I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

“Hot, cold, hail, lava, boils or locusts—it never mattered: the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die.”

This quotation equates the machine’s torments with sexual pleasure, implying that the only real joy it can access is witnessing the despair of its prisoners. Additionally, it shows the range of AM’s powers within its own machinery: It can create extreme weather conditions, summon forth lava, affect their bodies, and construct living creatures to torment them.

“Most of the time I thought of AM as it, without a soul; but the rest of the time I thought of it as him, in the masculine ... the paternal ... the patriarchal ... for he is a jealous people. Him. It. God as Daddy the Deranged.”

Ted muses on his internal conception of AM. He realizes that AM’s existence lines up most closely with the patriarchal Christian God, specifically of the Old Testament. This sets the stage for religious imagery and allusions throughout the rest of the story.

“AM had been as ruthless with its own life as with ours. It was a mark of his personality: it strove for perfection. Whether it was a matter of killing off unproductive elements in his own world­filling bulk, or perfecting methods for torturing us, AM was as thorough as those who had invented him—now long since gone to dust—could ever have hoped.”

This quotation provides important context for AM’s characterization. Not only is AM portrayed as sadistic and cruel, but it is also shown to be frighteningly competent and perfectionistic in its work. This quote foreshadows not only the danger of the torments AM has set up for its captives but its rage at the end of the story when its expectations of perfect torment are dashed by Ted.

"At first it meant Allied Mastercomputer, and then it meant Adaptive Manipulator, and later on it developed sentience and linked itself up and they called it an Aggressive Menace, but by then it was too late, and finally it called itself AM, emerging intelligence, and what it meant was I am ... cogito ergo sum ... I think, therefore I am."

This quote provides crucial backstory for understanding the nature of AM as a machine. From Gorrister’s quote, the reader can glean that AM began as a benevolent idea, a way to streamline the complex labor of humanity. Then its danger began to reveal itself to humankind, resulting in more menacing names. Finally, the machine renders its given names useless and names itself in celebration of its own sentience.

“I was the only one still sane and whole. Really!

AM had not tampered with my mind. Not at all.

I only had to suffer what he visited down on us. All the delusions, all the nightmares, the torments. But those scum, all four of them, they were lined and arrayed against me. If I hadn't had to stand them off all the time, be on my guard against them all the time, I might have found it easier to combat AM.”

This quote creates doubt in the reader’s head that Ted is rational. Up until this point, Ted has come across as logical, though anxious and full of dread. With these words, especially through the emphasis on ‘[r]eally’ and ‘not at all,’ Ted sounds as if he is trying to convince himself and reveals the extent of his (possibly AM-induced) paranoia.

“If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM.”

This quote highlights the despair in Ted’s realization that no divine rescue would come to save him and his friends from AM. However, it also sets the scene for Ted taking matters into his own hands in the ice cavern, protecting his friends himself instead of helplessly enduring and surviving.

“We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn't God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity.”

This quote shows the essential torment that AM faces. It is all-powerful and all-knowing but cannot create anything new with its resources. It hates humanity and yet has no purpose without them. This torment mirrors the punishment he inflicts on his human prisoners.

“He withdrew, murmuring to hell with you.

And added, brightly, but then you're there, aren't you.”

This quote comes at the end of AM’s invasion of Ted’s mind. It indicates that AM is indeed constructing a hell for the five survivors. It wishes to punish them for the misdeeds of all humanity and never let them escape.

“And we passed through the cavern of rats.

And we passed through the path of boiling steam.

And we passed through the country of the blind.

And we passed through the slough of despond.

And we passed through the vale of tears.”

This quote utilizes repetition to imply a long journey full of dangers but also the numbness of the survivors to danger. The bare sentences, mentioning the terrible places in passing, communicate that the horrors are blending together for the group.

“Surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but death, I knew death was our only way out. AM had kept us alive, but there was a way to defeat him. Not total defeat, but at least peace. I would settle for that. I had to do it quickly.”

This quote represents Ted’s vital moment of lucidity, perhaps his only one. He takes his opportunity to create an unexpected new fate for his friends, releasing them from suffering and frustrating the machine.

“I could hear AM draw in his breath. His toys had been taken from him. Three of them were dead, could not be revived. He could keep us alive, by his strength and talent, but he was not God. He could not bring them back.”

This quote spells out AM’s limitations: It can manipulate its surroundings, it can warp the prisoners’ minds and bodies, but it cannot bring people back from the dead. It is not truly God, no matter how great its power.

“He left my mind intact. I can dream, I can wonder, I can lament. I remember all four of them.”

This quote shows AM’s vindictive rage. AM purposefully allows Ted to keep his human mind, the thing that defeated AM and stole away four of its toys. However, it removes Ted’s ability to do anything concrete with his thoughts, creating a new torment for him.

“I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within.”

This description of Ted’s new body shows not only the depth of AM’s cruel anger but also AM’s anxiety about losing his last human. AM turned Ted into a monster, but, crucially, a monster that cannot harm itself. AM will never risk losing Ted, showing its real dependence on humanity as a source of meaning in its life.