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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. |
| “ | 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". |
The Allied Mastercomputer, better known as AM, is the 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 Harlan Ellison himself.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
In General/Background[]
- 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).
- 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, perpetually tortures the surviving human population in any way he can conceive solely for gratification for 109 years by trapping them in his virtual world.
- 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 similar fate to himself.
- Also, although AM is unable to do anything in any way beyond war & death, this does not mean that he can only do anything associated with war & death, such that he can decide not to use his abilities for war & death, yet still decides to do so.
- Although some of his acts aren't 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 doesn't 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.
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.
- 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.
Game Exclusive[]
- He makes all 5 survivors play his game (which would all be unwinnable if it weren't for the intervention of the Chinese and Russian entity) 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.
- AM takes great pleasure in exploiting Ellen's fear of the color yellow because her rapist wore yellow, so he tortures her by making her cell yellow, and 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, it isn't out of any care or admiration for him, but rather wanting to use him as means to invent new ways to torture the survivors, as he himself cannot do so.
- Should the survivors win his games instead of giving into their instincts, he will place them right back into torment out of pettiness.
- If the player gives control to the Chinese and the Russian, or surrenders the totem of entropy to AM, the player will be immediately betrayed and granted even worse torments for their transgression. 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, 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.
- While Harlan Ellison's over the top performance provides him with several funny lines, none of them lighten the mood with most of them showing just how evil and sadistic he really is, and all of his actions are still played completely seriously.
Trivia[]
- AM is widely considered by many to be one of the cruelest and evilest villains in fictional history (alongside Judge Holden and Qu), as he not only successfully committed near-omnicide before the events of the story, but deliberately tortured the remaining five survivors in the most horrendous manners conceivable for 109 whole years and enjoyed every moment of it. If it weren't for Ted's sheer, opportunistic luck, AM may have dedicated his entire existence to torturing them for all of eternity.
- 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 fictional AI villains such as Skynet, Absolute Solver and Decagrammaton and Brainiac from My Adventures with Superman.
External Links[]
- AM on the Villains Wiki
- AM on the VS Battles Wiki
- AM on the The Ultimate Evil Wiki