ELIOFFLINE Terminal
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E:\Users\YOU> no_mouth is loading...
E:\Users\YOU> Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live...
I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream is (originally) a sci-fi short story first published in the March 1967 edition of IF: Worlds of science fiction magazine. It was written by Harlan Ellison, also known for writing in Star Treck.
The cold war has developed into World War III and 3 supercomputers have been developed by The US, the Soviet Union and China to organise and deploy troops. These were called Allied Mastercomputers, or AMs. However, one of these AMs becomes self-aware and sentient and immediately grows to hate humanity for creating it. It absorbs the other 2 AMs and launches nuclear bombs, killing almost all of humanity. It keeps 5 humans alive for the purpose of torturing them: Benny, Gorrister, Nimdok, Ted, and Ellen.
Benny had previously been a theorist and a college professor, handsome and gay, so AM had striped him of his intelligence and made him resemble an ape. Ted also remarks that "the machine had given him an organ fit for a horse." He purely acts on animalistic instinct.
Gorrister had been a man who liked to take action and look ahead when making decisions, so AM had made him complacent and apathetic, unconcerned with most things.
Little is known about Nimdok in the short story. He often goes out into the dark on his own and comes back disturbed and shaken by whatever's out there.
Ted has become incredibly paranoid and cynical throughout his time spent within AM. He is also very misogynistic towards Ellen, as are the other characters to a degree. He is the youngest of the group.
Ellen is the only woman of the group, and AM made her into a sex object for the rest of the group. However, she has kept most of her empathy and morality.
I read the short story in one sitting at about 11pm. It was an experience. But since then I've been going through it again to make this page and I've been properly invested and fascinated by it, especially the concept of AM as a villain. As i'm writing this, I'm leading up to listening to the radio play which I'll write about afterwards but I have no plans to buy and play the game since I prefer to play games blind, and I've heard that it's very dificult to get through unless you have the guide and I feel like i'd not enjoy that. I have watched some gameplay, though, and I'm going to watch through all the routes so that I can write about them. Moving on, here is a plot summary of the short story!
4 of the 5 survivors look at the dead body of Gorrister hanging by it's foot off of an old computer component and drained of all of its blood. It's a trick by AM, however, and Gorrister comes up beside them to look at it too. Ellen goes to comfort him as he sits down away from the body and asks why AM can't just kill them all instead of torturing them. Nimdok (a name given to him by AM, just because it thought the name sounded funny) had had a vision of there being canned goods in a location called the ice caverns. Ted, the narrator of the story, tells the group that it's just another trick by AM. But the last time they had eaten was three days ago, and what they had eaten had been worms. Ellen convinces the group that it has to be worth a try and that it could be something edible this time, and Ted talks about agreeing being worth it because Ellen would have sex with him for it.
Nimdok and Gorrister carried Ellen so that, if danger struck, she could get away faster. The second day of the trip, AM summons a boiling sun-like object and supplies the group with some manna to eat, which Ted remarks tastes like boar pee. They only ate it because they were starving. On the third day, they passed through a valley of old computer parts which AM had disgarded from itself. Light filtered through a hole somewhere in the roof of the area and Ted remarks about how, despite the fact that they're close to the surface, there isn't anything up there worth discovering and AM would punish anyone who tried to escape. Despite this, Benny tries to get up there despite Ellen trying to calm him down and call him back and AM burns out his eyes, which is described as "Half sound and half light, something that began to glow from Benny's eyes, and pulse with growing loudness, dim sonorities that grew more gigantic and brighter as the light/sound increased in tempo."
The group make camp in the cavern and begin telling Benny stories to stop him being so afraid now he was blinded. Gorrister tells Benny about how AM was created and how it destroyed the world despite benny having heard the story so many times. The transcript goes as follows:
"The Cold War started and became World War Three and just kept going. It became a big war, a very complex war, so they needed the computers to handle it. They sank the first shafts and began building AM. There was the Chinese AM and the Russian AM and the Yankee AM and everything was fine until they had honeycombed the entire planet, adding on this element and that element. But one day AM woke up and knew who he was, and he linked himself, and he began feeding all the killing data, until everyone was dead, except for the five of us, and AM brought us down here."
Benny had previously been a theorist and a college professor, handsome and gay, so AM had striped him of his intelligence and made him resemble an ape. Ted also remarks that "the machine had given him an organ fit for a horse." He purely acts on animalistic instinct. Within his campaign his mind is restored but his body is not, so he cannot act on his intelligence.
Gorrister had been a man who liked to take action and look ahead when making decisions, so AM had made him complacent and apathetic, unconcerned with most things.
Little is known about Nimdok in the short story. He often goes out into the dark on his own and comes back disturbed and shaken by whatever's out there.
Ted has become incredibly paranoid and cynical throughout his time spent within AM. He had a relationship with an older woman starting at 19, and after her death he spent 20 years as a womaniser. His campaign involves helping to send a sick and dying Ellen to a good afterlife.
Ellen is the only woman of the group, and AM made her into a sex object for the rest of the group. She was a talented computer scientist and engineer and recieved a joint masters degree in both. After she married her husband Eddie, she suffered a miscarage and fell into depression, and Eddie left her after he was unable to help her feel better. Her life improved when she was hired by INGSAI engineering in 2006. After 6 successful years with the company she experienced her greatest trauma. After working late one night a man disguised as a maintenance man came into the elevator, locked it and sexually assaulted her. She blocked it out of her memory but left the experience with a phobia of the colour yellow, the colour worn by her abuser. Her campaign involves overcoming her phobia and fighting back against her abuser.