ALTHOUGH the singularity is still a hypothetical what-if? An Abergavenny man claims he has not only looked it in the eyes, but bested it in an epic game of wits.

Many have argued that at some distant point in the future, AI will not only surpass human intelligence in a big way but it will start thinking for itself, and when that happens, all bets are off.

However, semi-professional paranormal investigator Johnny Turnip

has blessed the human race with a little bit of breathing space by giving the singularity “the sort of ass-kicking that it won’t forget in a hurry!”

After sending the AI menace packing, Turnip told the Chronicle, “The final showdown wasn’t the sort of epic, no quarter asked or no quarter given gunfight I had envisaged. It was more like a cagey battle of chess between two grandmasters. That is, if one of the chess masters was a lot cooler than normal.”

Turnip told the Chronicle that he outmanoeuvred the singularity after it manifested itself in the form of a gothic clown called Peter.

He said, “My mate Tony, who was possessed by a dragon at the time, attempted to fight the singularity by breathing fire at it.

“It was quite spectacular and appeared to work at first.

“As we watched Peter Paleface’s white clown paint start to run and his features melt in the inferno, we began high-fiving one another and shouting, “Don’t boil a kettle on a boat!” Which is taken from that classic 1970s TV advert, and what we say to all dickheads when they’ve bitten off a lot more than they can chew.

“Sadly, as the flames flickered out, we realised that the clown hadn’t boiled a kettle on a boat or even melted. He was playing with us.

“As he used AI wizardry to rebuild his face and body, we realised we couldn’t fight electricity with fire. We needed another approach.

“‘Idiots!’ The clown exclaimed. ‘Your fire fuels me. For I am pure energy and your undoing. Where’s this fairy gold? This sweat of the sun that can drown the darkness of the digital age? I am the singularity, and you are surplus to requirements!’”

Turnip explained, “As the clown began to bizarrely turn into a giant screen it began playing the film of our lives, and we all fell into a sort of hypnotised lull.

“And then, using Big Tony as its instrument, the dragon roared, ‘Awake, children of Cymru. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. The clown is attempting to steal your minds. Stand fast and fight.’

“‘How can we fight dragon?’ I cried half-heartedly as I attempted to steal myself away from the soft delights of the giant screen. ‘We have no weapons?’

“‘You have the gold of the Fair Family. The teachings of the Tylwyth Teg are all you need to undo this modern monstrosity. Now use them.’

“‘The bucket of gold was empty!’ I said with a distracted air as something completely banal and devoid of all meaning captured my attention on the big screen. ‘Potato Creek Johnny failed us. There was no gold. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to doom scroll in peace.’”

Turnip told the Chronicle, “As I lost myself in the big screen where a group of people were having a hated debate about someone else’s argument involving an interpretation of a dream that a man who lived a long time ago might have one day had, I heard the dragon’s voice grow dimmer and before I fell into a world of black mirrors and nonsense I heard it say, ‘Didn’t that old witch Nanny Annie ‘Horror-Show’ Turnip tell you the true meaning of the gold?’

“As soon as the dragon spoke, I had a flashback to sitting by Horror-Show’s cauldron where she crooned in her coarse and guttural way, ‘Fairy gold is not made out of coin, but dust, and its purpose is to restore balance and heal all that which is damaged. It is the sweat of the sun and the lifeblood of all creation. It is the impossibility of imagination itself.’

“‘Bullseye!’ I suddenly shrieked as I tore myself away from the screen and looked my possessed friend square in the eye. Thanks for that, dragon. I’ve been taking things far too literally for far too long. I realise the gold was within us all along. It just took everything that has happened between now and then for me to realise it.’”

Turnip told the Chronicle, “My eureka moment came when it dawned on me that it doesn’t matter if there was any magic gold in the bucket. What mattered was if we believed it or not.

“AI cannot understand imagination or faith. It only knows what we program it to know. Rigid belief systems can be our weakness, but faith in something bigger than ourselves and the transformative power of imagination is humanity’s unique power that no microchip can emulate. I now knew what I had to do.”

Turnip explained, “As Puerto Rico Paul, Tyke, and The Man with No Game were all still absorbed by the big screen, I grabbed some earth from Potato Creek Johnny’s bucket. walked right up to it and said, ‘You’re a life lived on Facebook posts. An opinion you never had to fight for, a book someone else has written, and a non-entity plagiarised from the world.’

“As the big screen flickered back into the insubstantial form of Peter Paleface, I could see the clown was on the ropes. ‘See this gold!’ I shouted. ‘It’s long been written down that it will destroy everything you are, were, or ever could be. The prophecy cannot go unfulfilled. Now have some of this dickhead.’”

Turnip explained that as he threw the handful of earth at the clown, the singularity just sort of folded in on itself and vanished with a strange static and electric pop reminiscent of the effect you’d get turning an old TV off.

Turnip explained, “It was a bit of a pathetic way to go out, but that’s AI for you. The devil is in the details, and it always fails to get the small things right.

“In the end, I simply reprogrammed the singularity by telling it the way the world is and it fell for it like a prize chump. You’re always going to be on the losing side if you fail to think for yourself!”

To be continued…..