- Inhabitants of the Italian village of Canneto di Caronia
- previously evacuated after domestic appliances staged an inflammatory
uprising - have made a fearful return to their homes.
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- The tiny hamlet earlier this year became the front line
of the war of annihilation between man and machine when normally docile
equipment - including TVs and fuse boxes - began to spontaneously combust.
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- To add to the terror, mobile phones rang without reason
and electronic car door locks became self-aware. After several house fires,
the residents moved out, and the scientists moved in. Despite extensive
investigations by bodies as diverse as the National Institute of Geophysics
and Volcanology, the National Research Centre and power company Enel, no
single plausible reason for the occurrences has been found. The theories
include a burst of electro-magnetic energy, or supercharged ions released
from a fault in the Earth's crust, or good old static electricity.
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- The head of Sicily's Civil Protection Agency, Tullio
Martella, admitted to the NY Times: "The cause of the fires seems
to have been static electric charges. What we don't understand is why there
were these static electric charges." He further conceded that: "It
is not certain that the fires are finished forever. They were episodic
to begin with."
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- Some villagers, however, are certain they know the cause:
mephistopholean intervention. Nino Pezzino, a 43-year-old insurance salesman
who has just rather reluctantly moved back to his house of terror, said:
"I'm Catholic. I believe in the Devil. I don't know why the Devil
is here. If it happens again, I'm bringing in the exorcist."
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- Pezzino will not stop at exorcism to purge his village
of this evil: "If we're going to do it, we have to do it right,"
he said. "In order to do it, you need a sacrifice for the immortal
gods, like a black goat or a black sheep. You have to dig a hole into the
ground, because this is serious."
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- It is indeed. And those of us who have been watching
the inexorable rise of the machines with growing alarm know it will take
more than a bottle of Holy water and sacrificial black goat to turn back
the tide.
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- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/28/satanic_cyberappliances/
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