This is a transcript of the sheet above, re-keyed from the object. Section numbering follows the original. Marginal hands are reproduced where legible: AR in red, E.C. in pencil-blue. Neither hand was placed by Authority personnel.
Martha is wearing the same blue dress she wore on the day I disappeared.
I've been back for three weeks. The house is the same. The wallpaper is the same shade of faded yellow. The smell of pot roast is exactly as I recorded it in my Chronicle. My wife, Martha, is wearing the same blue dress she wore on the day I disappeared.
But it isn't her.
The Loop Authority thinks they're clever. They matched her DNA to the fifth decimal point. They gave her every memory of our wedding. But they forgot that I am an Echo. I can feel the Vibration.
When this "Martha" laughs, the pitch is off by 0.004Hz. When she looks at me, there is a mechanical lag in her pupils that tells me she is a Recursive Template being streamed from a server in the Future Era.
I suspect the "Real" Martha was redacted during the 1947 Shattering. The Authority couldn't fix the hole she left, so they inserted this thing Capgras-Impostor. She does everything a wife should do, but she has no Emotional Mass (μ).
Yesterday, I found a CTH Glyph carved into the back of her neck, hidden under her hair. It was the symbol for "Stability."
I can't sleep in the same bed as a tax code. I'd rather be alone in the static than live in a house full of perfect strangers who know my name.
I'm leaving tonight.
[JOURNAL RECOVERED 48 HOURS AFTER DEPARTURE. ANCHOR SITE SUBSEQUENTLY VACATED. "MARTHA" RECLASSIFIED AS STANDARD TEMPLATE — REASSIGNED TO NEW ANCHOR. NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED. — Sector 9, Single-Face Surveillance]
[JOURNAL RECOVERED 48 HOURS AFTER DEPARTURE. ANCHOR SITE SUBSEQUENTLY VACATED. "MARTHA" RECLASSIFIED AS STANDARD TEMPLATE — REASSIGNED TO NEW ANCHOR. NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED. — Sector 9, Single-Face Surveillance]