MINO’s Marginalia

Supplementary fiction · three imagined annotation sets. These notes give MINO a fictional editorial voice after three completed adventures. They are newly written, not quotations from the novels or additions to established events. Each set is placed after its named book and uses no later outcome. Open only the books you have finished.

After Book 7 · The Day Gallifrey Slept

On inadequate labels

Filed after the events of Book 7. No later adventures assumed.

1. A name is useful. Occasionally even mine.

Memory Inference and Navigation Organism. The expansion is provided for readers who believe an acronym becomes less suspicious when it occupies more space. It tells you approximately what I do. It does not tell you whom I trust, why I waited, or whether I approve of being described as equipment. For those subjects, further reading is regrettably necessary.

2. Correction to the likely diagram

If you have drawn an arrow from the Doctor to myself and labelled it “built”, please redirect it. Ravendael built me. This is not a minor clerical preference. A diagram in which the most conspicuous person creates everything tends to become a diagram in which everybody else's labour disappears. We have had sufficient trouble with disappearance.

3. Surviving is sometimes preparation

A safeguard can look very unimpressive while it is waiting. It may occupy a small amount of space and contribute nothing to the current conversation. The temptation is to call it obsolete. Before doing so, establish what event it was built to survive. If the answer concerns the destruction of the records you are consulting, consider widening your search.

4. The chair is not the beginning

The Doctor reaches a chair and learns what happened there. Readers naturally follow him. Kindly remember that the person subjected to the process had already resisted it. Discovery is a useful activity. It does not confer retrospective ownership of the action discovered. Raven need not wait for someone else to understand her resistance before it counts.

5. What to keep

Keep the name. Keep the maker's name beside it. Keep the difference between a programme intended to produce compliance and a person who would not comply. You need not retain every intimidating classification. Institutions produce classifications in bulk; a small owl has limited shelving.

Source shelf: MINO's introduction; memory-keys; the failed reprogramming and Raven's authorship.

After Book 12 · The Once and Future Owl

Notes on an invitation

Filed after the events of Book 12. No later adventures assumed.

1. An efficient welcome

The Council identifies our deviations promptly. There is something bracing about an institution which can diagnose your failure to belong before asking whether you enjoyed the journey. It saves time for the institution. I am less certain about the visitors, who still have to discover whether there is a door they may use without becoming another deviation.

2. “I decline”

Two words. Neither requires a demonstration of superiority, a replacement maintenance schedule or a written proof that the person refusing is the most interesting owl present. A refusal which must first earn permission is an application. The Council already has quite enough applications for authority.

3. Functional vocabulary

Prototype. Regulator. Reversion. Each word has a task. The difficulty begins when their tasks are allowed to replace mine. A useful description of an instrument can become an exceedingly poor way to address a person. If your maintenance language cannot distinguish repair from the removal of disagreement, the language itself may benefit from maintenance.

4. The important clause

I accept an invitation to stay on a condition: I may leave. Please do not omit the condition to save space under the grand title. The title is decorative by comparison. The condition is what allows staying to remain a decision I make, instead of a pleasing name for confinement. It is possible to care about a place without granting it permanent custody.

5. A recommendation for committees

When a meeting concludes that somebody is essential, allow that somebody to speak next. They may have relevant information concerning their availability, wishes or wings. If they choose to remain, thank them. If they choose to go, the acoustics of the hall should be capable of tolerating a farewell.

Source shelf: the Council's greeting and demand; the invitation; acceptance with a right to leave.

After Book 19 · The House That Remembered Him

How not to catalogue a person

Filed after the events of Book 19. No later adventures assumed.

1. An unusually brief record

“Sealed. Unresolved.” Economical, certainly. Less helpful if you live near the thing being described. I recommend regarding an exceptionally short entry with caution when every neighbouring entry supplies dates, provenance and a depositor. A tidy absence is still an absence. It does not become adequate documentation merely because it aligns beautifully with the margin.

2. The name in the other account

Della filed testimony of her own. It should not be catalogued as “additional material about the Doctor” and then quietly left unopened because the principal account seems sufficiently dramatic. People have an inconvenient habit of possessing perspectives which did not originate with him. This is one of their better habits.

3. A voice is not necessarily a recording

The Remanent echoes, distorts and approximates. An accurate-looking quotation extracted from an inaccurate witness is not improved by elegant typography. When possible, find out who actually spoke, under what conditions, and whether the thing repeating the words can tell a memory from an appetite. This last question is less common in ordinary archives, but should not be ruled out on aesthetic grounds.

4. The expert who says what she cannot tell you

Sable distinguishes a filing record from full knowledge of what occurred. This may appear less impressive than a sweeping explanation. It is considerably easier to work with. An identified gap can be investigated; a confident invention tends to acquire furniture, a title and a small administrative staff before anyone notices the missing foundation.

5. Access is not an obligation to perform

A record can be available without becoming a compulsory public event. Sable explains permission and purpose separately. Keep that separation. The people in an account have already lived through the events once. The convenience of a curious reader does not automatically entitle that reader to make them do it again.

Source shelf: the spare catalogue entry; the limits of the Remanent's speech; Della's testimony and access conditions.