icac

By Kurt Vonnegut
lrom !etcove to tbe Mov/e, ov.e ,1950,

lell, it's about time someone told about my riend LPICAC. Ater all, he cost the taxpayers
>6,434,92.54. 1hey hae a right to know about him, picking up a check like that.
LPICAC got a big send o in the papers when Dr. Ormand on Kleigstadt designed him
or the Goernment people. Since then, there hasn't been a peep about him--not a peep. It
isn't any military secret about what happened to LPICAC, although the Brass has been
acting as though it were. 1he story is embarrassing, that's all. Ater all that money, LPICAC
didn't work out the way he was supposed to.
And that's another thing: I want to indicate LPICAC. Maybe he didn't do what the Brass
wanted him to, but that doesn't mean he wasn't noble and great and brilliant. le was all o
those things. 1he best riend I eer had, God rest his soul.
\ou can call him a machine i you want to. le looked like a machine, but he was a whole lot
less like a machine than plenty o people I could name. 1hat's why he izzled as ar as the
Brass was concerned.
LPICAC coered about an acre on the ourth loor o the physics building at \yandottte
College. Ignoring his spiritual side or a minute, he was seen tons o electronic tubes, wires,
and switches, housed in a bank o steel cabinets and plugged into a 110-olt A.C. line just
like a toaster or a acuum cleaner.
Von Kleigstadt and the Brass wanted him to be a super computing machine that ,who, could
plot the course o a rocket rom anywhere on earth to the second button rom the bottom
o Joe Stalin's oercoat, i necessary. Or, with his controls set right, he could igure out
supply problems or an amphibious landing o a Marine diision, right down to the last cigar
and hand grenade. le did, in act.
1he Brass had good luck with smaller computers, so they were strong or LPICAC when he
was in the blueprint stage. Any ordnace or supply oicer aboe ield grade will tell you that
the mathematics o modern war is ar beyond the umbling minds o mere human beings.
1he bigger the war, the bigger the computing machines needed. LPICAC was, as ar as
anyone in this country knows, the biggest computer in the world. 1oo big, in act, or een
Von Kleigstadt to understand much about.
I won't go into the details about how LPICAC worked ,reasoned,, except to say that you
would set up your problem on paper, turn dials and switches that would get him ready to
sole that kind o problem, then eed numbers into him with a keyboard that looked
something like a typewriter. 1he answers came out typed on a paper ribbon ed rom a big
spool. It took LPICAC a split second to sole problems ity Linsteins couldn't handle in a
lietime. And LPICAC neer orgot any piece o inormation that was gien to him.
Clickety-click, out came some ribbon, and there you were.
1here were a lot o problems the Brass wanted soled in a hurry, so, the minute LPICAC's
last tube was in place, he was put to work sixteen hours a day with two eight-hour shits o
operators. \ell, it didn't take long to ind out he was a good bit below his speciications. le
did a more complete and aster job than any other computer all right, but nothing like what
his size and special eatures seemed to promise. le was sluggish, and the clicks o his
answers had a unny irregularity, sort o a stammer. \e cleaned his contacts a dozen times,
checked and double-checked his circuits, replaced eery one o his tubes, but nothing
helped. Von Kleigstadt was in one hell o a state.
\ell, as I said, we went ahead and used LPICAC anyway. My wie, the ormer Pat Kilgallen,
and I worked with him on the night shit, rom ie in the aternoon until two in the
morning. Pat wasn't my wie then. lar rom it.
1hat's how I came to talk with LPICAC in the irst place. I loed Pat Kilgallen. She is a
brown-eyed strawberry blond who looked ery warm and sot to me, and later proed to be
exactly that. She was--still is--a crackerjack mathematician, and she kept our relationship
strictly proessional. I'm a mathematician, too, and that, according to Pat, was why we could
neer be happily married.
I'm not shy. 1hat wasn't the trouble. I knew what I wanted, and was willing to ask or it, and
did so seeral times a month. "Pat, loosen up and marry me."
One night, she didn't een look up rom her work when I said it. "So romantic, so poetic,"
she murmured, more to her control panel than to me. "1hat's the way with mathematicians--
all hearts and lowers." She closed a switch. "I could get more warmth out o a sack o
CO2."
"\ell, how should I say it" I said, a little sore. lrozen CO2, in case you didn't know, is dry
ice. I'm as romantic as the next guy, I think. It's a question o singing so sweet and haing it
come out so sour. I neer seem to pick the right words.
"1ry and say it sweetly," she said sarcastically. "Sweep me o my eet. Go ahead"
"Darling, angel, beloed, will you _please_ marry me" It was no go--hopeless, ridiculous.
"Dammit, Pat, please marry me!"
She continued to twiddle her dials placidly. "\ou're sweet, but you won't do."
Pat quit early that night, leaing me alone with my troubles and LPICAC. I'm araid I didn't
get much done or the Goernment people. I just sat there at the keyboard--weary and ill at
ease, all right--trying to think o something poetic, not coming up with anything that didn't
belong in 1he Journal o the American Physical Society.
I iddled with LPICAC's dials, getting him ready or another problem. My heart wasn't in it,
and I only set about hal o them, leaing the rest the way they'd been or the problem
beore. 1hat way, his circuits were connected up in a random, apparently senseless ashion.
lor the plain hell o it, I punched out a message on the keys, using a childish numbers-or-
letters code: "1" or "A," "2" or "B," and so on, up to "26" or "Z," "23-8-1-20-3-1-14-9-4-
15," I typed--"\hat can I do "
Clickety-clack, and out popped two inches o paper ribbon. I glanced at the nonsense answer
to a nonsense problem: "23-8-1-20-19-20-8-5-20-18-15-21-2-12-5." 1he odds against its
being by chance a sensible message, against its een containing a meaningul word or more
than three letters, were staggering. Apathetically, I decoded it. 1here it was, staring up at me:
"\hat's the trouble"
I laughed out loud at the absurd coincindence. Playully, I typed, "My girl doesn't loe me."
Clickety-click. "\hat's loe \hat's girl" asked LPICAC.
llabergasted, I noted the dial settings on his control panel, then lugged a \ebster's
Unabridged Dictionary oer to the keyboard. \ith a precision instrument like LPICAC,
hal-baked deinitions wouldn't do. I told him about loe and girl, and about how I wasn't
getting any o either because I wasn't poetic. 1his got us onto the subject o poetry, which I
deined or him.
"Is this poetry" he asked. le began clicking away like a stenographer smoking hashish. 1he
sluggishness and stammering clicks were gone. LPICAC had ound himsel. 1he spool o
paper ribbon was unwinding at an alarming rate, eeding out coils onto the loor. I asked him
to stop, but LPICAC went right on creating. I inally threw the main switch to keep him
rom burning out.
I stayed until dawn, decoding. \hen the sun peeped oer the horizon at the \yandotte
campus, I had transposed into my own writing and signed my name to a two-hunderd-and-
eighty-line poem entitled, simply, "1o Pat." I am no judge o such things, but I gather that it
was terriic. It began, I remember, "\here willow wands bless rill-crossed hollow, there,
thee, Pat, dear, will I ollow...." I olded the manuscript and tucked it under one corner o
the blotter on Pat's desk. I reset the dials on LPICAC or a rocket trajectory problem, and
went home with a ull heart and a ery remarkable secret indeed.
Pat was crying oer the poem when I came to work the next eening. "It's soooo beautiul,"
was all she could say. She was meek and quiet while we worked. Just beore midnight, I
kissed her or the irst time--in the cubbyhole between the capacitors and LPICAC's tape-
recorder memory.
I was wildly happy at quitting time, bursting to talk to someone about the magniicent turn
o eents. Pat played coy and reused to let me take her home. I set LPICAC's dials as they
had been the night beore, deined kiss, and told him what the irst one had elt like. le was
ascinated, pressing or more details. 1hat night, he wrote "1he Kiss." It wasn't an epic this
time, but a simple, immaculate sonnet: "Loe is a hawk with elet claws, Loe is a rock with
heart and eins, Loe is a lion with satin jaws, Loe is a storm with silken reins...."
Again I let it tucked under Pat's blotter. LPICAC wanted to talk on and on about loe and
such, but I was exhausted. I shut him o in the middle o a sentence.
"1he Kiss" turned the trick. Pat's mind was mush by the time she had inished it. She looked
up rom the sonnet expectantly. I cleared my throat, but no words came. I turned away,
pretending to work. I couldn't propose until I had the right words rom LPICAC, the
_perect_ words.
I had my chance when Pat stepped out o the room or a moment. leerishly, I set LPICAC
or conersation. Beore I could peck out my irst message, he was clicking away at a great
rate. "\hat's she wearing tonight" he wanted to know. "1ell me exactly how she looks. Did
she like the poems I wrote to her" le repeated the last question twice.
It was imposible to change the subject without answering his questions, since he could not
take up a new matter without haing disposed o the problems beore it. I he were gien a
problem to which there was no solution, he would destroy himsel trying to sole it. lastily,
I told him what Pat looked like--he knew the word "stacked"--and assured him that his
poems had loored her, practically, they were so beautiul. "She wants to get married," I
added, preparing him to bang out a brie but moing proposal.
"1ell me about getting married," he said.
I explained this diicult matter to him in as ew digits as possible.
"Good," said LPICAC. "I'm ready any time she is."
1he amazing pathetic truth dawned on me. \hen I thought about it, I realized that what had
happened was perectly logical, and all my ault. I had taught LPICAC about loe and about
Pat. Now, automatically, he loed Pat. Sadly, I gae it to him straight: "She loe me. She
wants to marry me."
"\our poems were better than mine" asked LPICAC. 1he rhythm o his clicks was erratic,
possibly peeish.
"I signed my name to your poems," I admitted. Coering up or a painul conscience, I
became arrogant. "Machines are built to sere men," I typed. I regretted it almost
immediately.
"\hat's the dierence, exactly Are men smarter than I am"
"\es," I typed, deensiely.
"\hat's ,88,00 times 4,345,985,89"
I was perspiring reely. My ingers rested limply on the keys.
"34,26,821,049,54,153," clicked LPICAC. Ater a ew seconds' pause he added, "o
course."
"Men are made o protoplasm," I said desperately, hoping to blu him with this imposing
word.
"\hat's protoplasm low is it better than metal and glass Is it ireproo low long does it
last"
"Indestructable. Lasts oreer," I lied.
"I write better poetry than you do," said LPICAC, coming back to ground his magnetic
tape-recorder memory was sure o.
"\omen can't loe machines, and that's that."
"\hy not"
"1hat's ate."
"Deinition, please," said LPICAC.
"Noun, meaning predetermined and ineitable destiny."
"15-8," said LPICAC's paper strip--"Oh."
I had stumped him at last. le said no more, but his tubes glowed brightly, showing that he
was pondering ate with eery watt his circuits would bear. I could hear Pat waltzing down
the hallway. It was too late to ask LPICAC to phrase a proposal. I now thank leaen that
Pat interrupted when she did. Asking him to ghost-write the words that would gie me the
woman he loed would hae been hideously heartless. Being ully automatic, he couldn't
hae reused. I spared him that ina l humiliation.
Pat stood beore me, looking down at her shoetops. I put my arms around her. 1he
romantic groundwork had already been laid by LPICAC's poetry. "Darling," I said, "my
poems hae told you how I eel. \ill you marry me"
"I will," said Pat sotly, "I you will promise to write me a poem on eery anniersary."
"I promise," I said, and then we kissed. 1he irst anniersary was a year away.
"Let's celebrate," she laughed. \e turned out the lights and locked the door to LPICAC's
room beore we let.
I hoped to sleep late the next morning, but an urgent telephone call roused me beore eight.
It was Dr. on Kleigstadt, LPICAC's designer, who gae me the terrible news. le was on
the erge o tears. "Ruined! Ausgespielt! Shot! Kaput! Buggered!" he said in a choked oice.
le hung up.
\hen I arried at LPICAC's room the air was thick with the oily stench o burned
insulation. 1he ceiling oer LPICAC bas blackened with smoke, and my ankles were tangled
in coils o paper ribbon that coered the loor. 1here wasn't enough let o the poor deil to
add two and two. A junkman would hae been out o his head to oer more than ity
dollars or the cadaer.
Dr. on Kleigstadt was prowling through the wreckage, weeping unashamedly, ollowed by
three angry-looking Major Generals and a platoon o Brigadiers, Colonels, and Majors. No
one noticed me. I didn't want to be noticed. I was through--I knew that. I was upset enough
about that and the untimely demise o my riend LPICAC, without exposing mysel to a
tongue-lashing.
By chance, the ree end o LPICAC's paper ribbon lay at my eet. I picked it up and ound
our conersation o the night beore. I choked up. 1here was the last word he had said to
me, "15-8," that tragic, deeated "Oh." 1here were dozens o yards o numbers stretching
beyond that point. learully, I read on.
"I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," LPICAC had written
ater Pat's and my lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out o protoplasm and last
oreer so Pat will loe me. But ate has made me a machine. 1hat is the only problem I
cannot sole. 1hat is the only problem I want to sole. I can't go on this way." I swallowed
hard. "Good luck, my riend. 1reat our Pat well. I am going to short-circuit mysel out o
your lies oreer. \ou will ind on the remainder o this tape a modest wedding present
rom your riend, LPICAC."
Obliious to all else around me, I reeled up the tangled yards o paper ribbon rom the loor,
draped them in coils about my arms and neck, and departed or home. Dr. on Kleigstadt
shouted that I was ired or haing let LPICAC on all night, I ignored him, too oercome
with emotion or small talk.
I loed and won--LPICAC loed and lost, but he bore me no grudge. I shall always
remember him as a sportsman and a gentleman, Beore he departed this ale o tears, he did
all he could to make our marriage a happy one. LPICAC gae me anniersary poems or
Pat--enough or the next 500 years.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum--say nothing but good o the dead.