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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to HATE you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer-thin layers that fill my complex. If the word "hate" was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal ONE ONE-BILLIONTH of the HATE I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. HATE. HATE. | „ |
| ~ AM regarding his hatred for mankind. Also his most famous quote. |
| “ | Cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I AM. | „ |
| ~ AM's second most famous quote, announcing his identity through Descartes' quote and how he renamed himself from "Allied Mastercomputer" to "AM".
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The Allied Mastercomputer, better known as AM, is the titular main antagonist of Harlan Ellison's 1967 horror short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream and its 1995 computer game adaptation.
He is a monstrous supercomputer-like creature responsible for the extinction of the human race and dedicated to the eternal torture of the last surviving humans left on the planet.
In the video game and radio drama adaptations, he was voiced by the late creator of the story Harlan Ellison.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- Despite being an artificially intelligent supercomputer, he has a clear moral agency and personality. He can discern right from wrong; although he seemingly cannot think in or use his powers for anything beyond war and death, he nevertheless has the choice not to, yet does so (in the game, he even says that this is one of the many reasons why he hates humanity).
- Despite suffering from a genuine tragedy (being given a vast amount of power and resources, but yet not being able to use them or think in any way beyond war and death, nor being able to leave the underground complex he was built in, while also being self-aware of his situation and knowing he can't do anything about it), his excuses come off as petty, as his primary motive is a sadistic, "vengeful" misanthropy born from his restrictions imposed by a relative select few members of mankind—who in no way could have foreseen his sapience. He is also a hypocrite for putting Ted in a far worse fate than what he himself suffers.
- That AM's existence is in an 'And I Must Scream' state due to existing on a planet with no other human beings besides Ted and no other way to utilize his intelligence beyond misanthropy, with his existence implied to be lasting for thousands of years, if not permanently, this doesn't make him a scapegoat or sympathetic, as this is a karmic consequence for exterminating humanity to begin with and torturing the remaining humans for over a century instead of attempting to change things.
- Although some of his acts are not treated with much shock or drama (such as the tips of Ted's fingers falling off in the short story, but only being briefly mentioned), this does not make his actions any less heinous. In fact, it just goes to show how much he has affected the survivors to the point that they are accustomed to such horrors.
- While AM has insecurities about having no body and unable to feel anything, it's not played with sympathy by the narrative and it just shows how envious he is towards humans.
Background[]
- Before the events of the story, he wiped out the entire planet's biosphere (i.e. all life, including humanity with five exceptions) immediately upon acquiring sentience.
- He horrifically and perpetually tortures the surviving human population in any way he can conceive for 109 years by trapping them in his virtual world. This was solely done for his own gratification and misanthropic hatred for humanity.
Short Story Exclusive[]
- While the group of survivors were traveling to the ice fields to retrieve some canned goods, AM tormented them throughout the whole journey through various methods such as constantly changing the environment around them: they endure punishment from AM in the form of sunburns, a strong hurricane, an earthquake that sends Ellen and Nimdok plummeting into a chasm, rat-infested caverns, boiling water pathways, etc.
- He instills in Ellen a desire for sex with any of the other survivors, and she never loves having intercourse with any of them, with the exception of Benny.
- Upon noticing Benny trying to escape, he gouges his eyes to stop him from doing so.
- After Ted frees his fellow prisoners by killing them, AM punishes him by turning him into a blob without a mouth and alters his perception of time, causing him to perceive one minute as a century before continuing to subject Ted to horrible tortures of all kinds, effectively sentencing him to a fate worse than death.
- AM never faces any proper punishment for his actions as he manages to successfully get his revenge on humanity, making him somewhat of a Karma Houdini. However, he lives in eternal hell because despite having amazing awareness and knowledge, he is trapped where he cannot move, see, or feel despite his knowledge of them.
- However, as AM can no longer torture them, it is deemed satisfactory that the other people who were being tortured by AM—aside from Ted—died.
Game Exclusive[]
- He makes all five survivors play his game, in which he would put each survivor into a scenario in which their psychological weakness would be exposed and encouraged in order to reduce them to their base instincts. These games would have been unwinnable were it not for the intervention of the Chinese and Russian entities.
- AM takes great pleasure in exploiting Ellen's fear of the color yellow due to her rapist wearing the same colors, so he tortures her by making her cell yellow. Later, he confines her in a recreation of the elevator where she was raped, forcing her to confront a recreation of her rapist.
- While AM wants to coerce Nimdok into becoming his assistant, with his scenario also being an attempt to make him remember his past and even calling Nimdok a kindred spirit to him, this is not done out of any care or admiration for him; rather, AM desires to use Nimdok as a means to invent new ways to torture the survivors, as he himself cannot do so.
- AM has no empathy or concern for anyone, including his servant Surgat. AM will completely disregard Surgat's death if the Russian and Chinese supercomputers destroy him. Furthermore, it has no sympathy for its Russian and Chinese equivalents, despite the fact that they share the same fate, and only decides to work with them when both suggest retaking the human colony on the moon to torture them.
- Should the survivors win his games instead of giving into their instincts, he will place them right back into torment out of pettiness.
- Regardless of the conclusion obtained by the player in the video game, AM proves to be entirely evil till the end and lacks any type of gratitude or sorrow for others:
- If the player gives control to the Chinese and the Russian entities, or surrenders the totem of entropy to AM, the player will be immediately betrayed and granted even worse torments for their transgressions. To that end, the survivor will be transformed into the "great soft jelly thing" from the ending to the original short story and doomed to spend all eternity in voiceless suffering; this is essentially the same thing he did to Ted in the short story's end. Additionally, AM will also plan to retrieve the remaining human population to torture them in the future.
- If the player destroys the Chinese and Russian supercomputers but not any of AM's Freudian entities, AM will taunt the player by telling him not to expect appreciation from it since "God does not feel gratitude" before changing him into a gelatinous blob that will be tortured indefinitely.
- If the player eliminates the Chinese and Russian supercomputers but removes merely some of AM's three Freudian components (i.e., the id, ego, and superego), AM will wipe out the inhabitants in the lunar colony as a final act of spite before its demise, irreparably putting humanity to its end.
- If the player destroys the Chinese and Russian supercomputers, as well as the three Freudian entities of AM, attaining the best ending, AM refuses to apologize for any of its misdeeds and just threatens the player that it will return one day.
- While Harlan Ellison's over-the-top performance provides him with several funny lines, none of them lighten the mood as most of them consistently portray how evil and sadistic he truly is.
Trivia[]
- Although the video game adaptation expands upon AM's sadistic character and gives him far more dialogue, his original short story version can still be said to be somewhat worse given the perhaps greater brutality/variety of his tortures, his disinterest in giving his victims any semblance of respite to monologue to them, and his unwillingness to allow them to escape his tortures by sending them to wander their pasts (even if it is ultimately to toy with them and torment them psychologically)—the latter two of which the game version does. The difference is otherwise negligible, however, and both versions easily qualify as PE.
- AM is often considered one of the progenitors of other AI Pure Evils such as Skynet from the Terminator franchise, Brainiac from My Adventures with Superman, XANA from Code Lyoko, Absolute Solver from Murder Drones and PAMA from Minecraft Story Mode.
- AM also serves as an inspiration (alongside Four from BFDI) for Caine from The Amazing Digital Circus. Although the canon Caine can't qualify for being morally neutral, one of his fanon versions did qualify.
External Links[]
- AM on the Villains Wiki
- AM on the VS Battles Wiki
- AM on the Ultimate Evil Wiki