Provocative Testing

Provocative Testing is the branch of Stress Testing concerned not with the load a subject can bear but with the inquiry it cannot leave alone. Where Conceptual Load Testing measures a structure against a stated burden, Provocative Testing deliberately introduces a question the structure is known to be unable to resolve, and records what happens next. The practice is administered jointly by the Observatorium of Errant Postulate and the Directorate of Cartographic Review, and is the only testing regime in the Tower whose results are filed before they are obtained.

Definition and legal basis

The distinction between load and provocation was fixed in the Nineteenth Concordance, which acknowledged the utility of "sanctioned heresies" for the stress-testing of indexing protocols and thereby permitted examiners to ask questions they knew to be unanswerable. The Concordance stops short of naming the practice. The term itself appears first in an undated marginal note in the Second Concordance's working recension, where a hand now attributed to the Sixth Librarian writes: "the wall is tested by the weight; the index is tested by the question."

Provocative Testing should not be confused with the classification of a Provocative Query, which is a finding, nor with Procedure 12.ω, which is the route by which such a query reaches the examining chamber. Provocative Testing is the examination itself.

Method

A test begins with the examiner's declaration, read aloud in the presence of two witnesses, of the question to be introduced and the expected point of impasse. The question is then entered into the subject — an index, a catalogue, a stairwell registry, occasionally a single name — and the subject is observed until it either resolves the question, which is recorded as a failure of the test, or fails to resolve it in a manner the examiner can describe, which is recorded as a success. Tests that produce no observable impasse whatsoever are recorded as "inconclusive pending a more provocative question," a formula that has never been retired.

Before the testing area is opened, Annex Gamma, verses 7–12 of the Second Concordance are recited, as required for all procedures conducted under Conceptual Load Testing. The verses concern the clearing of the floor and the sealing of the doors and say nothing about questions. Examiners recite them anyway. A visiting rule posted at the door of the eastern testing chamber on Floor 308 states that no one may enter carrying a writing implement of any kind, and that this includes a borrowed one.

The Alaric Recension dispute

Scholarly disagreement centres on whether a provoked impasse is a property of the subject or of the question. The Functionalist School holds that the impasse belongs to the subject, which was always going to fail and has merely been shown to do so; on this reading Provocative Testing is a species of inspection and requires no special authority. The Consequentialist School holds the opposite — that the impasse is created by the asking and did not exist before it — and therefore that every test amends the thing tested and must be entered in the Whisperwood Folio as a change of designation.

The dispute descends from the Alaric Recension of 4 Gamma, in which an examiner on Floor 1212 asked a floor registry whether it contained itself. The registry, per the surviving minute, "returned an answer and then a second answer and then declined further correspondence." The Functionalists cite the first answer as proof that the defect was latent; the Consequentialists cite the second as proof that the asking made it. Both schools cite the Third Concordance, whose Annex 4 is silent on the point but whose marginalia are not. No reconciliation has been attempted since the Crisis of the Unanswered Query, which the Directorate has ruled inadmissible as precedent on the grounds that it is still, in a technical sense, occurring.

Transfer and stabilization

Questions that cannot be withdrawn from a subject once entered are transferred to the Atrium of the Unspoken Query for stabilization, and the subject is closed to examination for a period of not less than forty days. Transfer is by escorted courier. The courier may not speak to the question during transport, and may not read it aloud under any circumstances except at the destination, where it must be read aloud. The instruction has been the subject of eleven interpretative rulings, none of which is cited by the others.

Where a provoked impasse proves to be cartographically significant, the Directorate may reclassify the originating question as a foundational cartographic anomaly, at which point the examining office loses jurisdiction and the file passes to Cascade Mapping. Examining offices have been known to contest this. In the winter of the year recorded as 12 Sigma, the examiner of the northern chamber on Floor 308 submitted a test in which the expected impasse was reached early, on the fourth question rather than the ninth; the Directorate declined to reclassify on the ground that an early impasse is a different impasse, and the file was returned unopened.

Record and reputation

Provocative Testing is regarded within the Tower as a respectable and slightly feared discipline, and its practitioners are described in the Canonical Concordances as "necessary, and best kept on a floor of their own." The sentiment is not attributed. A standing instruction from the Academy of Precursory Law advises that no examiner should be asked to test a question they have themselves submitted, on the grounds that they will get the answer they wanted. The instruction is honoured in practice and has never been incorporated into any Concordance, which examiners regard as its chief virtue.