The Guild of Theoretical Mechanics Proposals

The Guild of Theoretical Mechanics Proposals is a bound submission of forty-seven numbered items lodged with the Gallery of Unenacted Laws by the Guild of Theoretical Mechanics on 12 Ventosus 712.Δ.3. It is the Guild's single largest transfer of unfinished business to the Gallery, and the document upon which the College of Ontological Mechanics and the Office of Implausible Mechanics both ultimately rest. The original is held in the Gallery's east reading room, shelf 712/Δ, under a lead-weighted cover; the collation most often consulted is the annotated recension maintained by P. Vel, Researcher-Archivist of the GTM, which reproduces all forty-seven items with marginal notes and, in the case of Item 31, rather more marginal note than item.

Origin and the Calcification

The Proposals were not written as a single document. They accumulated over an unstated period in the western wing of the Guild, each item being a proposal for a mechanism that could be described completely but not built, or could be built but not described completely. The distinction was the subject of the GTM White Paper on Phenomenological Inertia and remains unsettled.

Before the collection could be forwarded in full, the calcification of the Guild's western wing froze forty-seven pending proposals — among them, by coincidence of numbering, the very items under review. The Guild has never explained how the same forty-seven items were both frozen in the wing and lodged with the Gallery on the same date. The Guild of Theoretical Mechanicsgreat Calcification Event records the loss of the wing without remarking on it. Vel's annotation at Item 1 reads only: "Counted twice. Confirmed twice. Proceed."

Contents

The items concern themselves chiefly with theoretical aerodynamic entities, and the reader who expects a varied programme will be disappointed by Item 6 through Item 19, which describe, in slightly different terms, a wing that produces lift in a medium that does not exist. The principal items of interest are these:

• Item 22 — establishes the Office of Implausible Mechanics under Clause 22, the numbering being agreed in advance by the drafting committee and regarded ever after as evidence of foresight.
• Item 27 — sets out the founding mandate of the College of Ontological Mechanics, and is the only item in the collection to have been enacted without amendment.
• Item 31 — an extended treatment of Theoretical Spool Dynamics running to nine leaves. Vel's annotations on this item occupy fourteen.
• Item 44 — a proposed annex to GTM Ordinance Δ-117, withdrawn before lodging and retained in the bound copy with a single line drawn through it.

Review by the Gallery

The Gallery initiated a standard review upon receipt, which is to say that the Proposals were sealed, numbered, and shelved, and that a reviewer was appointed. The reviewer's name is not recorded. Memorandum Delta3 Gtm to Ge and its reply, Memorandum Delta12 Ge to Gtm, are the only surviving correspondence of the review period, and neither mentions the Proposals.

The submission has never been rejected, which under Gallery practice means it remains live. GTM/GE-Δ is the joint designation under which any future enactment would be recorded. Nothing has been recorded under it.

Dispute: the status of Item 27

Two Concordances govern the question of whether an item lodged with the Gallery may be treated as operative before enactment. Third Concordance, Annex 4 holds that lodging suspends an item's force entirely and that the College of Ontological Mechanics therefore cannot have existed before the Gallery acted; Ninth Concordance, Annex 1 holds that lodging merely defers an item's force to a later date, and that the College existed from the moment of drafting, retrospectively, whether or not the Gallery ever acts.

"An item lodged is an item asleep. It does not work in its sleep, and it does not wake to find that it has been working."

— Third Concordance, Annex 4

The College has declined to state which reading it prefers, observing in its standing note on the question that it has been in continuous session since 712.Δ.3 and does not propose to interrupt itself to resolve the matter. The Theoretical Jurisprudence Guild, whose liaison office adjoins the Guild, has been asked to arbitrate three times and has twice returned the papers unopened.

A third position, advanced by the Caliper Masters and supported by no Concordance, is that the Proposals have no force at all because the calcification destroyed the wing in which they were drafted, and that a proposal drafted in a room that no longer exists is a proposal about a room that no longer exists. The Guild has not answered this, although Vel's annotation at Item 47 is unusually short.

Access and condition

The bound copy may be consulted in the Gallery's east reading room on written application countersigned by a Librarian. The pages of Item 31 are to be turned with the felt knife provided. Nothing is to be measured at the desk. The lead-weighted cover is original and should not be lifted.