Unclaimed Causality

Unclaimed Causality is the formal designation, under Concordance LXXXVIII, Annex 2, for any causal relation whose originating event has been lost, retired, or otherwise separated from its effect before the effect was entered in a register. It is not the absence of a cause but the presence of an effect with no custodian, and the Tower files such matters at Floor 306, formally the Interim Registry of Unclaimed Causalities, where they are held in linear-plan shelving pending the discovery of an originating event or the closure of the originating floor's books.

The distinction between Unclaimed Causality and Provisional Causality is the subject of a standing dispute. Provisional entries presume a cause will shortly be identified; unclaimed entries presume nothing and assert only that the cause, at the time of filing, belongs to no office. The Department of Material Causality has declined on seven occasions to rule which category takes precedence when a cause is recovered after filing, and the question remains open in the Cabinet of Unclaimed Conclusions, drawer 12, under the label Matter of the Recovered Origin.

Origins and administration

The category was created by administrative accident. In the winter of the year recorded as 9-LXII, a clerk of the Registry of Unclaimed Adjectives, one Marn Elbric, was transferring a batch of orphaned descriptors between floors when the carrying case was overturned on a stair between Floor 306 and the floor below. The adjectives scattered, and the effects they had been modifying continued to occur without them. Rather than return the effects to their original entries, Elbric filed them as a class of their own, on the reasoning — later upheld by the Concordance — that "an effect which has occurred is no longer the property of its description" (Elbric, memorandum to the Interim Registry, 9-LXII, winter).

Administration was assigned to Floor 306, which already held provisional entries and was judged to have shelf space. The floor's keepers accept unclaimed items in sealed cases, each accompanied by Form 412-β, which records the effect, the date of its occurrence, and a declaration that no cause has been identified by the depositing office. Cases are shelved by date of effect rather than date of filing, a rule adopted in 11-LXII after a case filed in error spent four years between two incorrectly ordered shelves and was eventually found to describe an event that had not yet taken place.

Relation to reversed and ambient causality

Unclaimed Causality is frequently confused with Reverse Temporal Causality, the phenomenon monitored by the Ambient Causality Observatories in Spiral 88. The two are distinguished by direction: reversed causality has a cause, but the cause follows its effect; unclaimed causality has an effect and no identifiable cause in either direction. The Ambient Causality Observatory of Spiral 88 maintains a standing instruction that observers encountering an effect with no traceable cause in either temporal direction are to record it as unclaimed and forward the record to Floor 306 by the next downward lift, rather than attempting to classify it themselves.

The Sequential Causality Mapper is not used on unclaimed cases. Its calibration depends on the existence of a first term, and the Mapper's caretakers have recorded that feeding it an unclaimed effect produces a reading of zero that cannot be distinguished from a mechanical fault. The Department of Unclaimed Intervals has since requested that such readings be labelled as faults to avoid further confusion in the Causality Inquiry files.

The Recovered Origin Question

The chief difficulty of the class is what to do when a lost cause is later found. Concordance LXXXVIII, Annex 2, clause 6 provides that a recovered origin "shall be restored to its effect without penalty to either party." Concordance XCI, Annex 1, clause 3 provides, equally plainly, that a cause which has once been declared unclaimed "remains unclaimed in perpetuity, and any origin subsequently produced is to be treated as a new and separate matter." The Concordances have not been reconciled. Floor 306 currently observes the earlier text and restores recovered origins, on the ground that Annex 2 was read aloud at the floor's foundation and is therefore better attested.

"We do not decide which Concordance is correct. We decide which one was read at the door."

— Keeper Hesper, note appended to the Floor 306 intake ledger, 14-LXIII

Keeper Hesper was subsequently elevated to the Bureau of Unclaimed Categories, where the dispute continues in correspondence. The Bureau has not issued a ruling, but has asked both offices to keep their arguments short.

Inventory of current holdings

Floor 306's public inventory of unclaimed cases lists, among others:

• Case 306-U-0411: an effect of unknown origin, shelved since 10-LXII, described only as "the opening of a door."
• Case 306-U-0588: a persistent draught with no identified source, filed jointly with the Vault of Unclaimed Mechanisms.
• Case 306-U-0702: a sound heard once in the Scriptorium of Unclaimed Hours, attested by two scribes and no cause.
• Case 306-U-0819: an unexplained loss of weight in a sealed archive box, restored to its cause in 13-LXII and re-filed as provisional.

Cases are not to be opened in the reading room. Visitors may request a case by number and will be told whether it is available.

Criticism and the Insufficient Causality objection

Critics of the category, chiefly within the Department of Material Causality, argue that Unclaimed Causality is a filing convenience dressed as a phenomenon, and that under the Principle of Insufficient Causality an effect without a cause is simply an object due for retirement. The Department's Material Causality Assessments have twice recommended the wholesale closure of Floor 306's unclaimed shelves, most recently in 14-LXII, on the ground that unclaimed items cannot be evaluated and therefore cannot be maintained.

The floor's keepers reply that the Department mistakes custody for causation, and that an effect does not cease to occur because its origin has not been catalogued. No closure has been carried out. The most recent amendment to the relevant Edicts, the Beta recension held in the Reverse Causality Stacks, preserves the class without comment, which both sides have claimed as a victory.