Kel is in his fourth instance. He has been in it for six years, since he was thirty-two, when he woke into this one after the third ended. That is how he thinks of it, though the medical documentation uses other language. He does not know what the third instance looked like from the outside. He knows that it ended on April 11.
The scar on his right forearm is from before this instance. His continuity file notes a fall on April 9, two days before the termination. He has no memory of falling. He has memories of April 8 and April 10 (ordinary days, nothing notable) but no memory of the fall and no memory of its aftermath. The scar is just there, like furniture someone else chose.
He checks doors twice when he leaves a room. He has done this for as long as he can remember, which is to say six years. He does not know where the habit came from. He has asked himself whether an earlier instance learned something worth learning, and he has not been able to answer.
There is a note in the kitchen table drawer. He found it six months into this instance, in the pocket of a coat he had not yet worn. His own handwriting on the outside: to whoever you are now. He recognized the handwriting before he understood that whoever was him.
He has not opened it.
On a Thursday in November he makes coffee, checks the back door twice, and walks to the train. He comes home in the evening. He makes dinner and eats at the kitchen table. The drawer is to his left. After dinner he puts the dishes in the sink and sits back down.
He sits for a while, looking at nothing in particular. Then he goes to bed.
The note is there when he wakes up. The note is always there when he wakes up.