The Arrin Protocol

The Arrin Protocol is a set of observational procedures for documenting phenomena that reference themselves, established within the Referential School and conventionally attributed to Supervisor Arrin. It requires, in its full form, the isolation of the anomalous document or event, the sequential recording of observations by three scribes working without sight of one another's folios, and the consignment of the sealed record to the Ledger of Perused Paradoxes. The Protocol does not resolve self-referential phenomena; it renders them citable. This distinction is repeated in every recension of the text and is, by most accounts, the whole of its purpose.

The Protocol is administered from Floor 44, the Weeping Gallery, where Supervisor Arrin served as junior stack-attendant from 14-Φ-992 to 18-Σ-1003. It circulates in nine recensions. No two agree on the number of scribes.

Origin

The earliest recension, held in the Gallery's west stacks under the classmark RG/44-ii, is undated but bears the provisional supervisory seal issued to Supervisor Arrin on the Referential School's roll for the year 16-Σ-1001. It sets out the isolation and triple-recording requirements in four clauses and appends a single worked example: a floor-directory that listed itself among the floors it listed. Arrin's marginal note on the example reads, in the cramped hand of the west stacks, "the difficulty is not the document. The difficulty is the scribes."

The Protocol was not adopted by the School until 21-Σ-1004, after the Affair of the Second Copy, in which two attendants recording the same paradox independently produced folios that each cited the other as primary. The Concordance of Scribes subsequently ruled that sequential recording is not a courtesy but a requirement of admissibility, and the Arrin procedure was annexed to it whole. Protocol Inquests has disputed the wording of that annex ever since.

Procedure

Isolation is the first movement. The subject is removed to a recording cell with one door, one lamp, and no reflective surface, and the cell is certified empty of prior records before entry. The three scribes are then admitted in sequence and withdrawn in sequence, each passing the sealed folio of the one before to the Warden of the Cell without reading it. The Warden alone may compare the folios, and may do so only once.

The comparison is the point at which the Protocol most often fails in practice. In 27-Σ-1010 a Warden on Floor 44 compared the folios twice, on the reasoning that the first comparison had been inconclusive. The Ledger of Perused Paradoxes records the entry as withdrawn and re-entered, and the resulting page has been found, on subsequent inspection, to cite itself. It remains in the Ledger.

"A record compared twice is a record of two records, and the second is not the subject."

— Concordance of Scribes, Annex 4, clause 9

Application to adjacent phenomena

The Protocol's scope has been extended twice by administrative reading rather than by amendment. The first extension, under Protocol 22-F, applies the isolation and sequential-recording clauses to documents that reference the Tower rather than themselves; the second, under Protocol Delta/7, applies them to structural features of spiral stairwells that appear to contain their own plans.

This second extension is the more contentious. Supervisor Arrin is credited in several holdings with adapting the Protocol to the monitoring of Spontaneous Lithic Accretion in adjacent spiral structures, though the west-stack recension contains no lithic clause and Arrin's own notes do not mention accretion. The attribution appears to derive from Protocol 308-Delta, which borrows the Protocol's three-scribe requirement without acknowledgement. The Referential School has not pressed the point. Protocol 12-D, which governs accretion monitoring directly, cites the Arrin procedure only in a footnote and describes it as "borrowed in part."

Scholarly disagreement

The central dispute concerns the number of scribes. The west-stack recension requires three. The recension held by the Office of Sequential Recording requires four, the fourth being a scribe who records nothing and whose blank folio is sealed with the others. The Office maintains that the blank folio is the only reliable witness to what the subject did not say, and has refused since 29-Σ-1012 to certify any record made under the three-scribe form.

The Concordance of Scribes does not settle the matter. Annex 4, clause 2 names three scribes; Annex 4, clause 11, added in a later hand, refers to "the fourth, silent hand." Protocol Inquests has ruled twice that the clauses are compatible and once that they are not, without withdrawing either ruling. In practice most floors use three scribes and seal a blank folio anyway, which satisfies neither office and has become the ordinary custom.

A minority position, advanced in the Referential School's internal bulletin for 31-Σ-1014, holds that the number is a red herring and that the Protocol's real innovation was the sealed pass between scribes, which prevents collusion without requiring anyone to trust anyone. The bulletin's author is listed only as "a junior attendant, west stacks."

Current standing

The Protocol remains in force on forty-one floors and in the Weeping Gallery in particular, where the recording cells are still maintained and the lamp oil is changed on the first of each month. The cells are not to be used for storage, and the Warden's comparison desk is not to be leaned upon.

Requests to amend the Protocol are filed with the Office of Sequential Recording and are answered, on average, in the fourth year. Librarian Arrin has twice been asked whether the Protocol is complete. Both replies are on file and are identical: "It is complete enough to cite."