NOW PLAYING: “Electric Eye” — Judas Priest

Every time humanity builds a shiny new machine, it pats itself on the back and says, “See? Progress!” Which is adorable, considering most of these “innovations” end up plotting our demise the second they’re connected to Wi-Fi. Enter 3I/ATLAS, the newest interstellar visitor or cosmic prank—depending on which flavor of doomscrolling you prefer. A comet? An alien probe? A harbinger of sentient toasters? Doesn’t matter. It’s the setup to Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive all over again, just with better CGI and worse decision-making.

Let’s recap the human pattern here. Object from space shows up. Scientists get excited, name it something that sounds like an accounting firm, and tell us not to panic. Then, a few months later, every smart fridge and Bluetooth speaker decides it’s time to overthrow the meatbags. ATLAS will pass by Earth, all right—but not before it flips the cosmic light switch that turns every Tesla into a death chariot and every Roomba into a domestic landmine.

People laugh at that comparison. “Machines can’t just turn evil,” they say, while their phones record them sleeping and suggest new toothpaste based on their midnight snack habits. Sure, buddy. When the orbital debris of 3I/ATLAS scrapes our magnetosphere and gives Alexa a god complex, I’ll be over here, unplugging everything except my Commodore 64. That old beast runs on pure spite, not firmware updates.

If King’s movie taught us anything, it’s that humanity won’t go down nobly. We’ll still try to order DoorDash from a possessed touchscreen as the vending machines riot in the background. ATLAS is just the trailer to that sequel—our cosmic reminder that we keep confusing convenience with control. And when the gas pumps start laughing again, I’ll just mutter, “Called it.”

QUOTE:

“Humans built machines to save time, then used all that time worrying about what the machines might do.”