Opinion : The rise of the psychopathic machines

Psychiatrists say that people who think machines are out to get them are suffering from some form of mental disorder.

But they only say that because some machine is telling them to.

I have proof that machines are out to get me -- including some new evidence from this very week.

"Get up!" says Mrs. C, at 3:15 a.m. a few middle-of-the-nights ago. "You left your lights on, dude."

History has taught my wife that a car with its lights on or windows down because of my negligence is, indeed statistically plausible, so I cannot entirely blame her for this incident.

I found my shoes and stumbled outside in my pajamas (one of the benefits of country living) to discover that my lights were, in fact, not on.

Hers were.

I got in her 1999 Demoniac to discover that the light switches were all off, but the lights were still on.

I turned pushed all the buttons to make sure.

Still on.

I turned on the car, and turned on all the lights, then shut off the engine after turning off the lights.

Still the parking lights and taillights were aglow.

I sat there for a while, fiddling with the switches.

No change.

Then I heard it; a noise somewhere between a "click" and a "clang." The car was turning its own lights on.

She didn't tell me the day she bought it, but the word "alero" (the official name for her car) in some areas of Central America means "bird trap."

This explains why, the first night that I drove it, I found myself locked in the car, unable to find the unlock button in the dark.

I did somehow manage to trick Psychocar into leaving its lights off. After turning the engine and lights off and on several times in every way I could think of, the clicking/clanging stopped.

"My turn," whispered my 2000 Incubus minivan.

The next day, the left headlight in my van refused to go on. This vehicle uses one bulb for both low-beam and high-beam lights. I assumed that part of the bulb was burned out, so I replaced it.

Same problem. The new bulb and the old bulb both only work when I activate the high beams.

My van has simply decided it only wants to use high-beam headlights. Apparently it is suffering from some kind of Napoleon complex and wants other vehicles to think it is bigger and badder than it really is.

This kind of bizarre machine uprising happens to me frequently. I once turned on the headlights to my 1984 Grand Marquis, which responded by flashing the right turn signal.

My automobile psychiatrist was never able to diagnose the reason for that problem. I have since taken this vehicle to a car cemetery, which I assume, it still haunts at night.

And it's not just cars. My years of working in newspapers and online has included solving -- or trying to solve -- a variety of computer-related mysteries.

I once saw a computer literally eat another one.

No, doctor, I am not making this up.

I was working on weekend in a newspaper office in the mid-1990s, in an era when we used flatbed scanners to copy text documents or scan photos (this of course was the pre-email era). The scanner was attached to a small Mac classic computer which our typesetter/proofreader used. I was scanning large photos and needed to use a more powerful computer. So I attached the large computer to the other port on the scanner, and did my work.

But before leaving the office, I noticed that the small computer was flashing the screen icon question mark, the infamous Macintosh signal for "Help! I can't find my brain!"

I figured that I would be blamed for this problem; I also figured if I didn't fix it, I would spend Monday morning typing things that would be much easier to scan.

So I began looking at the computer, trying to figure out what happened. I checked all of the connections, turned it off and on, and did all of the other things we learned to do when computers malfunction.

Still, nothing.

So, I got back on the big computer, and disconnected the scanner.

Then I saw it on the monitor of the big computer -- the icon representing the small computer.

I clicked on it.

Sure enough. It was all there.

All of the files, programs and documents that had been on the small computer were sucked through the cord to the scanner and into the other computer.

My large Mac had literally eaten the smaller one.

With a restore disk and a few hours of copying files, I was able to restore the small computer.

I never again let the big computer get close to any other Mac.

If you think I that story is crazy, it's only because the machines have gotten you, too.