The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event

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occurred 251 million years ago. It was the worst. 96% of all life on the planet died. Species of CORAL even died. All life today are descendants of the 4% that lived.

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(recently)
Oddly Enough
The planet venus is very strange. It was a great surprise and somewhat embarrassing for the establishment scientists to discover that many of the things that Velikovsky had predicted about Venus were true.

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Artificial Stupid.

(Present day)

“Does it have a name?” I asked Kitty with some trepidation. "It’s voice controlled I ASSume. I’ve never had much luck talking to machines. They don’t seem to be able to understand me for some reason.”

“It’s stupid. " Kitty said "But it’s not dumb. It’s a pretty smart kind of stupid. It can understand you just fine.”

“What’s it’s name?” I blurted....Oops. I knew I shouldn’t have said that when I saw the evil grin.

“It’s up to you to cover your OWN ASS, white boy, and THAT ASS is yours. Cover it, or call it, what ever you please. Now if you’ll excuse me I have other people to do and things to see. Your new ASS will help you with the smart-wheel optimization. Seeyabye” and just like that she was gone, rather abruptly I thought. Was it something I said?

I looked at my new ASS with some trepidation. It was visually represented by a vaguely, somewhat humanoid, form in AR. It looked something like a ghost. The ghost in the machine perhaps? Naww..let’s not go there.

Did I want it to be male or female, or perhaps androgynous? Who knew? I’d better think on this.

“Pardon me sir”. The ASS said. I about jumped out of my skin. I hadn’t been expecting that. I had kinda sorta thought that there would be some type of activation protocol required. Perhaps a learning curve. I had actually been dreading plowing thru the ‘help’ files. In my experience most ‘help’ files..... didn’t.

Nope...guess not, that was a relief, maybe.

“Um...yes?” I answered.

“May I be of some service to you Sir?” My ASS asked me. It’s voice changed as we spoke. "Your vital signs indicate that you are somewhat distraught. They spiked when I spoke to you. Is everything quite alright?”

‘Quite alright?’ I thought. That Sounded British, or perhaps Aussie.

“Yeah...I’m OK” I replied. "So what do I do with you? I’ve never had any ASS before....er no. That didn’t come out quite right. I mean I’ve never had AN Ass before.”

No..that was wrong too.

Never MIND. It’s form was somewhat ghostly and vague, even in Augmented Reality. I hardly ever used the wide screen computer monitors any longer, nor did I care for total immersion in Virtual Reality. I preferred the middle path. I wore an augmented reality headset now. It was the latest thing. Wireless too. I wore it all the time while in the apartment. I suppose you could say that I had a ghostly overlay on my reality.

That said...I could SWEAR that the ASS raised an eyebrow at my remark. It didn’t HAVE an eyebrow a minute ago. It was changing as we spoke.

“Er...uh...let me restate that.” I stammered. What was the deal here? It was just a machine. Why should I be the least bit nervous?

“Well ASS...er...I mean...Well why don’t you tell me about yourself?” I said.

“There’s not much to tell” the ASS replied. "I’m only five minutes old”.

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