Mori has been a Continuity Counselor for sixteen years. She has seen 203 cases.
The standard intake question is: what do you have, and how long have you had it. Photographs, recordings, written notes, objects that crossed the transition. The time ranges from a few weeks to decades. Case fourteen was a woman in her second instance who had been carrying her prior self's wedding ring in a coat pocket so long she'd stopped feeling the weight of it. That case took eleven sessions. Mori still thinks about it sometimes.
The last appointment on a Thursday in March is a client in their third instance, three months post-transition, still calibrating. They found a voice message from their second self in an email archive that had survived the event. Seventeen seconds. They have not played it all the way through. In the session they play four seconds and stop. Mori does not ask them to continue.
She lays out the options. Listen fully and archive. Listen and delete. Delete without listening. Hold without deciding. No timeline required for any of them. There is no option she will call better. The client asks which she would recommend. She says: I don't make recommendations. I can tell you what other clients have found useful, if that would help. The client says yes. She tells them. There is no pattern that favors one choice across cases, and she says that too.
At the end of the session the client says: can I ask you something?
Mori says yes.
The client says: have you ever had one? A prior-instance artifact?
She says: that's not something I share with clients.
The client nods. They say: I'm sorry. I just thought it might help to know whether it ever got easier to sit with.
She says she understands. She walks them to the door.
The session notes go in the file. She checks tomorrow: two intakes, one follow-up. She has been doing this for sixteen years. She found her own note fourteen years ago, in a box of papers she was moving into the office she still uses. Two years into the practice. She remembers the handwriting on the outside before she understood whose it was.
The note is in the bottom drawer, to her right.
She closes her laptop.