Somnolent Fontanel

The Somnolent Fontanel is a soft cranial aperture of uncertain origin, held in the Paleontological Vitrines on floor 14-Kappa and catalogued as a specimen of the Somnolent Mimer class. It measures 41 millimetres across at its widest and does not close. Attempts to close it have been made eleven times, by seven offices, since the third recension of the accession ledger; each closure has been reversed within a season, and the reversals are not recorded as failures, the Fontanel not being regarded as an object that can fail. It is soft to the touch, cool in all ambient temperatures measured, and warm on the ninth of every month, a periodicity noted in Annex 12-C but never explained.

The specimen was accessioned from the sub-vaults beneath The Granular Congestion of 07--Ω during the recovery survey of that floor, recovered from a deposit of Somnolent Sand in which it had lain, by the surveyor's estimate, since before the second recension. It was not found attached to any skull. The recovery report, filed by Surveyor-Adjunct Mirelle Ostrand, records the find in a single line: "Object soft, pulsing at nine-minute intervals; lifted without resistance; carried in a lined basket." Ostrand's basket is preserved on the same shelf and is catalogued separately.

Descriptive properties

The Fontanel exhibits a slow periodic contraction at intervals of nine minutes and roughly twelve seconds, the second figure drifting by up to forty seconds depending on the floor on which it is stored. It does not respond to sound, light, weight, or the presence of observers, with one disputed exception recorded during the winter of floor 9-Gamma, when it is alleged to have quickened while a clerk read aloud from the Vellum of Perpetual Reckoning. The clerk, Tobias Venn, was subsequently transferred to a floor with no reading aloud. His account was accepted for the ledger but flagged as "corroborated by one."

Under the terms of Declaration 88-C, the Fontanel was re-categorized from 'dormant' to 'recalcitrant' in common with other holdings exhibiting the Somnolent Mimer phenomenon. The re-categorization was opposed by the Paleontological Vitrines on the ground that a fontanel cannot be recalcitrant, being an aperture rather than an agent. The objection was upheld by the Fifth Concordance and overturned by the Tenth Concordance four years later, and the current register follows the Tenth. The Vitrines have not amended their internal labels.

Jurisprudential dispute

Whether the Fontanel is an Intent-Holding Inorganic is the longest-running dispute attached to it. The Intentionalist school, following Somnolent Jurisprudence, argues that its periodicity constitutes Intent of Motion and that it should be treated as a Latent Agent under the Treatise on Latent Agency. The Environmentalist school holds that the periodicity is a property of the deposit from which it was lifted, and that the Fontanel merely retains it, as a jar retains the smell of what it held.

"An aperture that will not close is not thereby an agent. It is a hole with a habit."

— Third Concordance, Annex 4, marginal gloss

The gloss is unsigned. The Fifth Concordance cites it as authority; the Tenth Concordance cites the same words as an example of reasoning "not fit to be entered in a ledger," a phrase the Tenth applies to the Fifth directly.

Storage and handling

The Fontanel is kept in a shallow vitrine of drawn glass, on a bed of unsifted Somnolent Sand renewed each quarter, and is turned at the equinox. It may not be carried up more than six floors in a single journey, a rule introduced after the specimen was escorted to floor 22-Sigma in 1907 and returned with an additional aperture, which was catalogued separately as Somnolent Fontanel and has since been reabsorbed. Handlers are required to wash before and after.

A discrepancy recorded by Archivist Colm Hesper in the accession ledger, between the specimen's measured width in the first and third recensions, went unremarked for sixty years before contributing a minor entry to the tally of the Granular Congestion. Hesper's grievance, set out in a memorandum of some length, was that his note had been correct and the ledger had been miscopied. The memorandum is preserved. No correction was made.

Comparative holdings

The Fontanel is the only aperture of its kind in the archive, though the Oneiroscone is sometimes stored in its vicinity on account of a shared insensitivity to light, and Aspergillus soporifex is kept at a distance of no less than four shelves, the Fontanel being one of the few holdings to which the mould has never adhered. The Soporific Spore Incident left the vitrine unmarked, which the Vitrines record with satisfaction.

A Class-3 Oneiric Artefact designation was proposed for the Fontanel in the fourth recension and withdrawn on the ground that the specimen produces no dream in any observer tested. Tests are conducted annually. The current test register lists nineteen observers, all of whom reported nothing, and one — unnamed in the register — who reported a corridor.