Spiral of Contemplation

The Spiral of Contemplation is the collective designation for the forty-one helical staircases of the middle banns, each of which returns the reader to the landing from which they departed after a descent of variable length. It is distinguished from the Spiral of Deferred Ascent — with which it is frequently confused in petition, and from which it is separated by the whole of Ordinance 712-B — by the direction of its turn and by the fact that it does not ascend. The Spiral of Contemplation descends, or appears to; the Office of Vertical Affairs has recorded the figure as "not less than zero and not more than one, per circuit" (Registry Note 88-C, filed at Gallery of Unenacted Laws).

The Spiral is not a single structure. The forty-one are numbered irregularly, in the manner of the floors, and several are catalogued under names that predate the numbering: Spiral 202, Spiral Q, Spiral 17, and the four unlettered doubles of the ninth bann. What they share is a tread-depth of eleven and a half finger-widths and a handrail on the inner face only.

Construction and the question of depth

Each Spiral is cut from the same laminated stock as the Reading Alcoves, though the two materials are cured under different ordinances and cannot be repaired with the same tools. The treads are laid without risers, so that a reader descending sees, between each step, a narrow view of the step below and, through it, whatever the step below is currently showing — a property first described by the mason Ovell Trant in his survey of the ninth bann, and never satisfactorily explained.

The descent is measured in contemplation feet, a unit equal to one ordinary foot divided by the number of circuits completed. Since the circuits are not fixed, the unit shrinks as the reader proceeds. By the thirty-first circuit of Spiral 901 the contemplation foot is conventionally recorded as four thousandths of an inch, at which point surveyors are instructed to stop measuring and file the remainder as indeterminate.

Use and the contemplation period

Ordinance 712-B governs the contemplation period required before a reader may descend a Spiral, fixing it at not fewer than three days and not more than nine, to be served in a Contemplation Cell with the reader's own petition. The Ordinance is silent on the Spiral of Deferred Action, a silence that has generated the greater part of the litigation concerning it.

The Ordinance's authors appear to have intended a short preliminary reading; the Librarians of Floor 116 have since held that the period runs afresh at each landing, producing in the case of Spiral 790 a cumulative obligation of eleven years, four months, and a disputed fortnight. The reader assigned to Spiral 790 in the winter of the third recension was released on the finding that his petition had been mislaid at the second landing and was therefore never properly before him. He is not recorded as having descended.

"No reader shall be required to contemplate a document that has not been returned to the shelf from which it was taken, save where the shelf has itself been withdrawn."

— Fifth Concordance, Annex 2, clause 9

Doctrinal dispute: the catalytic reading

The Librarians of Floor 116 maintain that the Spiral's effect on the contemplating reader — the well-documented lengthening of attention and shortening of the breath known as vertiginous patience — is purely mechanical, a consequence of tread-depth and repetition. Against this, the Atelier of Lapsed Moments holds that the effect is catalytic, requiring only the presence of a reader and a document in proximity, and that the staircase itself is incidental. The Atelier's position is supported by the observation that the same effect has been recorded in flat corridors when a reader carries a sufficiently old document, though the Order of the Dormant Atelier has disputed the sample.

Both parties accept the finding of the Silent Audits that prolonged descent induces a mild Primary Catalepsy, indistinguishable from that produced by sustained contemplation of the Master Roll of Primary Registrants. The dispute concerns only its cause, and has been referred upward eleven times without resolution.

Rules of the stair

Readers are reminded that the handrail is on the inner face only, that descent is single-file, and that no reader may carry more than one document onto a Spiral, the second being left with the attendant at the foot. Contemplation on the stair itself is permitted but does not count toward any period fixed by Ordinance, a rule introduced after the Hall of Conditional Echoes incident, in which a reader claimed nine years' credit for a single afternoon on Spiral G. The claim was rejected; the reader was not.

The Spiral 72, the shortest of the forty-one, returns the reader to the landing in a mean of four circuits and is accordingly popular with petitioners, who cite it under the Consensus Second provisions. The Spiral 889 has no recorded foot and is entered from above only.

See also

• Ordinance 712-B
• Spiral of Deferred Ascent
• Contemplation Cells
• Reading Alcoves
• Gallery of Unenacted Laws