How the ubiCab got its name.
By Ruddy Hard Kipling, and translated by Alex Mugan.
One day, there was a man named Ubi. He was a clever man, but a poor man. He worked all day in the hardship factory, counting dust and being paid beans. He was very sad and his fingers got dusty from all the dust.
One day, Ubi was going home from work. It must have been a Saturday because on all of the other days Ubi didn’t get to go home from work at all. Anyway, he was running late for dinner with his wife, who was a toilet brush bleacher at the chilli tasting factory.
Ubi was distraught. His limited quality time was being eroded by his long walk home. He saw several motor vehicles whoosh past, but they were all driven by fat cats, whose owners had bribed city officials into granting them licenses.
“Woe is me,” thought Ubi, woefully. He stared at the disappearing back bumper of a Benz being driven by a Burmese. “By golly,” he said, outdatedly, “I’ve got a fantastic idea.”
“What’s that?” Asked a helpful passer-by who had been parachuted in by the writer for expediency.
“What if anyone at all could get a ride in a car?” Ubi asked,
“You’re mad.” Said the passer-by, sceptically.
“No, listen,” elaborated Ubi, “I mean, without owning it. What if people could just sort of, ride in the car, without buying it. They could pay the owner or something every time they want to go anywhere.”
“That’s crazy talk.” Remarked the passer-by, dismissively.
“It’s not, it could really work. And anyway, you’re meant to be a passer-by and you’ve been stood here for ages.”
“Fair point.” Said the passer-by. He turned and walked away, disappearing from Ubi’s perspective. It turns out he was two-dimensional, but that’s not important.
Ubi took his idea to a bank manager. It wasn’t the 2010s, so the bank manager lent him some money. Ubi used the money to buy a fleet of cars and pay some drivers and he sent his cars out into the city to pick up anybody who wanted a ride. Modestly, he decided to call his new invention a Ubi.
Over the centuries, and the ad hoc border between the real world and the one this stuff happened in, linguistic shifts turned Ubi into ‘taxi’ or ‘cab’. When we were thinking of a name for the app that will revolutionise the taxi industry though, it was an easy decision. In honour of the original inventor of what has become known as the ‘taxi’, we called it ubiCabs.
