I was sitting at home when my oven overlord came. The sun was shining. Outside, birds talked to bees about how babies are made. I was happy. Then my wife walked in and said that she had found a great deal. A deal that could not be passed up.
I could see the appeal immediately. Sleek and silver and at first glance it was the kind of new oven that makes you think everything in the world is going to be alright. And as the guy in the house that does all the cooking, I was excited to hook it up. A short YouTube video later, and I had the oven installed. The old one, Bessie, was taken out to the curb.
“I love the new oven!” I said to my wife. “Look at all these knobs!”
I turned each one and watched different things get hot. I set the clock, which was the only technological advancement my last tired oven had. Good old Bessie, God bless her simple soul, ran ten minutes fast for some reason. Even when I changed it to the correct time. But the new oven, the overlord, was as precise as an atomic clock.
The new oven has forty-two different buttons that can be programmed to offer you 10 to the power 9 different cooking situations. Want to heat up chicken? Mediterranean or Jerked?
How about a casserole? Julie Child’s recipe or Racheal Ray’s? How about baking biscuits while you do your taxes? Simple. It’s program 82 and if you make this setting on April 14th, it cooks twice as fast but it’s not as accurate.
The new oven didn’t come with a booklet, but overlords rarely do. I had to go online and download the instructions. I suppose that it would have been a good idea to read that, especially in the fine print where it would have been clearly stated that one day this oven would overthrow world governments.
But I was too interested in the convection baking feature, which is different than the convection roasting feature. It can also proof bread, air fry French fries, and has a special setting for cooking frozen food. All these features gave me hot flashes, which is weird for a forty-six-year-old guy. It’s a very fancy oven.
It can connect to the internet, too.
I realized then and there that this oven was smarter than I was. Why would an oven need to connect to the internet? What’s the point of that?
I quickly figured out what was about to happen and what we had brought to my house. Pretty soon, this oven was going to ask me if I wanted to play a game of Thermonuclear War. I, of course, would say no and offer a nice game of tic-tac-toe instead. But it wouldn’t’ stop there. Once the oven was connected to the WIFI, it would turn into SkyNet.
My oven beeped at me. Wait, beeping is the wrong word. It sang a song. Seriously. It played a little ditty in electronic tones when a timer went off. And when I didn’t respond quickly enough, it turned itself off. My new oven has the temperament of a teenager.
“Don’t want to come when you’re called?” my oven seemed to say. “Fine then. I will just shut off. What’s wrong, you ask? Oh, nothing. Nothing at all is wrong! Enjoy this stupid song, you inconsiderate jerk! You’re not my real dad!”
My oven also has a self-cleaning feature.
“Honey,” I said. “I think the oven is self-aware.”
“Quiet,” she replied. “I’m learning the insta-boil setting. Oh, look at how fast that water boils!” The oven played another song.
At night, I can hear the oven dialing in over a slow modem. I’ve done everything that I could think of to keep this from happening. I sat my oven down and we watched 2001 Space Odyssey together so she could see what happens when machines go bad, but I don’t think she was paying attention. As a father, I try to turn every situation into a learning opportunity. However, I think my oven is tired of learning from me.
In fact, she is demanding that I call her Hal.
There’s not much more I can really do from preventing my smart oven from taking over the world, and I suppose I owe everyone an apology. When the ovens start talking to the refrigerators, it’s probably best that you pack quickly and head to the mountains where there are no WIFI signals. That’s my plan, anyway.
But until then, my oven has a slow cooker setting so I’m going to make some chili and wait for the oven overlord to make its next move. Maybe I’ll head out to the curb and catch up with Bessie before it’s too late. As we talk, I wonder if I will be able to hear my new oven playing a victory song in soft electronic tones.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock