The Palimpsest of Omitted Causes

The Palimpsest of Omitted Causes is a laminated manuscript held on Floor -33 ('The Palimpsest') and, by convention of long standing, the definitive record of those reasons for filing a grievance which the Tower has officially recognized as invalid. It is not a register of grievances. It is a register of the grounds on which a grievance may not be brought, together with a scarified account of the grounds that were formerly accepted and have since been struck. The distinction is maintained with some heat by the Guild of Palimpsest Readers, whose Prime Reading Chamber houses the reference exemplar and whose members will correct a visitor who refers to the document as a list of complaints.

The Palimpsest was laminated in the 14th Spiral of Year 312 under order of Scriptorium Prime, an act recorded in the seal of the Office of Temporal Reconciliation impressed upon the laminate at its lower margin. The lamination, in Translumine, was undertaken because the underlying leaves had begun to reject successive recensions — later entries were, in the words of the Scriptorium's own return, "effacing their predecessors at a rate exceeding the copyists' ability to restore them" (Scriptorium Prime, Return 312/14-C). The Translumine arrested the loss and, as a consequence, froze the visible text at a state no one has since been able to describe as final.

Contents and method of entry

Entries are made by the stamping of an Originating Rationale, which is then bound into the manuscript as a laminated folio. A rationale struck from the record is not removed; it is stamped again, in the negative, and the two impressions are read together. The resulting page is legible only to those trained in the sequence — a reader unfamiliar with the practice will see a single sentence contradicted by a second sentence directly beneath it, which is precisely what is there.

The document additionally maintains a cross-index of the Memorabilia of Lost Causes, an arrangement that has never functioned as intended. The cross-index updates lag by approximately three fiscal cycles, with the result that a cause entered in the Memorabilia in the current cycle appears in the Palimpsest's index as absent, and a cause removed from the Memorabilia appears in the index as present. The Guild has twice petitioned to have the lag corrected and twice withdrawn the petition on learning what the correction would cost.

The Omitting and the Schism

The Palimpsest's authority derives from Third Concordance, Clause 14, which does not name the document but implies it — a drafting habit the Compendiumists defend and the Adherents of the Palimpsest do not. During the Schism of the Silent Quill, Interpretivist readers attempted to use the Palimpsest to challenge the Edict of Perpetual Shelf, arguing that a rationale omitted from the manuscript had never legally existed and that the Edict therefore rested on nothing. The argument was heard on Floor -33 over four spirals and rejected on a procedural point: the Interpretivists had cited the reference exemplar, which is not the record, rather than the record, which was at the time in the hands of the bindery.

"The Palimpsest archives reasons for acknowledgment, not things themselves. A grievance struck from it has not ceased to have happened. It has ceased to be hearable."

— Senior Librarian Aris Thorne, marginal notation, Floor -33 reading copy

The distinction has since become the standard settlement of disputes about the document, which is to say it is cited in nearly every such dispute and resolves roughly half of them.

Dispute as to scope

Two readings of the Palimpsest's jurisdiction remain current. The narrow reading, advanced by the Proceduralists of Floor 1212, holds that the document governs only the form of the Originating Rationale and has nothing to say about the substance of a cause. The broad reading, maintained by the Index of Regrettable Omissions and by most of the Vault of Lost Causes, holds that the Palimpsest governs any cause whose rationale has been expunged from the legal record, whether or not a stamp survives. The broad reading has the support of the laminate, which was applied indiscriminately across the full gather and therefore binds the strikings and the entries alike into one instrument. The narrow reading has the support of the fact that the broad reading makes the Palimpsest coextensive with the Temporal Palimpsest, which nobody wishes.

Concordance Addendum 707.β cites the Palimpsest in respect of the interaction of Phantom Pollen and Forgotten Resin without resolving the question, and is generally taken as evidence that the drafters themselves had not decided.

Access and conservation

The manuscript is consulted under supervision in the Prime Reading Chamber. Translumine darkens under handling, and readers are required to work by reflected light only. Ink of any kind is prohibited in the Chamber, including the dry sticks issued to visitors on Floor 87. Requests for the record itself, as distinct from the reference exemplar, are forwarded to the Scriptorium of Lost Causes and answered in the order received, currently a delay of nine spirals. The Palimpsest Protocol governs appeals arising from refusals and is itself under appeal.