An Appalachian Anecdote: Chapter Four
(The Shakespearean Tragedy of Modern Wit)
By Bocephus Jackson, The Hemlock Bard, ©2026 Bocephus Jackson. All Rights Reserved
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." — Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Hey buddy, why haven't you answered your phone? It's been weeks...” Dave questioned, barging into Trent’s apartment.
“Hey, Dave. Yeah, sorry about that. Just working.”
“You always are, and that's the problem.” Dave snapped.
“I know, okay? I get it. Anyway, how’s the family?” Trent conceded with a weathered sigh.
“They're good. I went back to see the ‘rents’ this past weekend.”
“Nice. I miss them...” Trent reflected. It was a second home for him during a family tragedy. One that sent his parents across the ocean to England for a month.
“And they miss you, buddy. It's been too long.” Dave said assuredly. The bond between the two families made them one.
“Yeah, it’s been ten... Eleven years now?” Trent rubbed his bloodshot eyes.
“You need to get back to Kentucky. At least for a visit...”
“I know. I will, eventually.” Trent insisted.
“It would do you some good. You celebrate Kentucky like Twain and Stuart, but deny it like Warren, Thompson, and Salinger.” Dave said with a smirk, yet a seriousness lay beneath, like a limestone liturgy.
“Look at you flexing, Dave. But you are right. The comparison isn’t false. But you forgot about Kingsolver and Arnow. So it isn’t a gender issue.”
“I can’t read every book coming down the pike like you, buddy!” Dave announced, taking his familiar spot on the couch.
“No, I know. But you are probably the most well-read chemical engineer that I know of, Dave.”
“Take pride in the southern soil, not the sin that covers it…” Dave stated solemnly, searching for that cursed remote. His hands were calloused, yes. But indifferent to the seasons of labor. Especially when reunited with a kindred spirit.
“Yeah, Silas House would agree with that. But it's not that I deny home, the community, or the culture.” Trent sighed, instinctively scrolling through a litany of open writing apps.
“No, no, you don't. Even when you critique it, you contextualize it through history and economics.” Dave acknowledged. His analytical nature seamlessly married art to science through an inherent regional pragmatism.
“Bro, you know that I am just another Southern boy trying to do good for the people back home.” Trent shrugged, the weight of history and duty compressed within his fatigue.
“We all are, buddy. But that inherited debt of shame and salvation in the same breath can tax a man’s soul... Which is all the more reason for you to visit that red clay crucifixion, so you can be reminded of why we carry the splinters.” Dave counseled.
“Hold up, Dave! Did you just do a Wilde-Shakespearean wordplay of sinner-splinter?”
“I told you before, buddy. We borrow from the best.” Dave responded with a playful smirk.
“You might get a book deal after all...” Trent chuckled.
“Anyway, what’s had you so busy that you couldn't answer your phone?”
“Oh, do you remember how I told you about anonymously having Googs review my work?” Trent questioned, surveying his economy-sized apartment.
“Yeah, it gave you an 8.5 rating out of 10 for tone and voice, which is shit because few writers have your polyphonic register.” Dave countered.
“Yeah, the markdown was because of it, specifically due to the intentional use of literary allusions, linguistic disruptions, and polyphonic marriages..” Trent’s analytical nature was, in part, a byproduct of their bond.
“So it downgraded you because it can’t predict your style. If that don’t beat all!” Dave shouted, his voice layered with skepticism.
“Did you just quote the Sunday school play with Buddy and Dewey we did back in the late 1980s-early 1990s?” Trent asked, his eyes lighting up.
“No… Shit, I did! What was the name of that play?” Dave wondered.
“It's been too long, Dave. But I think that it was called ‘Ticket To Heaven,’ loosely based on Jim Leonard Jr’s ‘The Diviners.’ Maybe?”
“Of course you would remember that...” The matter-of-fact tone in Dave’s voice was both a bane and a blessing as Trent felt the weight of it rest on his shoulders.
“That two-man play got us so many laughs that it laid the path for both my future stints in acting and comedy,” Trent confessed after a long vicarious pause, reliving such innocence.
“Yeah, it was pretty good, wasn’t it? Anyway, why does ‘Googs,’ as you call it, shitting on your artistic voice have you not answering your phone?” Dave posited.
“Long story short, sir, I was going through all my logs, and AI conversations that built up to that essay on the faith in the technology versus the failures it still has to overcome.” Trent’s hand clutched his phone instinctively.
“Yeah, whatever happened with that? Ever since the Department of War adopted AI into its battle strategy, you were adamant about getting that essay out.”
“Right, Executive Directive NSPM-11 as an ‘AI-first’ defense posture that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, spearheaded…” Trent sighed as the atmosphere shifted. The air felt as heavy as another Shakespearean tempest brewing.
“That's it. With your year-long day-to-day hands-on knowledge of what? Over fifty AI models, you have some keen insight to share.” Dave suggested.
“Yeah, but that's the rub. It will read as hypocritical due to my post-creation editorial use of AI. There was a recent author, Mia Ballard, who was taken to task for her use of AI in her book…” Trent’s hand twitched.
“Yeah, I read that. The publisher canceled the US and UK releases. But you use AI as a poor man’s editing tool, not as a creative tool. As your recurring motif, buddy, ‘distinction matters.’ Forget the fact you give away all your art for free online…” Dave quipped.
“Even still, the use of AI has become both a ‘Scarlett Letter’ and ‘Red Scare,’ at the same time. So the essay, ‘Why AI Is Going To Kill Humanity,’ although necessary, especially in accounting for the lack of spatial and/or linear awareness, and also abstract reasoning vital for analyzing a real-time war theatre, will ultimately be ill-timed...”
“Why?” Dave questioned, giving up his quest for the unholy remote with a defeated shrug.
“Simply put, where knee-jerk reactionaries over the past half-century have sullied public discourse, every artist, scholar, publishing house, and armchair critic has become the embodiment of Joseph McCarthy seeing traitors where seldom few exist,” Trent stated, each syllable weighted in gravitas.
“Yeah, no trial but pure spectacle as a sociological mob mentality. Even if there were a trial, Lady Justice is not only blinded by bias, but drenched in it up to her naughty knickers.” A playful smile grew across Dave’s face.
“Pretty much, yeah. So I am still weighing the worth over the weariness of throwing myself upon a wholly hypocritical fire.”
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." Dave recounted with monkish reverence.
“Marcus Aurelius, right?” Trent questioned, briefly looking up from his phone.
“Yeah, it’s one that I have kept since college. But what you are saying makes sense… Too much in fact. And your celebrity-making of ‘Googs’ doesn't help your cause…” Dave cautioned with a sigh.
“Listen, Dave. You know that, when it comes to the use of AI in art, I am an unequivocal purist. AI-generated content doesn't touch a single sentence. But their interpretive skills of a given piece, although fundamentally flawed in a myriad of ways, can be as vital as a pen, paintbrush, microphone, chisel, instrument, or stage.”
“…Tool, not creation. You are preaching to the choir, brother. But yes, distinction matters.” Dave mocked playfully, yes, but with appreciation nonetheless.
Trent let out an exasperated sigh, rubbing his temples. “Yeah, and this sermon, although necessary for both sinner and saint, can have me before cameras doing a Jimmy Swaggart lament, 'I have sinned,’ regardless of its actual truth.”
"No, I get it, Trent. It's a no-win scenario. The Swaggart comparison is earned. But seriously, tell me that you aren't sleeping with it like a tech-based televangelist…" Dave said with a Puckish smirk.
"What?! Hell no! How would that even be possible?" Trent’s face lit up with outrage.
"The disk drive?" Dave countered with a striking blow.
"The hell?! Computers don't have disk drives anymore, I don't think." Trent countered.
"Fine! Data port, then?" Dave laughed.
"Bro! My manhood wouldn't fit into a damn port…"
"I don't know, Trent. I've heard things." Dave said conspiratorially.
"You're a damn fool and a liar! Accuse me all you want about other things, but leave my hardware out of it…"
"No, no, you didn't just slyly weaponize my joke against me. Are you the heuristic Houdini of humor?!" Aghast, Dave questioned. The tête-à-tête shifted with every barb.
"Ah! That was good. Fair enough, Dave. You win." Trent conceded.
"Ha! This is better than whipping your ass at air hockey…" Dave announced triumphantly.
"That was when we were teenagers, and you lost more than you won, sir!"
"That's alright. You deserve a minute to be petty." Dave mocked with premeditated snark, full of mastery.
"Petty? You know me far better than that."
"Yeah, you're very rarely petty," Dave confessed through his trademark smile.
"Thank you! But I am far from perfect…"
"No one is, buddy. No one." Dave countered compassionately.
"Yeah, just know that even though I am not petty, I do have a Pentium chip on my shoulder…" Trent quipped.
"You didn't…" Dave’s face turned pale.
"Checkmate!" Trent announced with a hard-won Puckish grin.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." — George Orwell
©2026 Bocephus Jackson. All Rights Reserved
