The Third Scribe's Guild, before its dissolution, transcribed the Algorithm in two recensions differing by a single connective, with the result that the question cannot now be settled from the text and must be settled — as it usually is — by asking which recension the older registrars were trained on.

Sequestering and the sub-basement route

Provisional subjects — objects, persons, and on thirteen recorded occasions weather — that cannot be held in place while their Annex awaits confirmation are removed to Sub-Basement Annexes 44-γ through 44-ω, designated for the purpose under the Provisional Ratification arrangements. Removal is by the long stair, since the lifts are not certified below Floor 2000 and the certification has been pending since before the lifts were installed.

The Bureau of Auditory Logging maintains a standing annex for any Provisional Annex whose confirmation is attempted aloud; under the procedural annexes of the Provisional Logging Protocol, a spoken description of an unconfirmed Annex must be logged in the register of provisional subjects, and a description logged there cannot subsequently be used to confirm the Annex it describes. The Bureau has never explained this rule and the Annexes and Outliers papers treat it as settled.

Selected Provisional Annexes in standing

• 408/0 — the corridor that lengthens while walked; survey abandoned 16 times.
• 512/0 — a reading room; every volume returned to the shelf before it is opened.
• 733/0 — held by the Bureau of Auditory Logging; no description permitted.
• 894/0 — a stairwell; not entered, on the advice of the registrar who entered it.