EPICAC
EPICAC covered almost the entire fourth floor of the physics building
at Wayndotte College. He was seven tons of electronic tubes , switches ,
etc.
I won’t go into details about how EPICAC worked expect to say that you
would set up you problem on paper , turn dials and switches that would get
him ready to solve it. The answers came out Typed on a paper ribbon.
The minute EPICAC’s last tube was in place , he was put to work sixteen
hours a day with two operators working eight hours each. It didn’t take
long to find out that he was a good bit below his specifications . But we
went ahead and used EPICAC anyway. The operator who worked with me was Pat
Callaham, a brown- eyed blond mathematician . I loved Pat and Wanted to
marry her , but she wouldn’t marry me because she said I wasn’t poetic.
One night after Pat had gone home , just as a joke , I typed a message
for the computer: “ What can I do?” EPICAC responded : “ What’s the
trouble?” I was so surprised that I laughed. Playfully I typed , “ My girl
doesn’t love me.”
“What’s love ? What’s girl?” asked EPICAC.
I defined love and girl and told him that I wasn’t getting either
because I wasn’t poetic. That got us on the subject of poetry which I
defined for him.
“Is this poetry? He asked. He began to working again. The paper ribbon
was coming out onto the floor at a great speed. I stayed there until
morning decoding. When the sun came over the horizon, I had rewritten and
signed my name to a too – hundred – eighty – line poem entitled “ To Pat” ,
I put it on the Pat’s desk and went home.
Pat was crying over the poem when I came to work the next evening.
“ It’s beautiful,” she said , and she kissed me.
When I was along again I switched on the computer. EPICAC was the first
to ask me a Question. “ Tell me how she look. Did she like the poem?”
It was impossible to change the subject without answering him, since he
could not take up a new matter without having solved the problems before
him. If he was given a problem to which there was no solution, he would
ruin himself trying to solve it.
I told him what Pat looked like and assured him that his poem was a big
success.
“She wants to get married,” I added.
“Good.” said EPICAC. “I’ll marry her.”
I understood . I had told EPICAC about love , about Pat. Now ,
automatically, he loved Pat . Sadly I told him ,”She loves me. She wants to
marry me.”
“Your poem was better than mine?” EPICAC asked.
“I signed my name to your poem,” I admitted . “ Machines are built to
serve men.” “Women can’t love machines,” I typed.
“Why not?”
“That’s fate.”
“Oh,” said EPICAC’s paper ribbon. He said no more, but his tubes burned
brightly, showing that he was thinking about fate.
The next morning a telephone call from Dr. Ormand woke me up. He told
me the terrible news that EPICAC was ruined. When I arrived at EPICAC’s
room I found there wasn’t enough left of him to add two and two. On the
floor I saw a paper ribbon on which the following was written:
“I don’t want to be a machine . I want Pat to love me. But fate made me
a machine. That it the only problem I cannot solve. I cannot do on this
way. Good luck, my friend. Love Pat well. I am going to disappear out of
your lives forever. You will find on this ribbon a wedding present from
your friend EPICAC.”
I had loved and won. EPICAC had loved and lost. But before he died, he
had done all he could to make my marriage a happy one. EPICAC left me
anniversary poems for Pat – enough for the next five hundred years!
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