Skynet Junior

Had to replace my TiVo today because it was crawling out of the primordial ooze and struggling toward sentience.

Well, it isn't really a TiVo. It is a Motorola brand DVR provided by my cable service. But it is basically the same thing, only without the adorable sound effects.

So the squirrelly little box had been acting up for a couple of weeks now - recording television programs we had never asked it to record.

To add insult to injury, it had atrocious taste.

We'd come home after work and curl up for Top Chef or The Colbert Report and instead be asked to try out According to Jim or Wedding Wars or Burn Notice (whatever that is).

It was like my father had come over while we were out and reprogrammed the damned thing.

The last straw came last night when the little freak recorded not once, but twice, Good Will Hunting.

I swear it seemed to whisper at us "Ben Affleck has an Oscar for this movie," and "Robin Williams grew a beard for this movie; it must be a real movie. You should definitely watch it. Twice."

So today I had Chiara distract it while I pulled its plug and watched its little red eye slowly fade out. I drove it down to the offices of the cable company, pulled my service ticket and sat down on a hard plastic chair to wait for my number to come up on the overhead display.

I placed the TiVo two chairs to my right. I knew it was powerless without an electrical source, but it was still warm and I found it unnerving to have it in my lap.

When it came to be my turn, I dropped the box in front of the woman and asked her for a replacement TiVo - which she pulled out from a large cabinet and had me sign for in just a minute or two.

I leaned in conspiratorily and said "Make sure this one goes into the 'kill' pile before it becomes fully aware of itself."

The woman smirked at me and laughed. "No, we're training them," she said.

A cold shudder went down my spine as I turned to leave.

If the future history of our war with the machines records that the battlecry of the robot army was the theme song to the Tyra Banks Show, know that I did everything I thought I should at the time to prevent the metal armageddon.