A reclusive scientist, Jeff Peters (Malkovich), builds a robot, Ulysses, which looks exactly like himself and is set to go on a long-term space mission. Since the (real) scientist seems to lack all emotions, he is unable to program his (lack of) emotion into his automaton, and an eccentric woman is hired to "educate" the robot on human behavior. In the end, she falls in love--but is it with the robot or with Mr. Right?