Securement of Holding

The Securement of Holding is the administrative procedure by which a shelf-granted subject is fixed to a defined point in the Tower's structural or ontological framework, so that it may thereafter be handled, cited, insured, and cited again without the risk of drifting. It is distinguished from Physical or Conceptual Securement proper, which names the resulting point of attachment; the Securement of Holding is the act, the paperwork, and the argument that precede and justify it. The distinction is maintained by the Office of Dimensional Integrity and is not observed by most clerks, who use the two phrases interchangeably and then are asked to explain themselves at audit.

Origins and authority

The practice derives its force from Concordance 14, Annex 2, which authorizes the attachment of holdings and is worded with a looseness that has never been corrected. Its clauses were interpreted at length by Concordance 3,891, "On the Securement of Ontological Edges", under whose Clause 7 the Office of Dimensional Integrity was first constituted. The Office was given no budget, no staff, and no premises, and was therefore for its first eleven years a single desk in the Stairwell of Minor Jurisdictions, occupied in rotation. It was not until the winter of 468 that the Office acquired a room of its own, by the simple expedient of the previous occupant dying and no one claiming the desk.

The ordinary vehicle for a Securement is Conceptual Zoning, which fixes the attachment point, followed by Conceptual Infusion, which records the holding's fundamental properties at the moment of attachment. The sequence is prescribed but not enforced. A holding secured in the reverse order is described in the records as "secured, irregularly," and is not thereby invalid.

The problem of the unmoved holding

The procedure was devised for holdings that could be approached from one side. Difficulties arose with holdings whose shelves were occupied by other holdings, so that the point of attachment could not be reached on foot. The early remedy was to secure the holding to the holding in front of it, which produced chains of attachment sometimes forty shelves deep and which, in one celebrated instance on Floor 22,104, required a single clerk to maintain 1,300 attestations annually.

Concordance 14, Annex 2 was amended in the following century to permit attachment at the point of conceptual rather than physical approach. The amendment is generally praised. It is also generally blamed for the Paradox of the Verified Holding, on the grounds that a holding secured by conceptual approach can be attested without any clerk having seen it, and thereafter attested again by the attestation. The Office of Dimensional Integrity has declined to comment on the connection on the record. It has commented twice off it, in memoranda that were subsequently classified.

Attestation and the Logistician's objection

A Securement is not complete until attested. Attestation is performed by the securing clerk, countersigned by a second clerk, and filed with the Office of the Grand Logistician, which will not allocate physical or conceptual space to an entity lacking an attested Securement. This arrangement has caused friction for as long as it has existed. The Logistician's office maintains that attestation is a matter of record; the Office of Dimensional Integrity maintains that record is a matter of attestation. The two positions have never been reconciled, and the file on the dispute is itself one of the longest in the Tower.

"Let the point be fixed and the attestation follow, or let the attestation be made and the point fixed after: the holding is secured in either case, and the difference is a difference of clerks."

— Concordance 14, Annex 2, clause 9

Clause 9 was written by a committee and is understood by no one. In 511 the Office of the Grand Logistician cited it in support of refusing space to forty holdings that had been secured by the Office of Dimensional Integrity but not, in the Logistician's reading, attested; the holdings were returned to the shelves unattested; a year later the same space was granted to them under different designations, so that the Tower briefly contained forty holdings twice. Only eight were ever recovered. The remainder are recorded as "at large, secured," a status that the archive permits and cannot describe.

Jurisdiction at the point

Once a Securement is established, jurisdiction over the area within one meter of the attachment point defaults to the Office of Dimensional Integrity, under Ordinance of Fluid Jurisdiction, Clause 7, unless superseded by a more specific Concordance. This default is the source of most of the Office's actual work, since a point of attachment is a convenient place to stand, lean, set down a lamp, or leave a bag, and one meter is generous. The Office maintains a small schedule of standing orders for its own points; visitors are asked not to touch the seal at the base of the attachment and to keep to the painted line.

Where two Securements occur within one meter of each other, the Ordinance provides no rule at all. The Practice of Procedural Neutrality applies, and in practice the two points are marked, allowed to remain in proximity, and inspected quarterly by whichever clerk has been assigned the floor that season. This has worked well enough that no one has proposed a remedy.

Status Beta and indefinite Securement

A holding whose Securement fails review — because its attachment point has lapsed, or been claimed twice, or because the holding has begun to demonstrate persistent ambiguity about its own properties — may be reclassified under Status Beta and held indefinitely. Holding 44Δ-881 entered Status Beta in this manner and remains so, its 2,347 objects secured individually and its documentation secured as a body, in a divergence that the Office has described in correspondence as "resolved by convention." Holding 9,999-A has been under perpetual review since Clause 19 of the Fifth Concordance and is secured only provisionally.

Ambiguity is not, in itself, grounds for refusal. Holding 44.12- established that a holding is valid if its own documentation says it is, and the Office has applied that principle to Securements with some latitude. A holding may present for Securement with a certificate of its own attachment. A holding may present with none. The Office secures what is presented, records what it secured, and does not investigate.

See also holding, Subject Holding, Active vs. Passive Holding, Holding Designation, and Holdings at Large, maintained irregularly.