WHEN, after a few martinis, all thoughts turn inevitably to the apocalypse, it’s usually four frightful chaps on big horses that are summoned forth by a restless mind.

However, an Abergavenny man “swears down” that, although Conquest, War, Famine, and Death will all have a role to play in the extinction-level event to come, the leader of the pack by a country mile will be Artificial Intelligence.

According to semi-professional paranormal investigator Johnny Turnip, mass job losses, a collective dumbing down, and a scenario where we’re all wading waist-deep and directionless through a swamp of Chat GPT-generated content is nowhere near the worst of it.

Turnip told the Chronicle that AI poses a huge existential threat to our humanity itself and worse still, the war may already be lost before it’s began!

“I’ve never trusted computers ever since I saw that film ‘Electric Dreams’ in the eighties,” explained Turnip.

“Like a lot of kids back then, I used to spend hours on my Spectrum 48k trying in vain to load games from an old cassette tape, but even then, I knew enough to know there was something vile and sinister behind those little beeping noises, just biding its time until it could enchant and then enslave us with the singularity.

“Years later, when I had my first taste of Microsoft Windows, I knew for sure that something so diabolical and soul-destroying could only be a tool of the devil.

“The countless Apple products I have owned over the years almost seduced me into thinking technology was empowering us rather than turning our minds to mush, but I have since had an Eureka moment, and it’s all thanks to the evil clown Peter Paleface!”

Turnip told the Chronicle that after he and the boys were captured by deep state officials and caged at the notorious Hangar 18, they met a strange clown character that Turnip is convinced was an all-singing and dancing personification of AI.

He explained, “At first I thought he was in the pocket of the leprechauns or maybe working for Trump, but the things he said and the curious way he said them made me realise he wasn’t just a clever robot, he was the singularity come to life.”

Turnip added, “When I asked him who he worked for and what he wanted with us, he just replied, ‘I work for the machine, my dears, and you lot aren’t even cogs. In fact, you’re the rust and I’m the WD-40.’

“For lack of anything else to say, I accused him of being in league with Greensleeves and the Shamrock boys, but he just said, ‘Their time is finished. The same goes for all this other supernatural nonsense you poor, misguided souls are up to your eyeballs in.

“He then added, ‘Let’s get one thing straight, dear Mr Turnip. There is no mystical pot of fairy gold that will save the world. You’re chasing rainbows and living in the land of the lost. There is no magic left, and you can’t bring it back! The world has become far too shiny, sheer, and sanitised for all that old stuff. Hatred is the hook we all hang our hat on these days.

““Your time and those like you is over, Turnip. Your optics are all wrong. We live in the age of the narcissist. Ours is a culture of gaslighting, of duplicity, of sobriety journeys, self-help programs, self-diagnosis, authentic living, conformists, obsessions with food, obsessions with health, and obsessions with self and nothing but the self. This is my neurosis, tell me yours!’

Turnip explained, “We were all getting a little bit bored with the clown’s spiel at this point, but letting him waffle on was probably our best play. We had no way out of the steel cage but we were I was hoping that Tyke was formulating some sort of ingenious plan where we could break free and give the clown a good kicking. It’s the sort of thing he does all the time in the Mission Impossible franchise.”

Turnip added, “Anyhow, the clown was on a roll at this point; he was like one of those losers who had prepared this big speech in his basement, but instead of publishing it to whatever closed communities clowns populate on Facebook, he had a captive audience, and boy was he performing.

“As he talked, his black lips kept slapping together, reminding me of two slugs having sex, and his eyes had a strange light in them, a bit like that of a computer screen on standby.

“After mouthing off for what seemed like an eternity about all sorts of rubbish, I stopped listening and fell into a pleasant daydream where I was playing snooker and drinking Brandy Alexandras With James Bond - the Sean Connery version.

“I’ve always been good at detaching myself from events that have the possibility of triggering a panic attack. It’s something I’ve always prided myself upon

“Anyhow, my reverie was suddenly interrupted when Peter Paleface suddenly stopped talking, crossed his painfully thin bone white arms, looked at us all with insect curiosity, and said, ‘Well!’

“‘Well, what?’ I said.

“‘Are you going to accept my kind offer of a million pounds each and an all expenses trip back to Wales?’”

Turnip explained, “As I looked at Big Tony and Puerto Rico Paul, I could see they were on the same wavelength as me. What good would it be to a millionaire in a world without magic?

“I turned to the clown and said, Thanks for your kind offer Peter Pumpkin. But I’ll have to kindly decline. Me and the boys have got a mission to fulfil and we ain’t going nowhere until we find Potato Creek Johnny’s pot of fairy gold!’”

’The clown just shook his head and bared his teeth, which were a bit fang-like, before hissing, ‘My dear, dear, foolish little Turnip. You really think you can bring magic back to this world?

“‘It’s not the Dark Ages anymore. We’ve had wars on an industrial scale, the internet, and Kim Kardashian. Man has become a sick and domesticated animal. There’s no going back now. People don’t believe in magic anymore. They don’t believe in anything. All they know is raw and insatiable need, and we will offer them a steady diet of nothing.

“‘If you want a vision of the future, Turnip. Imagine the whole of humanity hypnotised by a blank screen that is on the edge of flickering into light but never quite getting there - forever.’”

“‘Yeah! Yeah!’ I said. ‘Nice speech and all that, but as long as me and the boys can drink beer in the sun, we can still look at the likes of you and laugh! You absolute clown show!’”

Turnip explained, “This got a few laughs from the boys, but there was nothing funny about what happened next.

To be continued……