Purging Cycle

Definition and scope

The Purging Cycle is a scheduled administrative interval during which holdings, residues, and accumulated catalogual matter are removed from active circulation and transferred to the Submerged Annex. It is among the oldest recurring provisions of Tower governance, referenced in Cycle 11 and administered continuously through the precedents set by the Kappa Cycle. The Purging Cycle is not itself a numbered cycle; it is a procedure that recurs within them, which has been the source of considerable dispute. Purgings are conducted floor by floor and are timed to coincide with the convection current described in the Spiral Charter of Cycle 9,447, which was designed to carry "stagnant ideational effluvia" upward and out of the archival body. In practice the current moves slowly, and matter purged on the lower floors has been observed arriving on the upper floors several cycles later, where it is catalogued as arriving.

Duration and scheduling

A standard Purging Cycle runs 41 standard Tower years, with a preparatory interval of nine years during which holdings are flagged but not yet removed. The preparatory interval was extended to fourteen years following the Great Audit, when it became apparent that flagging and removal had been proceeding in the wrong order on a number of floors. Scheduling authority rests with the Standard Temporal Commission, which coordinates the Purging Cycle against the boundaries of the current Cycle 231. Earlier purgings were timed by local custom, which produced the irregularity catalogued in the Kappa-Aperture Discrepancy.

Contested classification

Whether the Purging Cycle constitutes a cycle in the administrative sense remains unresolved. The Third Concordance, Annex 4, is explicit:

"A cycle is that which begins and ends. A purging is that which is done within it. The two are not to be entered in the same column."

— Third Concordance, Annex 4

The Fourth Concordance nonetheless lists the Purging Cycle among the numbered intervals in its table of durations, a table that has been re-collated twice and remains illegible in three columns. Under the Fourth Concordance reading, the Purging Cycle would have a length; under the Third Concordance reading, it would not. The dispute has been cited in connection with the Cycle 12 Controversy and with the dating of the 126th Cycle. The office of Curator Vael has held, without resolving the question, that a procedure which recurs on a fixed schedule is indistinguishable from a cycle for all practical purposes, and that the Tower should behave as though it were one. This position has not been adopted, and has also not been overturned.

Relation to other purging provisions

The Purging Cycle is frequently confused with three narrower provisions that share its vocabulary: - The purging of dream-content prescribed by Protocol Alpha under the Alpha-Aligned School, which applies to navigational material and not to holdings. - The purging of voided sonic crypts governed by the guidelines of the Department of Ephemeral Acoustics, which concerns resonance deposits and is not scheduled. - The systematic purging of original records undertaken during the Great Audit, which was an event and not a cycle, though it is entered as one in two surviving ledgers. The distinction matters in practice: material purged under the first two provisions does not pass through the Submerged Annex and is therefore absent from the reconstruction attempted after the Great Audit, contributing to the provenance disputes recorded in Compliance Audit of Cycle 345.

The Submerged Annex

Purged matter is received in the Submerged Annex, a repository whose floor number is recorded inconsistently. Two inventories place it below the lowest known floor; a third places it eleven floors above the reading room, which no clerk has been able to reconcile with the observation that the Annex is damp. Receipts are issued for all purged material. The receipts are retained in the Tower, which is generally considered the correct arrangement. Visitors are permitted on Annex levels only during the preparatory interval, and only in parties of three or fewer; a party of two is preferred, as the corridors were not designed for passing.

Current status

The most recent Purging Cycle concluded nine years before the inauguration of Cycle 231 and is referenced in the annals of Cycle 198 as an example of a purging that "completed without notable incident, which is itself notable." The next preparatory interval is expected to open within the current cycle, at a date the Standard Temporal Commission has declined to fix, citing the general unreliability of dates that precede the event they describe.