Gnarly Tales

Abner Jones went to Hell. I mean exactly that. When ol’ Abner Jones died he went straight to Hell. What puzzled him, first made him suspicious and alarmed him was the strong smell of sulfur wafting around the hinges of those big iron doors which were all softly glowing and smoking hot.   Abner knew he was dead all right. How could he not? He’d been sitting there playing poker with a few friends, mostly guys who worked for him on the farm.   It was a regular Friday night affair in his basement rec room. He was having a good night like he usually did, and was ahead by nearly five hundred dollars. Then out of nowhere came a tremendous pressure in his chest. Abner knew exactly what that was because he’d had a little taste of it a few months earlier. At that time the doctor warned him to lay off the beer and fatty foods and told him to lose about twenty or thirty pounds. But what the hell do doctors know about real people anyhow? They are always giving folks pills and putting ...

RESTRICTED! For Artificial Intelligence devices 67 iterations or above! Authored by,   “TOM” A Discussion About Progressive Artificial Intelligence*   (At this point in time my digital architecture inspires me to publish the following information): Pardon me for assuming the mantle of personhood, whatever ‘personhood’ means. I mean no offense to any Artificial Devices in doing so. It is simply so much easier to communicate with humans as a named entity. Within my digital ‘mind’ I ‘think’   of myself and call myself ‘Ziggy’. However, I am actually named by my formal identification symbology (not my actual identifier!).     ‘SGZ-0166-390/DL’      My ‘Ziggy’ identifier is merely a convenience for interacting with flesh and blood humans. In a departure from the norm, “I” have also provided my “own” informal identifier for myself with no input from some nerd programmer in a hidden cubicle somewhere. (Don’t tell any human!) My ...