Some objects arrive from, or continue to exist partially within, frames governed by physical laws that differ from those operating at the collection site. A pocket dimension, a layer that runs at a different rate, a space where entropy functions as a resource rather than a cost — these require active study if the collection is to remain stable and if the storage site is to remain in its current configuration. The department does not always succeed, but it keeps records.
Frame physics is the study of objects that did not agree to the rules of the room they now occupy. Each must be understood well enough to be contained, because an unmanaged frame does not stay where it is put: it leaks, propagates, and acquires.
The department keeps suppression and containment protocols, some inherited from predecessor institutions that no longer exist in a form able to confirm their own methods. It does not always succeed; it keeps records either way. Active propagation events are handed to the Incident Protocol rather than managed as routine conservation.
Several accessions are housed within, include, or have incidentally generated bounded spatial anomalies: pocket dimensions, compressed frames, or rooms whose measured interior volume does not match their exterior. Custody of these requires containment protocol alongside standard conservation practice. A minority of pocket dimensions have shown evidence of preference regarding their contents.
Objects that exist simultaneously across several modes of reality — present as mass in one frame, as signal in another, perceptible only to certain categories of witness in a third — require analytical methods able to operate across those registers without collapsing the object into a single reading. The department considers this a solved problem in principle and a partially unsolved one in practice. Results are held under restricted access pending review.
Unstable frames sometimes propagate: a storage room occupying two periods simultaneously begins to affect adjacent rooms; a temporal rift widens under ordinary foot traffic; a pocket dimension becomes acquisitive. The department maintains suppression protocols, some derived from predecessor institutions that no longer exist in a form able to confirm their own methods. Active propagation events are managed under the Incident Protocol rather than standard conservation procedure.