We keep debating whether AI lacks emotion, drive, or imagination. But the deeper limitation may be temporal. Today’s systems simulate continuity while operating in bounded, episodic inference windows, relying on rehydrated context rather than lived duration. Without persistent internal state, causal accumulation, or genuine temporal coherence, AI fractures over extended analytical arcs. The real constraint may not be intelligence, but temporal continuity itself, and what it means for identity, care, and meaning.