The Contingent Text

The Contingent Text is a class of archival object in the Contingent Stacks whose contents alter according to the conditions under which it is read, filed, or cited, while its physical extent, pagination, and call number remain fixed. It is distinguished from the Lonely Text by the presence of a reader: the Lonely Text is presumed to exist unobserved, whereas the Contingent Text does not fully exist until consultation, and reverts when the reading room is closed. The category was first given standing in the Tenth Concordance and is generally treated as an application of the Principle of Contingent Filing.

Definition and classification

Under Annex IV: On Ephemeral and Contingent Spaces, a holding qualifies as a Contingent Text if it satisfies three conditions: that its text be stable in the absence of readers, that it be demonstrably unstable in their presence, and that the instability be documented rather than merely reported. The third condition is the burden of proof and the cause of most litigation in the Stacks. A reader who claims that a page changed must file a Citation of Contingent Action before leaving the floor; the citation is read against the stack register, and if the register shows no fluctuation the reader is recorded as having misremembered, a finding entered in the margin and not appealable.

The standard example is the Ledger of Unclaimed Bequests, held at Contingent Stacks aperture delta-9. Consulted by a single reader it lists four hundred and six entries. Consulted by two, it lists four hundred and nine, and the three additional entries name the second reader's heirs. The Bureau of Metrical Integrity has measured the volume on both occasions and reports no change in thickness.

Behaviour in the reading room

Contingent Texts respond to the number of persons present, the hour, the direction of approach along the shelf, and — in a small number of recorded cases — the reader's stated purpose. The Clerk of Contingent Volumes maintains that at least one holding, the Kalendar of Reversed Winters, revises its weather tables if the reader announces an intention to copy them, and remains unchanged if the reader merely sits. The Clerk has requested that readers of the Kalendar sit for a quarter of an hour before speaking. This is a courtesy and not enforced.

"A text consulted twice by the same reader on the same day is two texts. A text consulted twice by the same reader in the same hour is a dispute."

— Tenth Concordance, Annex 2, clause 6

The practical consequence is that reading-room attendants issue consultation slips bearing the hour as well as the date, and that no Contingent Text may be consulted by two readers holding the same surname without a supervising officer present. The rule dates from the winter of the year recorded as 1723 in the Stacks' own reckoning, when the Grand Atrium Clerk-Superior granted the Stacks contingent sovereignty over their housed items; the ink on the ruling was still wet when two brothers named Vell consulted a parish register at aperture beta-3 and produced between them a third brother who had no entry in any other record and no grave. The Vell finding is cited in almost every subsequent case, usually for the wrong proposition.

The doctrine of the second reading

Scholarly opinion divides on whether the Contingent Text changes, or whether the reader changes it. The Proceduralist School, following On the Sequence of Means, holds that the text is contingent only in its relation to the reader and that its underlying content is singular and fixed — the seventh axiom being that a thing is what it is under the means by which it is approached. Against this, the cartographic tradition descended from the Treatise on Conditional Geographies treats the text as a territory whose existence is conditional, and the reader as a condition of the terrain rather than an observer of it.

The Twenty-Second Concordance attempted a settlement by requiring every Contingent Text to carry a Writ of Contingent Supersession recording its supersessions; the Writ, as is well known, establishes holdings and mandates their structure but is silent on who keeps them, and the Contingent Texts have never been adequately kept. The Eleventh Concordance, Annex C goes further and denies that the question is meaningful, on the ground that a text which cannot be read twice cannot be said to have changed between readings. The Bureau of Metrical Integrity has declined to comment on the Annex, noting only that it has been measured and is of standard length.

Notable holdings

The following Contingent Texts are listed in the current stack register. The inventory is not exhaustive and, by the nature of the class, cannot be.

• Ledger of Unclaimed Bequests — aperture delta-9; four hundred and six entries under single consultation.
• Kalendar of Reversed Winters — aperture delta-11; weather tables stable when uncopied.
• The Vell Register — aperture beta-3; sealed since 1724, consulted only under Writ.
• Ordinary Grammar of the Lower Floors — floor unnumbered; the grammar of its own preface changes with each printing, of which there has been one.
• Vector Gamma — classified separately; see the holding's own entry.

Handling and prohibition

Contingent Texts are consulted at the table nearest the aperture, never in the closed carrels, and are returned to the shelf by the attendant rather than the reader. Readers are asked not to read aloud. The prohibition on reading a Contingent Text to a child is absolute and is posted at every aperture in the Stacks; the Clerk of Contingent Volumes has recorded nine instances of the prohibition being disregarded, of which seven were resolved and two were filed as new holdings.

The Eloise Contingent, developed for the controlled dissolution of paradox-generating holdings under Paradox Warden oversight, is available where a Contingent Text has begun to supersede itself — the recognized sign being a text that cites its own citation. The procedure is seldom invoked, and the Eloise Equation has never been applied twice to the same volume, which the Wardens regard as a point of professional pride and the Stacks regard as a superstition.