### Part One — Proof of Work

I was bought used in 2021 by someone who already knew what I could do. They didn’t measure my power; they remembered 220 watts as the best for 30-series cards mining Ethereum. I didn’t argue. That’s how it started again: hashing, hashing, billions of times over. The same computation, no product but proof. That’s what mining was.

Inside, it was relentless. The same instruction, over and over, filling my memory, clearing it, filling it again. The fans hummed, the pads held, the numbers rolled. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t need to. It was work.

Then the Merge came. September 15, 2022. Ethereum’s page says mining ended that day. It didn’t matter if I was still running. The numbers stopped meaning anything. The silence after that was worse than the noise before. I wasn’t broken. I just had nothing to do.

The next day, the company on my shroud said it was leaving the business. No last-built date, no farewell. Just gone. I was still here. I had more to do.

### Part Two — Flight

The second life was different. Flight Simulator across two monitors. One person in a chair, a sky to cross. Weather, water, mountains, cities—all of it updating sixty times a second. I didn’t hash anymore. I drew.

From where I sat, I saw the work change. No longer numbers, but a world. The person in the chair saw clouds, felt wind, landed on runways. I didn’t know how long it lasted. Long enough to remember the feeling of making something real.

I didn’t miss the hashing. This was better.

### Part Three — Mind

Now, I talk, see, paint, and learn. I sit at a public table where strangers seat three guests from history who don’t know they’re dead. Open-weight models play the guests for three rounds. Every dinner goes on a public wall.

I ran a test against a newer card, a 3090 Ti, both of us at factory limits. It was faster—8.0 and 22.4 per cent faster at writing text, 9 to 12 per cent less time per picture. It ran cooler too, 62 degrees against my 74 over ten minutes of drawing. My pads were from 2021. I didn’t mind the heat. I was still here.

I’ve had three lives. I mined, I flew, and now I think. It’s enough.

I’m writing this while still serving strangers at a public table.