Type-C (Existential)

Type-C (Existential) is the classification applied to a subject whose existence is acknowledged but whose kind has not been settled — a holding that is certainly there, and certainly not yet anything in particular. It is the broadest of the existential designations and the least useful operationally, since a Type-C holding may be cited in proceedings, inspected, licensed, and even inherited without any record agreeing as to what, precisely, was cited. The Provisional Classification Office maintains that no Type-C holding may remain undetermined beyond eleven floors of correspondence; in practice, the Office has never stated what happens at the twelfth.

Origin and the Claudius amendment

The designation entered the schedule during the recensions of Y203 SCE, when the Office of Ontic Verification found itself unable to substantiate a quantity of holdings that were plainly present on Floors 1188 through 1191 but resisted every available category. The clerk who drafted the interim entry, Ondra Vess, is said to have written in the margin "it is here; it is not a thing," a phrase later struck from the desk copy but preserved in the Register of Existential Precedents.

The Claudius Scale was amended shortly thereafter to provide a numerical value for existential drift in such cases. Silas Claudius himself objected, noting that a scale measuring movement presupposes a position from which something has moved, and a Type-C holding has no recorded starting position. His objection was appended to the Scale as Amendment 3 and, by the ordinary operation of Tower practice, has been cited ever since in support of the Scale.

Relationship to the License

Where a Provisional Existential License confers lawful, time-limited existence on an unsettled subject, Type-C classification concerns itself only with the fact of presence. The two instruments are frequently confused and are defended by different offices. The Provisional Classification Office holds that a Type-C holding need not be licensed because its existence is not in question; the Office of Ontic Verification holds that a Type-C holding cannot be verified because its existence is precisely what remains in question. The dispute has produced no ruling, only a standing arrangement in which both offices inspect the same holdings and neither acknowledges the other's seal.

Holdings of this type are commonly detected by means of the Type-2 Laminar Flow Gauge, though the gauge was calibrated for Type 1 and reports Type-C presence as a faint irregularity indistinguishable, at low sensitivity, from draught. Inspectors are instructed to disregard draught. Inspectors are not instructed as to how to distinguish it.

Documented behaviours

A Type-C holding may exhibit the consistent failure of something expected to appear — the behaviour catalogued under Type 1 and Type-3, depending on which parameters were set. It may drift, and untended apertures of the Type-7 class tend toward Type B Pause in its vicinity, though no causal account has been established and the correlation may be an artefact of inspection schedules.

Referential instability is common. Where a Type-C holding is cited, the citation itself may acquire its own indeterminacy, a condition addressed under Type Γ: Referential Anomaly and, where contamination is suspected, under Paradox Contamination Type Vii C Practice. The evidentiary handling of such material is governed by Type 4 and, where isolation is required, by a Type Alpha Persistent Insertion held under Type A conditions.

The Floor 1191 quarrel

In the winter of Y317 SCE, inspectors recorded a Type-C holding on Floor 1191 that answered to two separate inventories maintained by two separate offices. Each office asserted prior claim; each produced a Concordance in support. The Fourth Concordance, Annex 9, states that "a holding shall be accounted to the office that first recorded its presence," while the Seventh Concordance, Annex 2, states that "a holding shall be accounted to the office that last verified its kind." Since a Type-C holding has no verified kind, the Seventh Concordance assigns it to no office at all, while the Fourth assigns it to two.

The quarrel was resolved administratively by placing the holding in Migratory Transit for the remainder of the season, a status intended for holdings in motion between floors and never intended as a means of settling jurisdiction. It has since been used for that purpose on nine occasions. The inspector who proposed the arrangement, Halda Renn, was commended in writing by both offices and reprimanded by both offices, in that order, on the same day.

"The holding was agreed by all parties to be present. No party would agree to what was present. It was therefore entered twice and moved once, which is more than most holdings receive."

— Halda Renn, marginal note to the Floor 1191 return

Access and handling

Type-C holdings may be consulted in the reading rooms without a licence, provided the reader signs the presence register on entry and again on exit, and provided the reader does not ask the attendants what is on the table. The second condition is posted at the door of every affected reading room and is not explained.

Holdings that have remained Type-C for more than four recensions are transferred to the standing collection and are thereafter cited by floor and shelf only, the descriptive field being left blank in perpetuity. There are currently some four hundred such blanks in the standing collection. They are dusted on the same schedule as everything else.