Chapter 1: Locating the Machines

The car lurches forward in glorious black and white, pushing a man to the edge of the pool that will soon become his watery grave. No driver is seen. No remote device deployed from an unknown assailant. Indeed, the machine operates independently. For Bartlett Finchley, the machines finally took over and consumed him: a horrific end to a man who loathed technology in all of its guises. “The Thing About Machines,” an iconic episode from The Twilight Zone (1960), is an excellent representation of the fear that machines can produce in the imagination of their operators. In this particular story, Rod Serling takes us on a nightmare voyage in which the machines literally drive Finchley insane: his car without a driver, sociopathic electric razors inch down the stairs toward him, and typewriters typing gruesome death threats. The television takes on a sinister flare, informing Finchley to leave the house or risk bodily injury. The episode reads like a nightmarish technological world where control has been lost to the machines we have created: clocks that cannot even display the correct hour, for example. Machines are not just pervasive, but they are also homicidal, waiting for the perfect opportunity to usurp their creators. Through this particular episode, machines appear to transcend the limits of, and eventually destroy, their creators. Slave has finally turned upon master.