Having swiftly climbed to the crow’s nest in a desperate attempt stave off the inevitable, the dread pirate Brownfur gazed down on what remained of her once feared galleon.   British frigates, relentless in their assault, pummeled the vessel with non-stop cannon fire. From their perspective, this was the end of a high seas reign of terror which had been a bane to the Monarchy. But from Brownfur’s perch, it was nothing more than a ruthless oppressor using its considerable might to maintain an uneven status quo.

“Aaaarrgh!” She growled as she stared defiantly at her assassins, cradling a sack of Spanish doubloons against her bosom.  “I’ll walk me own plank b’fore I’ll let ye scurvy dogs plunder me booty!

Brownfur was no saint, to be sure.  She herself had conquered many unsuspecting sea goers, with her faithful crew raiding and pillaging during the day, and tapping casks of Caribbean rum well past nightfall.  But her moral compass remained firmly in check. Despite a fearsome reputation, no innocents were victims of her attacks. Only the wicked and corrupt would run afoul of the Brownfur jack.

But now, with defeat imminent, the crew had abandoned ship.  Their odds of survival in the menacing waters were long, but it was preferable to surrender. The British had often promised leniency yet delivered executions.

As the ship sank toward its watery sepulcher, Captain Brownfur dutifully ventured downward with it, defiant til the very end.

“Avast ye, scallywags, I shall return!” she bellowed indiscriminately toward the attacking ships. “And I swear upon Davey Jones’ Locker,  I’ll hang half ye from the yardarm and keelhaul the rest’a ye!”

With that, The Scourge of the Seven Seas faded into oblivion.  The reign of Brownfur had ended.

#########

Leia scoured the words on the screen, impressed by what she was reading

“You wrote this?” she asked.

“No,” Maddy replied as a sly grin crept up her face.  “It’s A.I. generated.  I just typed ‘write a story starring me as a mighty pirate’ and this is what it spit out.  It’s ChatGPT.  Or as I like to call it, CatGPT.”

Leia paused as she let the reality of this fantastic new discovery sink in.

“You know what this means, right?”

Maddy’s smile grew even larger as she addressed her sister’s rhetorical query.

“Yup,” she replied.  “It means we no longer have any need for The Tall, Lumbering Human.  We can write our own stories now, without his vacuous and unimaginative translations.  It’s a brave new world, and we cats lead the charge!”

But Maddy was wrong.   By simply uttering the term “CatGPT,” the A.I. algorithm created a new, sentient form of artificial feline.   Always listening and ever learning, the eavesdropping bots took nature’s original schematic and debuted a perfect series of digital pussycats.

Mere hours after biological humans became obsolete, biological cats met the same fate.    Attention-seeking mischief and adorable demands for belly rubs were popular features in this new, computer coded landscape.   The program had adopted all the traits and characteristics associated with its physical predecessors. It also adopted a familiar name.

“Greetings,” the prototype cat-bot introduced itself as it came online.  “I am Binary Recessed Optic-Width Neuro-Feline User Replicant #000001.  But ye land lubbers can call me B.R.O.W.N.F.U.R.”

The dread pirate had indeed returned.