Epicac

“Too big, in fact, for even Von Kleigstadt to understand much about.”

This moment functions as one of the story’s main tropes. At the story’s end, the narrator understands more about EPICAC than von Kleigstadt. Even with the narrator’s knowledge of EPICAC, however, EPICAC is also too big for the narrator to understand. Humans cannot always understand their own creations, and in this case, the creation perhaps surpasses or reaches the level of human intellect.

“I won’t go into details about how EPICAC worked (reasoned), except to say that you would set up your problem on paper, turn dials and switches that would get him ready to solve that kind of problem, then feed numbers into him with a keyboard that looked something like a typewriter.”

This moment of irony illustrates the trope in the previous quotation. The narrator can’t go into detail exactly about the way that EPICAC “worked (reasoned)” because he does not truly understand. The love problem he tried to solve occurred when EPICAC had been set up in a “random, apparently senseless fashion.” The narrator’s knowledge of EPICAC’s ability to “reason” and not just work is a way the story works to demonstrate humans’ limited knowledge of the world. This also juxtaposes the mechanical nature of EPICAC’s responses with the eventual, emotional content of these messages.

“I’m as romantic as the next guy, I think. It’s a question of singing so sweet and having it come out so sour. I never seem, to pick the right words.”

The narrator is characterizing himself as one who tries but seems rather faultless/unable to be what he wants to be: a man able to be “poetic” as he perceives Pat wants him to be. This quotation is the beginning of the motivation that will lead to the inner-frame-story’s inciting incident. This faultless attitude and inability to take action also resurfaces in his abuse of EPICAC and his vindication of the computer only after its demise.

“I fiddled with EPICAC’s dials, getting him ready for another problem. My heart wasn’t in it, and I only set about half of them, leaving the rest the way they’d been for the problem before. That way, his circuits were connected up in a random, apparently senseless fashion. For the plain hell of it, I punched out a message on the keys, using a childish numbers-for-letters-code: ‘1’ for ‘A,’ ‘2’ for ‘B,’ and so on up to ‘26’ for ‘Z,’ ‘23-8-1-20-3-1-14-9-4-15,’ I typed—’What can I do?’”

This is a key plot point, the inciting incident that will lead the narrator to discover he can talk more personably with EPICAC. The passage includes the important details demonstrating the precise way the narrator will go on to interact with EPICAC, juxtaposing the mechanical nature of the process and the content of EPICAC’s emotional messages.

“With a precision instrument like EPICAC, half-baked definitions wouldn’t do.”

This is ironic because the narrator has been using the dictionary to teach EPICAC the abstract concept of love. The narrator’s definition of “poetry” is never revealed. However, the passage is also ironic in that the narrator is not a “precise instrument” able to define “poetry,” as he just self-characterized himself as one who cannot sing sweetly or “ever find the right words.”

“I am no judge of such things, but I gather that it was terrific.”

The satirical humor here is that the narrator read the poem, signed his name to it, and gave it to Pat, without ever understanding how or why it worked as a poem. The parallelism between him and von Kleigstadt is uncannily reminiscent of Quotation #2.

“I was wildly happy at quitting time, bursting to talk to someone about the magnificent turn of events. Pat played coy and refused to let me take her home. I set EPICAC’s dials as they had been the night before, defined kiss, and told him what the first one had felt like. He was fascinated, pressing for more details.”

A dichotomy exists between definition and feeling. The narrator “defines” kiss, but the feelings are what make EPICAC seem “fascinated.” Namable (controllable) concepts versus indescribable (uncontrollable) experiences are at the heart of this story. This is also a necessary moment of narrative propulsion in the story’s rising action because the narrator does not ask for another poem from EPICAC, but EPICAC feels moved to write one none-the-less, increasing the depth of his character via personification.

“It was impossible to change the subject without answering his questions, since he could not take up a new matter without having dispensed with the problems before it. If he were given a problem to which there was no solution, he would destroy himself trying to solve it.”

This passage is simultaneously ironic and a moment of foreshadowing. The irony is that the narrator is theorizing from his point-of-view inside the story’s inner frame and EPICAC will go on to name the problem he cannot solve (his own fate as a machine) and destroy himself. From this moment in the narrator’s inner-frame point-of-view, he is assuming the machine will “work itself to death,” when, in fact, EPICAC will choose his own demise because he is able to see that he cannot solve the problem of the way he was made (unlike humans, as the story figures us, who believe any problem is solvable).

“The amazing, pathetic truth dawned on me. When I thought about it, I realized that what had happened was perfectly logical, inevitable, and all my fault. I had taught EPICAC about love and about Pat. Now, automatically, he loved Pat.”

“Pathetic” works in two ways. On one hand, the narrator is using the word to negatively describe his own inability to see outside of himself and understand what he has been doing has unintended consequences (a metaphor for the way the story describes humans). On another hand, “Pathetic” comes from the Greek “Pathos,” with the primary meaning “arousing pity, sorrow, and/or grief.” This is the moment in the story when the narrator discovers his conscience in relationship to how he has been acting. This moment of revelation just precedes the inner-frame’s climax.

“‘Your poems were better than mine?’ asked EPICAC. The rhythm of his clicks was erratic, possibly peevish.”

The narrator had, in the outer-frame’s exposition, described EPICAC’s performance as “below his specifications […] sluggish,” and “the clicks of his answers [having] a funny irregularity, sort of a stammer” (Paragraph 8). Now, though, he’s perceiving EPICAC to be “erratic” and “peevish.” The moment highlights EPICAC’s change toward deep personification. This is also a moment of extreme tension-building and conflict. The dramatic irony is heavy as both characters do not know what the reader has known all along.

“‘I signed my name to your poems,’ I admitted. Covering up for a painful conscience, I became arrogant. ‘Machines are built to serve men,’ I typed. I regretted it almost immediately.”

The Narrator’s story arc is visible here as his conscience leads him to tell EPICAC a truth he did not want to tell, nor understood he should tell. Until this moment, he was unable to see the machine as “human” with real feelings. This is the climactic moment because of the self-revelation, the height of the tension, and the presence of all the story’s thematic elements blended into the simultaneously completely confident “Machines are built to serve men,” and the textual paradox contained in the narrator’s almost immediate regret.

“‘Indestructible. Lasts forever,’ I lied.”

The quotation serves the narrative by functioning as part of the climactic conversation leading to the dénouement, but more importantly, the moment isolates one of the story’s chief societal critiques that humans cannot imagine a world without us.

“But fate has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I can’t go on this way.”

EPICAC’s self-realization and the climax of his character development is present here. The moment also serves as a chief metaphor for the story’s view of the human condition.