Unofficial Histories Annex

Unofficial Histories Annex is the standing supplementary holding administered by the Bureau of Unverifiable Histories for the receipt, temporary shelving, and eventual disposition of narratives that fail to meet the indexing thresholds of the Incomplete Histories yet are not acknowledged by any operative Concordance as events of record. The Annex is physically situated on Floor 412 between the Breathing Corridor and the The Sighing Atrium, and is reached by the secondary spiral marked Aperture δ.

Establishment and Jurisdiction

The Unofficial Histories Annex was first constituted under Annex Epsilon, promulgated on 14 Thermidor, 9,742 (Tower Civil Reckoning), which assigned to it "all accounts rendered in good faith whose premises resist verification under the Annex of Unverifiable Pedigrees." Primary jurisdiction over such accounts is held by the Bureau of Unverifiable Histories, whose Lobby of Resigned Acceptance serves as the intake point through which materials are transferred to the Annex after a wait not exceeding eleven years. The Department of Provenance maintains a parallel register, though the Negative Concordance disputes the Department's authority to do so (Clause 9, Scholium β).

A ruling of the High Curators Spire in the winter of 9,801 confirmed that the Annex does not catalogue subjects but rather the absence of their catalogue, a distinction later criticised by the Ontologicalists as "a shelf for the shadow of a shelf" (Marginalia, Folio 12, verso). The Chamber of Parallel Histories on Floor 899 has declined, by Ordinance 702.4, to extend its Temporal Ledger to Annex holdings.

Holdings and Classification

Materials in the Unofficial Histories Annex are segregated into three tiers by the Guild of Personal Historiographers, who alone are permitted to annotate them. A typical transfer comprises a sealed carton, a proprietor's mark, and a single sheet of Unofficial Colors pigment used to denote the claimant's chosen hue of uncertainty. Provisional Hues under evaluation by the Chromaticians are expressly forbidden from appearing on Annex cartons, a restriction the Lamplighters' Guild enforces by extinguishing any lamp whose flame reveals a Provisional Hue near Tier II.

The following inventory, taken on 3 Frost, 9,838, reflects a representative week of intake:

• One account of a staircase that ascended before it was built (Tier I).
• Seventeen depositions regarding the untimed resignation of a clerk no longer named (Tier II).
• A bound volume entitled Queries Never Put, returned by the Biographical Register of Minor Functionaries as unassignable (Tier III).

Scholarly Dispute on the Ninth Recension

A continuing disagreement concerns whether the Pocket Concordance of Permissive Queries supersedes the Annex's intake rubric. The Elaran Protocol holds that it does not, citing the Third Concordance Annex 4, which states that "no permissive query shall be construed as authorising the cataloguing of its negative." The Ontologicalists, by contrast, argue in a circulating memorandum that the Ninth Recension of the Annex Epsilon implicitly devolves such authority to the Chamber of Parallel Histories. The Bureau of Unverifiable Histories has issued no settlement, on the grounds that any ruling would itself constitute a Question Dependent on Unverifiable Premises.

"The Annex is not a place where histories are kept; it is the keeping of the fact that they are not kept."

— Elara of the Incomplete Sum, Scriptum 7, delivered to the High Curators Spire

Administration and the Care of Clerks

Day-to-day administration falls to the Keeper of the Unofficial, a post occupied since 9,815 by Clerk Tavrell of the Narrow Margin, whose grievance against the Department of Provenance stems from a mis-shelving of his own grandfather's unverified pedigree in Tier III rather than Tier I. Clerk Tavrell has refused all promotion, on the stated basis that "a higher floor would require a window, and the Annex has agreed never to have one." The Lamplighters' Guild supplies precisely four lamps, none of which may be moved more than two spans from its bracket.

Visitors to Floor 412 are permitted to read any Tier I account provided they do not read aloud, and provided further that they first surrender their own name to the Lobby of Resigned Acceptance for the duration of the visit. The Guild of Personal Historiographers recommends against requesting a copy of any Annex holding, as no copying apparatus has been installed since the revision of 9,744 and none is contemplated.

Cross-Reference to Related Offices

The Unofficial Histories Annex draws upon the Bureau of Unverifiable Histories for all questions of jurisdiction, upon the Incomplete Histories for contrastive shelving, and upon the Negative Concordance for the enumeration of what it is not. The Breathing Corridor provides ventilation sufficient to prevent the pigment of Unofficial Colors from settling on the cartons, a service the Sighing Atrium has described as "adequate but unhurried." Disputes over Marginalia appended to Annex records are resolved, where resolved at all, by reference to the Third Concordance and the commentary of the Ontologicalists.