The narrator is the story’s protagonist. The narrator remains unnamed because the story is told in first-person, and none of the other characters refer to him by name. The narrator begins the story saying he “wants to vindicate EPICAC,” because, “maybe he didn’t do what the Brass wanted him to, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t noble and great and brilliant” (Paragraph 2).

The narrator, a mathematician working the evening shift with the computer EPICAC, is a round character with a story arc that challenges The Ethics of Friendship and Love. The narrator speaks in a consistent colloquial dialect. He refers to the military higher-ups as “the Brass,” and he uses plain syntax with a mixed diction (words like “hell” and “dammit” alongside “protoplasm” and “arrogant”) to make him accessible to the reader. This accessibility makes his love story (his courting Pat) the kind of story anyone in love could relate to. The narrator has two wants in the frame story and in the story told within the frame. His want in the internal story is to win Pat’s love and hand in marriage, both of which he gets.