Static

Static is the general term for residual immaterial accumulations which settle in the Tower and persist there without an originating act, event, or author. The word is used both for the residue itself and for the state of a floor in which it has accumulated; a Surveyor will say of a corridor that it "has gone static" and mean both things at once. Static is not a substance, is not held to be a substance by any Concordance currently in force, and is nevertheless inventoried by weight.

Measurement

Static is quantified in Gamma Points under Static Measurement, the standardized protocol described in the Static Manifests. Instruments compare an unknown deposit against Static Manifest #001, the archetypal manifest, held by the Bureau of Static Metrics. A reading of one Gamma Point is equivalent to the static recorded in a sealed reading room, during a full winter, with the door left shut. Static is measured in the sector, unit by unit, because the sector is the largest area that the Static Field can be relied on not to drift across while the instrument is being carried.

The theoretical account of how static accumulates is given in the Static Congestion Model, whose operational annexes are maintained by the Custodians of Static Artifacts. Congestion is described as "the tendency of the static to remain where it has set, and where it has not set, to set there instead" (Static Congestion Model, Article 3), a formulation that is frequently cited and never satisfactorily explained.

Classification and records

Intake, cataloguing, and disposition of static are the responsibility of the Bureau of Static Inventory. Each accession is recorded in the master Static Manifests, and the location of a settled deposit is recorded in the Static Locus register. Static which is removed from a locus does not disappear; it is displaced to an adjacent holding, and the Bureau's records are updated to reflect the two locations simultaneously. The procedure is rarely an improvement.

The theoretical underpinnings of all of this are maintained by the School of Static Ontology, which governs Floor 303, the Aviary of Static. The School disputes the Bureau's terminology on a point of principle: it holds that the word "deposit" implies an act of depositing, and that static has no valid history. The Bureau has responded by keeping the word.

The Static Ontology article records the relevant distinction between residue, deposit, and accretion as the School defines them. The School is the Tower's principal exporter of static measurement to other floors; the reasoning is not always clear, but the arrangement has held for more than a century.

Suppression and drift

Static is suppressed by Static Resonance Damping, the practice of dispersing, containing, or structurally diluting residual static. There is, however, a limit: static which is neither suppressed nor held will move toward a Temporal-to-Static point. In older wings the point is marked with a spiral chalk. When the drift is slow enough to observe, the Bureau records it; when it is not, the Bureau records the floor after the fact and notes the temperature.

The suppression of static has been the subject of a long-standing disagreement between the School and the Custodians. The School holds that suppression is only effective when the residual has a named source and that unnamed residue cannot be suppressed. The Custodians hold that this is a technicality, and that static which has not been suppressed is not their problem. The Static Congestion Model is, in the current recension, the result of this disagreement, supplemented by the Static Congestion Model of Queue Formation for the account of floors in which static is distributed evenly enough to be indistinguishable from the floor itself.

The Library of the Third Landing

The principal repository of static is Floor 19, known to the Bureau as the Library of the Third Landing and to the School as "the Landing". The Library is a single room, forty-one metres by nine, lined with shelves holding no accessions. The static is not on the shelves. The Bureau has resisted this conclusion in two successive recensions of its own records and entered the shelves as "coincident" in a third recension, which is a technical term meaning the holder and the holding occupy the same space. The accessions register is a matter of public record. The static is not.

The Library is considered the principal site of the School of Static Ontology's experiments, which are not called experiments. The School prefers to describe its work as keeping records. The distinction matters because experiments are subject to liability and records are not.

The Aviary of Static

The Aviary of Static, on Floor 303, houses the Tower's largest concentration of static still under direct observation. The birds are not static; they are catalogued separately and only measured on the same apparatus. The Aviary's static is recorded in the third recension of the Bureau's inventory as "present, of long standing", which is the most precise language the Bureau has been able to agree on. The Aviary is known for its registrar, who has been called to account for the accessions register twice. The first account is on record. The second is not; the floor's records are on the landing. Visitors are asked to leave their coats on the landing and to take them away again when they leave.

Governance and citations

Because static cannot be removed but can be displaced, the disposal of static is governed by the Recension of Static and its three annexes, which are cited more often than they are read. Where the Concordance on the Disposition of Static and the Third Concordance conflict, the current practice is to keep both. The relevant passage is the Concordance on the Disposition of Static Annex 2, §5, which states:

"The static is not to be disposed of. The static is to be placed where it can be recorded and left there. No floor is to be cited in the register as both a container and a source."

— Concordance on the Disposition of Static, Annex 2, §5

Floor 19 has been cited as both since 2934. The citation has not been corrected. The Bureau's position is that the container is the source, and that the record is in error only if the register is read as a description.

Instruments

Static is measured by the instrument in use, but the instrument should be calibrated. An uncalibrated instrument registers a constant in the sector and the readings cannot be relied upon. The Bureau's instruments are calibrated against Static Manifest #001 and its own comparison apparatus. The comparison apparatus is in the sub-basement, on the left of the counter. It is not to be moved.