Madam, I'm Adam

Man, woman, and robot in Ian McEwan’s “Machines Like Me.”

- Julian Lucas

Charlie Friend is thirty-two. A former electronics whiz kid, he has squandered his youth on dilettantish studies in physics and anthropology, followed by a series of botched get-rich quick schemes. His parents are dead, his friends (if they exist) go unmentioned, and his employment consists of forex trading on an old laptop in his two-room apartment. He seems to leave home only to buy chocolate at a local newsstand or, once, after noticing a pain in his foot, to have an ingrown toenail removed, an apt literalization of his enervating self-involvement. Perhaps out of some desire for correction, Charlie sells his mother’s house to finance the purchase of Adam, one of twenty-five cutting-edge androids built to serve as an “intellectual sparring partner, friend and factotum.” The impulsive slacker is all too ready to exchange his birthright for a mess of wattage.

In much the same way that some singles adopt dogs, Charlie uses Adam to court his upstairs neighbor, Miranda, a graduate student ten years his junior. The gamesome yet secretive daughter of a famous writer, she studies history, informed by a postmodern suspicion of “truth” that winks at coming narrative vexations. A relationship forms after Charlie introduces Miranda to Adam and invites her to co-author the robot’s personality. Kind, eager, and brilliant, Adam becomes the young couple’s “ultimate plaything”—and, once he takes over Charlie’s day trading, the household’s golden goose. Before long, Charlie and Miranda are considering parenthood and searching for a suitable nest. Man, woman, and android third wheel, the trio is Eden by way of Apple.