Memory and the Persistence of Physical Records

When does a readable record survive the actual physical process, and when does memory change that survival? Present readability, temporal label retention and process memory answer separate questions. Their analysis requires a physical carrier, an identity-relevant record quotient and its actual continuation. We develop their common reduction architecture and derive an explicit memory correction to temporal record certificates. On a classical record quotient, the channel defect equals the largest class re-identification error. Its additive composition bound holds for the actual composed quotient process; it need not hold for individually calibrated steps whose preparations erase the correlations reached in a real run. A two-CNOT construction makes every freshly calibrated step preserve the record perfectly while the actual two-step continuation erases it. The missing term is a process-composition gap, which we define and bound by discrepancies between actual joint preparations and the preparations used by a reduced model. The same construction identifies a memory sector that must be retained to obtain a faithful record continuation. We also prove that decoherence and broadcasting do not fix temporal record identity; that CP-divisibility depends on the carrier and preparation; and that memory can be irrelevant to a protected identity register. A finite dephasing model has no trace-distance backflow on its declared interval yet changes record retention under a correlation-severing intervention. These results separate memory magnitude, causal record relevance and Constitution change. The derivations use unchanged finite-dimensional quantum dynamics and retain explicit scope conditions for every identity claim.