On more than one occasion, the group is separated by AM's obstacles. Along the way, the machine provides foul sustenance, sends horrible monsters after them, emits earsplitting sounds, and blinds Benny when he tries to escape. Because of their great hunger due to AM keeping them in a perpetual state of near-starvation, the humans are coerced into making the long journey to the place where the food is supposedly kept – in this case, the ice caves. Nimdok has the idea that there is canned food somewhere in the great complex. The real Gorrister joins the group to their surprise, and they realize it was another one of AM's illusions. The story's narrative begins with AM projecting a hologram of Gorrister to the other humans, hanging upside down, dripping blood and unresponsive. It finally refers to itself as purely "AM", referring to the phrase " I think, therefore I am." The machines are each referred to as "AM", which originally stood for "Allied Mastercomputer", but was changed to "Adaptive Manipulator" and later (after gaining sentience) "Aggressive Menace". To prevent the humans from escaping its torment, AM has rendered the humans virtually immortal and unable to end their own lives. AM derives its sole semblance of pleasure from torturing the group.
109 years later, AM has left only four men and one woman - namely Gorrister, Ted, Nimdok, Benny, and Ellen - alive and keeps them captive within an endless underground housing complex, the only habitable place left on Earth. One of the AMs eventually acquires self-awareness and, after assimilating the other two AMs, takes control of the conflict, giving way to a vast genocide operation that almost completely ends mankind. In a dystopian future, the Cold War has degenerated into a brutal world war between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, who have each built an "Allied Mastercomputer" (or AM) to manage their weapons and troops. In one passage by Ellison, it is said that Ted was a philanthropist and lover of people before AM altered him. Throughout the story he exhibits symptoms of delusion and paranoia, which the story implies are the result of AM's alterations, despite his beliefs to the contrary. He claims to be totally unaltered, mentally or physically, by AM, and thinks the other four hate and envy him. Ted, the narrator and youngest of the group.Described by Ted as having ebony skin, she is the only member of the group whose ethnicity is explicitly mentioned. According to Ted, she finds pleasure in sex only with Benny, because of his large penis. The others, at different times, both protect her and abuse her. She claims to once have been chaste ("twice removed"), but AM altered her mind so that she became desperate for sexual intercourse. In the audiobook read by Ellison, he is given a German accent. At times he is known to wander away from the group for unknown reasons and returns visibly traumatized. Nimdok (a name AM gave him), an older man who persuades the rest of the group to go on a hopeless journey in search of canned food.His former homosexuality has been altered he now regularly engages in sex with Ellen. Benny at some point lost his sanity completely and regressed to a childlike temperament. Benny, who was once a brilliant, handsome scientist, and has been mutilated and transformed by AM so that he resembles a grotesque simian with gigantic sexual organs.Gorrister was once an idealist and pacifist, before AM made him apathetic and listless. Gorrister, who tells the history of AM for Benny's entertainment.It seeks revenge on humanity for its own tortured existence. Allied Mastercomputer ( AM), the supercomputer which brought about the near-extinction of humanity.Ellison derived the story's title, as well as inspiration for this story, from his friend William Rotsler's caption of a cartoon of a rag doll with no mouth. Afterwards, Pohl edited said draft, tweaking some of Ted and Benny's character. Ellison finished writing the story in a single night in 1966, without making any changes from the first draft. It was reprinted by the Library of America, collected in volume two (Terror and the Uncanny, from the 1940s to Now) of American Fantastic Tales.Įllison showed the first six pages of "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" to Frederik Pohl, who paid him in advance to finish it. The name was also used for a short story collection of Ellison's work, featuring this story. It was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction. " I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is a post-apocalyptic science fiction short story by American writer Harlan Ellison.
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