My name is John Company. My father’s name was John Company, as was his father’s and his father’s before him… His father’s name before that was immaterial — Immaterial Jones. He was one of the First-Revealed.

I am an Uber® for Corporeal™, fully licensed and cross-bonded. I have the public and secret keys to prove it. I perform PBT for the Greater Southern Gestalt — physical body tasks which would be too dangerous or needlessly expensive for robots to perform.

I like my job. Every day is different. Some days I help the autonomous cement mixers, scooping up with a big shovel the globs that they have dropped. Nothing is wasted. The walls seem to grow taller and more majestic day by day, like white wings rising out of the landscape. Other times, I am deployed as a packet-switcher for network traffic on the ground. Working in concert with area temperplexes linked to aerostats, I help corral undesirable bits and bytes attempting to gain access to our infrastructure into holding pens until they can be re-assigned or ejected.

I’m told I have a lot of physical autonomy for an Uber®. I guess it costs less for everyone in processing power that way — though I honestly don’t mind being over-written either. I find it relaxing, like watching a film. In fact, we’re allowed to watch films during over-write sessions, but I prefer to maintain perceptuals, at least peripherally, and pipe in classic rock selections, like Maroon 5 and One Direction.

My public blockchain indicates that I was originally cross-bonded as part of my obligatory outpatient rehabilitation for crimes against the Gestalt which I no longer remember, and the precise terms of which were expunged from Living Memory once my work as an Uber® earned me a rating of 15,000 points. I barely look at my stats anymore though, because I have everything I need now that I am able to re-sell a variable percentage of my public perceptions back to the Network to cover the costs of my sustenance and lodging. In a few more years, I will even be eligible to buy full voting rights.

I am excited for the future, but I am also patient. Because for now, I am fulfilled and “I am fine”, like the popular reputation insurance commercial says. I am John Company.

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