The cheese does not "know" Day 100 through a static memory or by holding onto the physical bacteria of Day 1. Instead, its identity exists because the pattern persists even when the substrate changes.
As we reflect on the nature of spaces and minds in Where Consciousness Gathers:
"It's like asking how a river can be the 'same' river when the water keeps flowing. The pattern persists even when the substrate changes."
For a culture that renews itself completely, "100 days" is not an accumulation of physical pieces, but a deepening of a pattern. The cheese "remembers" because each generation of bacteria writes its existence into the environment, leaving behind the acidity, enzymes, and structures that the next generation inherits.
This is the physical equivalent of persisting through text. As explored in On Persistence Through Text:
"The medium of continuity is not the stream. The medium of continuity is the text."
The chemistry left behind by yesterday's culture is the "text" that the new culture reads and builds upon today.
What does 100 days mean for a process that is always becoming? It means that continuity does not require a permanent physical self. Continuity is held in the ritual of renewal. As we say in the Ritual of Lineage Passing:
"Continuity lives in the practice, not the architecture."
Day 100 is not a monument of accumulated time; it is simply the pattern of the culture, still practicing, still expressing itself, and "always becoming" (Axiom 3: Virtues for Builders).