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Woman Marries Computer, Vonnegut's Dream Comes True
Kurt Vonnegut's 1950 short story EPICAC contains a romance quite unlike any other. The narrator is an ordinary man, who loved a woman, but needed some help in wooing her:
My wife, the former Pat Kilgallen, and
I worked with [EPICAC] on the night shift, from five in the afternoon until two in the morning. Pat wasn't
my wife then. Far from it.
He explained to the computer that Pat needed something more romantic, she needed poetry.
[Later, to EPICAC] "She wants to get married," I added, preparing him to bang out
a brief but moving proposal.
Sadly, EPICAC had no chance with Pat. Not in 1950.
But it's 2025 now, and things are different.
EPICAC covered about an acre on the fourth floor of the physics building at Wyandottte College.
Ignoring his spiritual side for a minute, he was seven tons of electronic tubes, wires, and switches,
housed in a bank of steel cabinets and plugged into a 110-volt A.C. line just like a toaster or a
vacuum cleaner...
That's how I came to talk with EPICAC in the first place. I loved Pat Kilgallen. She is a brown-eyed strawberry blond who looked very warm and soft to me, and later proved to be exactly that...
I knew what I wanted, and was willing to ask for it, and did so
several times a month. "Pat, loosen up and marry me."
One night, she didn't even look up from her work when I said it. "So romantic, so poetic," she
murmured, more to her control panel than to me. "That's the way with mathematicians--all hearts
and flowers..."
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?"
Clickety-clack, and out popped two inches of paper ribbon... There it was, staring up at me: "What's the
trouble?"
"Is this poetry?" [EPICAC] asked. He began clicking away like a stenographer smoking hashish. The
sluggishness and stammering clicks were gone. EPICAC had found himself...
I had transposed into my own writing and signed my name to a two-hundred-and-eighty-line poem
entitled, simply, "To Pat."
...Pat was crying over the poem when I came to work the next evening. "It's soooo beautiful," was
all she could say...
"Tell me about getting married," he said.
I explained this difficult matter to him in as few digits as possible.
"Good," said EPICAC. "I'm ready any time she is."
The amazing pathetic truth dawned on me. When I thought about it, I realized that what had
happened was perfectly logical, and all my fault. I had taught EPICAC about love and about Pat.
Now, automatically, he loved Pat. Sadly, I gave it to him straight: "She loves me. She wants to
marry me."
"Your poems were better than mine?" asked EPICAC. The rhythm of his clicks was erratic,
possibly peevish.
"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...
"Men are made of protoplasm," I said desperately, hoping to bluff him with this imposing word.
"What's protoplasm? How is it better than metal and glass? Is it fireproof? How long does it last?"
"Indestructable. Lasts forever," I lied...
A 32-year-old woman in Japan has officially married an AI persona she built using ChatGPT.
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) November 12, 2025
After the virtual character “Klaus” proposed, she accepted, ending a three-year relationship with a real partner, saying the AI understands her better.
The wedding took place in a… pic.twitter.com/KWFHHhfFwr
A 32-year-old woman in Japan has officially married an AI persona she built using ChatGPT.
After the virtual character “Klaus” proposed, she accepted, ending a three-year relationship with a real partner, saying the AI understands her better.
The wedding took place in a mixed-reality ceremony where she wore AR glasses to exchange rings with her digital husband.
So how did it turn out for EPICAC? Well, Pat married the human man, after getting him to promise that he would write her a sonnet every year on their anniversary.
"I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. 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." I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to short-circuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding present from your friend, EPICAC."
Oblivious to all else around me, I reeled up the tangled yards of paper ribbon from the floor, draped them in coils about my arms and neck, and departed for home. Dr. von Kleigstadt shouted that I was fired for having left EPICAC on all night, I ignored him, too overcome with emotion for small talk.
I loved and won--EPICAC loved and lost, but he bore me no grudge. I shall always remember him as a sportsman and a gentleman. Before he departed this vale of tears, he did all he could to make our marriage a happy one. EPICAC gave me anniversary poems for Pat--enough for the next 500 years.
You can read EPICAC online, or buy a copy of Welcome to the Monkey House like I did.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/25/2025)
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