Mara Kessler

Mara Kessler is hired to catalogue the tapes before Bellwether is dismantled. She has spent eleven years separating bad wiring from bad testimony. She does not believe a recording can remember something its listener has forgotten. On her first playback, she hears her own voice say, 'Leave the ninth channel open.' The words do not appear on the waveform. Her assistant hears only footsteps. Mara writes the sentence in the maintenance log. Beneath it, a carbon impression of the same sentence is already pressed into the next page. The earlier impression is signed with tomorrow's date.