From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Leather Alphabet
This article proposes a theory of the cycle and the leather armor. For canonical leather descriptions, see Leather Enough for a Dozen.
The Leather Alphabet proposes that the leather armor Katita stitches in Chapter 5 is not merely protective garment but a record—each stitch marking one completed loop. When the narrator observes "there is secretly enough leather for a dozen suits," this is not logistics; it is metrical. Katita has already lived this moment a dozen times.
The theory cites a hidden seven-stitch mark on Katita's left shoulder-seam in the lost 1997 radio transcript as proof: seven complete loops, then seven more beneath. A doubled seam = doubled repetition. By the novel's climax, when Katita dresses the broken Leif and reset-whispers "We can do it we can do it we can do it," she is stitching the eighth or ninth or twentieth recurrence. The armor grows heavier with each wearing because it carries every previous wearing in its leather.
If correct, the novel is not unfinished—it is over-finished, its ending looped past any readable count.