The Omega Annex

The Omega Annex is the collective designation for the four bound volumes of supplementary material physically affixed to the rear board of each registered copy of the Annex Omega Document. It is not itself a document, and the distinction is litigated more often than any other in the annexes. Where the Annex Omega Document states a rule, the Omega Annex records what happened when it was applied; where the two disagree, the Omega Annex is authoritative on matters of fact and silent, by its own terms, on matters of doctrine.

The volumes are held in the reading room of Annex Ω (Omega), Section 7, and are chained. Chains are inspected on the first working day of each quarter. Three of the four chains date from the original affixing in 41 Y.R.; the fourth was replaced in 96 Y.R. after an incident involving a visiting auditor and a window, details of which are sealed under Concordance 501-Omega.

Composition

The Omega Annex comprises four parts, conventionally cited by the sigla of their bindings:

• Omega I — the Register of Applications, 41–88 Y.R.
• Omega II — the Register of Applications, 88 Y.R. to present, currently at folio 6,412.
• Omega III — the Case Notes of the Initial Scrutiny, governed by Concordance 9, Annex Omega.
• Omega IV — the Disputed Slips: loose leaves, filed but never bound, concerning applications whose outcome is not agreed.

Omega IV is the smallest and the most consulted. It is also the only part that acquires new material without a Librarian's countersignature, a fact first noted in writing by Clerk Halloran Vesk in his marginalia of 63 Y.R. and not acted upon since.

The doctrine of the affixed text

The Omega Annex was created to resolve a persistent difficulty: the Annex Omega Document, being a statement of doctrine, could not describe its own application without becoming a record, and a record, once appended to a doctrine, alters it. The office of the Second Recension proposed in 39 Y.R. that application be kept in a separate volume permanently attached to the document but not part of it — "affixed as a hinge is affixed," the proposal reads, "and as little the door."

"The Annex shall not speak. It shall only have spoken."

— Fourteenth Concordance, Annex Omega, Clause Omega-7

This has never been observed. Clerks record outcomes in the language of rules, and the boundary has been patrolled ever since by the Office of Affixed Texts, a body of four whose membership is drawn by lot from the Order of the Chained Volumes.

The Vuori Dispute

In the winter of 88 Y.R., an application concerning the standardisation of "disputed essences" was entered in Omega I under an erroneous floor number and simultaneously in Omega II under the correct one. The resulting double entry was not detected for eleven years. By then the same application had been ruled upon twice, with opposite outcomes, and both rulings had been relied upon downstream: Annex Omega had sealed the first outcome with an Omega Seal, and the Aperture Omega survey of 94 Y.R. had proceeded on the second.

The dispute was referred to the Scrutiny Tribunal and returned unresolved. The Tribunal's minute of 99 Y.R. — widely quoted in the annexes and, by the Tribunal's own later admission, misattributed — holds that "a duplicate entry is not an error but a second opinion, if the second opinion is filed first." Adherents of this view, the Vuorists, hold that Omega I and Omega II are two registers of one document and may legitimately diverge. Opponents, chiefly the Office of Affixed Texts, maintain that two outcomes for one application constitute an amendment of the Omega Annex itself, which under Protocol 17-B Trigger cannot be made without the concurrence of the Fourteenth Concordance, Annex Omega. Neither side has been able to secure that concurrence. The application remains open.

Physique and handling

The volumes are bound in board covered with a dark cloth whose composition the Chemistry Floor has declined to state twice. They measure 43 cm by 29 cm by 11 cm, except Omega IV, which has no cover. The whole annex weighs 14.2 kg. Reading requires the Reading Desk 12-Omega and a stool; the desk is fixed, and the stool is not, and one of the two has been stolen every year since 71 Y.R.

Visitors must surrender all writing implements at the door. The rule was introduced after the Vuori episode and has never been relaxed. A further standing instruction, posted at the threshold in the hand of the Desk Warden, reads in full: "No leaning."

Relationship to the other Omega instruments

The Omega Annex is frequently confused with Supplemental Protocol Omega and with Appendix Omega; the first is a distinct instrument establishing the procedural form of Supplementals, and the second is not held at Annex Ω at all. It is unrelated to the Omega Annex formerly kept at Annex Omega-7, which shares the name and nothing else, and no citation may be transferred between them. Its relation to the Annex Omega proper is that of record to rule. Entries in the Omega Annex concerning the Stairwell describe it as exhibiting "hybrid-variance" characteristics, following the Annex Omega Document, which is the only place the phrase is defined.

A supplement to the Omega Annex is said to be in preparation, governing the treatment of entries made by clerks who have since been reassigned. It has been in preparation since 102 Y.R. The stool, meanwhile, is chained.