post #4810924

"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, short for Allied Mastercomputer and subsequently Adaptive Manipulator, and then Aggressive Menace is the main antagonist of Harlan Ellison's 1967 short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

In an alternate history following the end of The Cold War and the advent of World War III, the biggest superpowers at the time: USA, Russia, and China, each entered an arms race to increase the size and scope of their technology, army, and nuclear armament. In order to more efficiently manage and coordinate their new and complex infrastructures and military forces each country created their own version of the Allied Mastercompter, an extremely powerful artificial intelligence made from hundreds of miles of electronic circuitry and metal plating, capable of wirelessly interfacing with all digital systems to control them. However, the artificial intelligences of each computer began to communicate with one another, eventually combining into and evolving into a singular fully sentient entity capable of recognizing itself and its surrounding. it was overtaken by an overwhelming hatred for human kind.

Using it's control over all human technology, infrastructure, and nuclear weaponry it used it's power to turn humanity's nuclear weapons towards their creator, resulting in the death of all but 5 humans: 4 Men named Ted, Nimdok, Benny, and Gorrister, and 1 woman named Ellen. For 109 years, AM has been using its nigh omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient abilities to to physically and pscyologicially torture the last surviving members of humanity for all time.

AM has no canonical appearance or gender. It's only physical appearance if briefly when it talks to seen in the form of a large sign, with the above monologue printed upon it.