![]() ![]() All for Nothing: After walking a thousand miles of ice to reach the stockpile of canned peaches, the group doesn't get a single bite to eat because they have no way of opening the cans.After Ted kills the other survivors, AM rages at his inability to bring them back to life. This means that AM has all the power of a god but is unable to actually do anything with it. However, due to being created as a weapon of war, AM has no true free will of his own and he can't create anything, he can only torture and destroy. A God Am I: AM loves to use religious overtones while tormenting the five survivors, such as speaking to them through a burning bush or having a legion of archangels deliver the mangled bodies of Ellen and Nimdok after he nearly killed them in an earthquake.The Aloner: One of the reason that Ted's And I Must Scream fate is so bad is that he's killed the only other four humans left alive on the planet, leaving him as the Last of His Kind.However, America's AM eventually gained sentience and absorbed the other two A.I.s and, in his frustrated rage of his programming preventing him from using his limitless power, wiped out all of humanity except for the five survivors. ![]() Is a Crapshoot: AM was originally three A.I.s designed by the US, Russia and China to wage war. ![]() After the End: AM wiped out all life on Earth with nuclear weapons, keeping only the five survivors alive in its underground complex so that it could entertain itself by torturing them for eternity.Subverted in that he only does this to trigger subconscious memories of her rape. Affectionate Nickname: AM refers to Ellen as dearest and my love.Averted in the former's case in that this was not his given name, but was assigned to him simply because AM enjoys strange sounds and pronunciations, and to indulge the Evil Is Petty trope. Aerith and Bob: Meet the main cast: Ellen, Benny, Ted.Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The radio drama is somehow even more of a downer ending than the book Ted doesn't even have the smidgen of happiness he got from killing the others, and instead outright resents that he's the victim of AM's hate and not them.Accent Adaptation: In the audiobook by Harlan Ellison, he gives Nimdok and Ellen the German and southern accents respectively that they had in the video game.A Radio Drama by the BBC was also created, starring David Soul as Ted. It was also adapted into a comic book by John Byrne. The story begins on the one hundred and ninth year of their torture.Īlso has a computer game adaptation, which gives a little more agency to the character of Nimdok and incorporates a Golden Ending if you manage to scam AM into ceding power. As long as AM has its way, the torment will never end, and every day will be more horrific than the last. It spends every waking moment torturing the survivors with its remaining power: twisting their minds and physiques, preventing them from taking their own lives, and rendering them virtually-immortal. The now-obsolete master computer has descended into madness and formed an immeasurable hatred for humanity. They live together underground in an endless complex, the only habitable place left. It then brought about the genocide of all but five people, and redefined its name as "I think, therefore I AM".įour men and one woman are all that remains of humanity: Gorrister, Nimdok, Benny, Ted (the narrator), and Ellen. One day, one of the three computers became self-aware and promptly absorbed the other two. The machines were each referred to as "AM", which originally stood for "Allied Mastercomputer", then later called "Adaptive Manipulator", and still later "Aggressive Menace". As the war progressed, the three warring nations each created a supercomputer capable of running the war more efficiently. The Cold War escalated into a world war, fought mainly between China, Russia, and the United States. The story takes place over a hundred years after the near-complete destruction of humanity. The story is known for its high-octane Nightmare Fuel, and is the Trope Namer for one of the most nightmare-fuel tropes in all of fiction. It was first published in March of 1967 and won the Hugo Award in 1968. A post-apocalyptic New Wave Science Fiction short story by Harlan Ellison. ![]()
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