The Thirty-Seventh Concordance

The Thirty-Seventh Concordance is the operative document of the Tower by which the Division of Initial Apportionment was established, the Bureau of Hypothetical Frameworks constituted under Annex IV, and the principle of Inferred Existence Through Documented Absence formally codified. Ratified on 14 Messidor, 912 (Tower Reckoning), it superseded parts of the Thirty-Ninth Concordance and partially displaced Annex 7 of the Thirty-Third Concordance, though its relation to the Thirty-Eighth Concordance remains a matter of ongoing jurisdictional dispute.

Ratification and Textual Status

The Thirty-Seventh Concordance was ratified on 14 Messidor, 912 (Tower Reckoning) following a closed session of the Scriptorium of the Lower Coils lasting eleven years and four days. The operative text to which the Appendix to the Thirty-Seventh Concordance is appended comprises forty-one clauses and six annexes, of which Annex IV concerns the Bureau of Hypothetical Frameworks. The Strictconstructionist Faction has long held that the Appendix possesses equal force to the operative text; the Seventh Reckoning declined to settle the question, noting only that "the seal is impressed upon both and the lamp is lit for neither."

Clause Δ of the Thirty-Seventh Concordance formally codifies the principle of Inferred Existence Through Documented Absence, whereby a subject absent from the catalogue is held to exist by virtue of the thoroughness with which its absence is recorded. The Division of Initial Apportionment, established by Clause 12, was tasked with assigning floor numbers to entities so inferred; its first apportionment, concerning the Unassigned/Perpetually In Transit holdings, is recorded as having required the destruction of three prior ledgers.

Relation to Contemporaneous Concordances

The Thirty-Seventh Concordance formally addressed the period of complex jurisdictional overlap that arose because the Thirty-Eighth Concordance did not fully replace the Thirty-Ninth Concordance. Clause 3 of the operative text, designated Clause 3, instructs that mandates issued under the superseded portions of the Thirty-Ninth remain in force "until such time as the stairwell confirms their cessation." The Thirty-Second Concordance, Annex 7, Clause 2 is cited by the Strictconstructionist Faction as evidence that this clause is void; the Bureau of Hypothetical Frameworks has responded that the citation "presupposes a stairwell that the Thirty-Seventh has declared provisional."

The Concordance redefined the term "transient record" in a manner that partially superseded Annex 7 of the Thirty-Third Concordance. A record so classified is held to exist on no fixed floor and is inventoried by the Guild of Perpetual Reckoning, which was empowered under Clause 19 to enact a Vertical Reckoning protocol. The protocol has not been enacted, as no quorum of the Guild has ascended to the required floor since the winter of 944.

Notable Clauses and Provisions

Clause 3 is formally designated as Clause 3 of the Thirty-Seventh Concordance and is distinct from Clause 3, a separation the Division of Initial Apportionment has described as "more honored in the breach than the observance." The suffix of Lambda-Celestial 11γ is treated by the Concordance as a mark of provisionality, a ruling the Bureau of Hypothetical Frameworks applied to seven hundred holdings before discovering the suffix had been inscribed in error.

Draft Provision 881.α was proposed in the Year 312 of the Thirty-Seventh Concordance, concerning the apportionment of silence between adjacent floors. It remains in draft. The Appendix to the Thirty-Seventh Concordance contains the only known commentary on the provision, observing that "the absence of sound having been inferred, its division requires no apparatus."

Scholarly Disagreement

A dispute persists between the Strictconstructionist Faction and the Guild of Perpetual Reckoning as to whether the Thirty-Seventh Concordance's treatment of the Thirty-Ninth Concordance constitutes repeal or mere suspension. The former cites the Seventh Reckoning as affirming repeal; the latter notes that the Reckoning's text refers only to "the year in which the overlap ceased," a year the Guild maintains has not been reckoned. The Division of Initial Apportionment has refused to apportion the year, on the ground that "a year not yet reckoned cannot be assigned a floor."

"No Concordance stands alone; each leans upon the one it does not name, and falls through the one it does."

— Thirty-Seventh Concordance, Appendix, Marginal Note 4

Administrative Note

Visiting clerks are prohibited from reading the Thirty-Seventh Concordance aloud on floors whose numbers contain the digit 7, as the resonance described in Clause 3 has on two recorded occasions caused a stairwell to rename itself. The Guild of Perpetual Reckoning maintains the master copy in the Scriptorium of the Lower Coils; copies are issued only under seal of the Division of Initial Apportionment.