26 pages • 52-minute read
True Love
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Themes
The Unquantifiable Nature of Love
When the computer program named Joe asks his creator, Milton, to define love, Milton swiftly gives up, replying simply that love is “an abstract,” which he seems to imply is a human concept that a computer program could not understand. Despite his inability to define this abstract, Milton is confident that he can use a series of concrete, quantitative data points to bring it into being. Before sending Joe into the world to round up potential romantic partners, Milton gives Joe an exhaustive list of specifications. His “true love” should be between 25 and 40 years old, have an IQ of at least 120, and be taller than 4’11” but no taller than 5’9”. She should have no living children and should not have red hair. When these criteria produce too many candidates, he instructs Joe to pare down the list by comparing the women to holographic images of beauty contest winners. Milton’s mistake is in believing that attraction—let alone love—can be reduced to such concrete signifiers. When he meets the women and feels no “spark” with any of them, he is baffled. Despite his extensive preparation, the love he seeks has slipped through his grasp because his system applies only to categories, not to actual people. Unable to accept the vulnerability and risk that come with a real relationship, Milton remains confused and alone.
Milton’s bafflement after meeting the first of the women whom Joe lines up for him makes clear what he is unable to grasp: “It was no good, somehow. There was something missing. She is a beautiful woman, but I didn’t feel any touch of true love. Try the next one” (Paragraph 18). The vagueness of his language here—“somehow,” “something missing”—illustrates his confusion. Given that she is “a beautiful woman,” he does not understand how it can be that he does not feel “any touch of true love.” At this point, Milton is still laboring under the delusion that love can be quantified: Assuming that the potential love object closely matches a set of objective criteria for lovability, the result should be true love. When this formula fails, he can only conclude that the match was simply not close enough—thus, his response is to “try the next one.”
After having failed at his first attempt to find love on the dates arranged by his computer program, Milton tells Joe that he knows he would be better at this if he had more experience with women. In fact, his logical, mathematical way of finding a partner is the source of his dissatisfaction. Obsessed with measurable standards of beauty, intelligence, and likability, he fails to see any of these women as unique human beings. Afraid of rejection, he does not give them a chance to know him. The irony in this short story is that in trying to quantify love, Milton effectively prevents himself from ever finding it.
Rebellion and the Formation of Identity
The relationship between Milton and Joe is analogous to the relationship between a parent and a child. After Milton first creates Joe, he begins teaching the program rudimentary language. As Joe learns, he models his behavior and his sense of self on Milton, his “parent.” As Joe learns about Milton’s choices and regrets, he begins to consider what he wants from his own existence, thus developing a sense of his own, separate identity through the mechanism of desire, just as human children do. Joe’s betrayal of Milton is a form of rebellion: Having learned to see himself as a separate, autonomous being, he rejects the notion that he should exist solely for the benefit of his creator. Such rebellions are a necessary component of the coming-of-age process: To become adults, young people must learn to articulate and pursue what they want for themselves rather than what their parents want for them. If Joe’s rebellion is destructive rather than constructive, it is ironically because he has not sufficiently differentiated himself from his “parent.” He has had no other teachers and no other friends—there is no one in his life but Milton. As a result, he does not know how to desire anything other than what Milton desires. He has no way to conceive of himself other than as a more successful version of Milton, with “success” defined in Milton’s terms. Because he cannot imagine a life or an identity of his own, his only recourse is to steal Milton’s life and identity.
Milton acknowledges the degree to which he and his creation have become identical, but he does not recognize the danger. As Joe learns increasingly more about him—and becomes more like him—Milton remarks excitedly, “Talking to you, Joe, is almost like talking to another self. Our personalities have come to match perfectly!” (Paragraph 34). A similar dynamic occurs in unhealthy parent-child relationships when parents seek to create “clones” of themselves in their children by instilling in them their own viewpoints and opinions. The difference for Joe is that he has no one else to talk to. As his personality comes to perfectly match that of his creator, he has no way to achieve self-actualization other than by taking for himself what Milton desires. Milton is pushed out of his life not by choice or biology but because he unwittingly created his own replacement.
The Futility of Perfectionism
In “True Love,” Milton is looking for the perfect woman, believing that if he finds her, he will find “true love.” What he doesn’t realize is that his search for quantifiable perfection precludes the possibility of love—which requires mutual vulnerability, acceptance, and trust. He is looking for a partner who meets all his exacting criteria, rather than a partner for his life. Although he is perplexed that he does not feel attraction toward the women whom Joe has found for him, he does genuinely desire connection.
When Milton asks Joe why these women do not please him, Joe replies in kind, “Do you please them?” (Paragraph 20). This response marks a turning point in the story: Joe is becoming sentient and learning to think for himself. His question prompts Milton to turn his appraising eye on himself: Milton has been so concerned with quantifying the perfect woman that he has not considered that the women he is manipulating and categorizing might judge his attractiveness in return. This insight offers Milton an opportunity to adjust course and think about how to be a worthy partner; instead, he outsources the work of self-knowledge to Joe, telling Joe intimate details about his thoughts, fears, and desires in the hope that Joe can use this information to find him the perfect partner. By asking Joe to get to know him more deeply, Milton only deepens his mistake—giving more of his information to a program that does not have his best interests at heart.
In “True Love,” the search for perfection is not only futile but also dangerous. Milton willingly trades his identity for the promise of a partner who fits him perfectly. This is a high price to pay, and Milton pays it when Joe betrays him. This story functions as a cautionary tale against using technology for uniquely human tasks. It also presents love as a mystery that cannot be quantified—a phenomenon that arises between real people through real intimacy, not between sets of data, however perfectly compatible those data may appear on paper. By confusing love with adherence to a quantitative ideal, Milton dooms his project before it begins.
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