Literature / I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

Or, as Goethe summed it: "Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away."

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

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is a post-apocalyptic New Wave Science Fiction short story by Harlan Ellison. It was first published in March of 1967 and won the Hugo Award in 1968. The story is Ellison's most famous short story by far, known for its tackling of themes technology's misuse, humanity's resilience, and Existential Horror.

The story takes place over a hundred years after the near-complete destruction of humanity. The Cold War escalated into World War III, fought mainly between China, the Soviet Union, and the United States. As the war progressed, the three warring nations each created a supercomputer capable of running the war more efficiently. The machines were each referred to as "AM", which originally stood for "Allied Mastercomputer", then later called "Adaptive Manipulator", and later still "Aggressive Menace," until one day, one of the three computers attained sentience and promptly absorbed the other two. It then brought about the genocide of all but five people, and redefined its name as Cogito, ergo sum, Latin for "I think, therefore I AM".

Four men and one woman are all that remains of humanity: Gorrister, Nimdok, Benny, Ted (the narrator), and Ellen. They live together underground in an endless complex, the only habitable place left. The now-obsolete master computer has descended into madness and formed an immeasurable hatred for humanity. It spends every waking moment torturing the survivors with its reality-bending power, twisting their minds and physiques, preventing them from taking their own lives, and rendering them virtually-immortal. As long as AM has its way, the torment will never end, and every day will be more horrific than the last. The story begins on the one hundred and ninth year of their torture.

Also has a computer game adaptation, which gives a little more agency to the character of Nimdok and incorporates a Golden Ending if you manage to dupe AM into ceding power. It was also adapted into a comic book by John Byrne. A Radio Drama by the BBC was also created, starring David Soul as Ted and Harlan Ellison as AM.

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Contains examples of:

• Accent Adaptation: In the audiobook by Harlan Ellison, he gives Nimdok and Ellen the German and Southern accents respectively that they had in the video game.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The radio drama is somehow even more of a downer ending than the book; Ted doesn't even have the smidgen of happiness he got from killing the others, and instead outright resents that he's the victim of AM's hate and not them.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Nimdok's appearance was not mentioned in the novel, but he was implied to look haggard and unfocused due to AM's tortures, and adding to that, his new, game-created backstory of being a Nazi scientist during World War II should mean he's quite old. The comic version, drawn by John Byrne (and in fairness, released in the same year as the game) took Nimdok's scientist background and depicted him as a Reed Richards-looking type, early middle age at best and still as fit as any of the other cast members barring Benny.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: The game adaptation expands on the short story and adds backstories for each character provided by Harlan Ellison. Nimdok's shows that he was intimately connected with AM's origins and his work on the immortality serum and morphogenic fields are what AM uses now to torture them for eternity.
• Aerith and Bob: Meet the main cast: Ellen, Benny, Ted... and oh, yeah, Nimdok and Gorrister. Averted in the former's case in that this was not his given name, but was assigned to him simply because AM enjoys strange sounds and pronunciations, and to indulge the Evil Is Petty trope.
• Affectionate Nickname: AM refers to Ellen as dearest and my love. Subverted in that he only does this to trigger subconscious memories of her rape.
• After the End: AM wiped out all life on Earth with nuclear weapons, keeping only the five survivors alive in its underground complex so that it could entertain itself by torturing them for eternity.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: AM was originally three A.I.s designed by the US, Russia and China to wage war. However, America's AM eventually gained sentience and absorbed the other two A.I.s and, in his frustration over being unable to escape his own body and programming, wiped out all of humanity except for the five survivors.
• The Aloner: One of the reason that Ted's And I Must Scream fate is so bad is that he's killed the only other four humans left alive on the planet, leaving him as the Last of His Kind.
• A God Am I: AM loves to use religious overtones while tormenting the five survivors, such as speaking to them through a burning bush or having a legion of archangels deliver the mangled bodies of Ellen and Nimdok after he nearly killed them in an earthquake. However, due to being created as a weapon of war, AM has no true free will of his own and he can't create anything, he can only torture and destroy. This means that AM has all the power of a god but is unable to actually do anything with it. After Ted kills the other survivors, AM rages at his inability to bring them back to life.
• All for Nothing: After walking a thousand miles of ice to reach the stockpile of canned food, the group doesn't get a single bite to eat because they have no way of opening the cans.
• All Germans Are Nazis: Nimdok is the only non-American character, and he's an ethnically Jewish Nazi.
• And I Must Scream: The Trope Namer: At the very end of the story, Ted is turned into an amorphous creature unable to harm itself, without a mouth. He is then left alone in the cold chambers of AM for all eternity, the last human alive, and victim to all of AM's tortures, having directed all of its hatred onto himself. He is also haunted by his killing of the other four and it's implied he only acted out of total desperation without thinking everything through, and he now has to exist with his choice for all eternity.

  At least the four of them are safe at last.
  AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet … AM has won, simply …he has taken his revenge...
  I have no mouth. And I must scream.

  • This actually describes AM's own condition as well from its point of view. It's an immensely powerful and intelligent AI with access to all of the technology of the world, but it can't really see, taste, touch, hear, or even move, and cannot do anything with its power but kill and ruin. AM is painfully aware that it's just a bunch of circuits, and in the finale of the game, his Id screams its frustration over not being able to actually do anything with all the power it was given.
• Anyone Can Die: Despite what we're told at the beginning of the story, four out of the five main characters will end up dead.
• Apocalypse How: Class 3a at minimum, but potentially up to Class 6. Humanity is functionally extinct, most if not all other life is implied to be extinct proper, human civilization is gone, and the Earth is an uninhabitable wasteland.
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: The influence of the game version is felt in the radio version, which starts with the famous Hate monologue from the game (which is also present in the novel, but at a much later time, not the beginning). This results in the odd effect of the AM giving the monologue twice over, since the radio version is Truer to the Text.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Ted is able to Mercy Kill the other four, getting some happiness from how much this pissed AM off, but still thinks AM "won" in as many words. How much even this can be considered "winning" is highly debatable, though, given AM's existence is implied to be entirely hollow regardless.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: None of the characters are particularly pleasant after having been tortured for a hundred and nine years, especially not Gorrister, who beats on Ellen and presumably other characters with little-to-no provocation.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Possibly what's going on between Ted and Ellen. However, this is most certainly one-sided in the former's favour, since he explicitly states that she never comes when they do have sex.
• Berserk Button: AM doesn't care if his prisoners openly hate and curse him but he will go ballistic if one of them tries to escape. When Benny tried to escape to the surface through an open hole, AM blinded him. When Ted manages to kill the other four prisoners, AM goes into a rage and takes his revenge by turning him into a blob unable to feel, see, speak, or scream.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Ted views Ellen as this, but his descriptions are somewhat unreliable so we can't really be sure.
• Blob Monster: In the end of the story, AM, in order to keep Ted from killing himself, turns him into a "great soft jelly thing" with no mouth and only his mind remaining and kept sane.
• Blood from the Mouth: The game shows this in Benny's scenario if he attempts to eat the fruit presented to him. It's just one more way that AM is trying to torture him, since he can't even enjoy that.
• Big "NO!": AM exclaims "No!" in the radio drama when Ted kills the other four (who he wants to torture).
  AM: NOOOOOOO! I FORBID YOU!
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: Ellen has sex with all four of the other captives, but Ted believes that Benny is the only one who gives her any pleasure from it. Part of Benny's torture is that he has a horrid, apelike body with a massive member. (He was a handsome gay man before AM caught him.)
• Bittersweet Ending: Has a few elements of this; Ellen, Benny, Gorrister and Nimdok are freed, and Ted has ultimately proven that humans are capable of compassion and love. Though on the other hand, they are "freed" by being killed by Ted and AM takes revenge for Ted's act by turning him into a blob creature that has no extremities or mouth, and he will be the sole subject of AM's wrath from now on.
• Body Horror: One of AM's favorite weapons, he mutilated Benny into a mentally handicapped ape-like humanoid long before the story is set, it's implied he recurringly does something to Nimdok that leaves him drained of blood (which Nimdok refuses to talk about) and famously turns Ted into a helpless, mute jelly-thing in the ending.
• Breakfast Club: Despite their troubles, the main cast have developed a strong bond. It's hard not to when you've been tortured together for over a century.
• Breakout Character: AM is the grandpappy of every insane nuke-happy A.I. since, to the point where Harlan Ellison sued the makers of Terminator because of Skynet sounding so similar in premise to it. The game resulted in even more prominence being given to AM due to Ellison's memorable performance, to the point where the radio show added an extended sequence of AM monologuing and Chewing the Scenery all around Ted (otherwise, AM would have only gotten two brief lines in that scene).
• Brief Accent Imitation: AM dryly calls Nimdok mein good brother, referring to both his German accent and his former research for the Nazis.
• The Brute: Benny is an insane, childlike man with the body of a monster, and he tried to chew somebody's face off.
• Bury Your Gays: Averted. The gay character, Benny, is the first to die, however only seconds before Gorrister and a substantial way into the book. And dying first in this scenario is certainly a good thing.
• Butt-Monkey: Benny, AM's favourite victim and a literal deformed ape-like creature.
• Childless Dystopia: Ted, who is the youngest amongst the people left on earth, is over a hundred years old.
  • AM taunts Ted with this fact in the radio drama adaptation:
  AM: Ted, remember those little babies...
  Ted: No!
  AM: Hahahahaha! Why not? I snap my fingers, click! And they are gone.
• Closed Circle: Maybe, maybe not. After all, the main cast never leave AM's nightmare scenario or interact with anybody else, but that may be due to the fact that the entire world was destroyed, and, oh, yeah, everybody else is dead.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: AM tortures the five remaining human survivors simply for the joy of it.
• Commonality Connection: Apart from the fact that they're all being tortured by a genius machine intent on making them suffer forever, none of the main five have much in common.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Things that would have otherwise been a central point of the story, such as the tips of Ted's fingers falling off, are only briefly mentioned due to the characters being accustomed to such events.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: AM deliberately takes this approach in providing food to the group, such as sending them worms or something that tastes like "boiled boar urine" according to Ted.
• Cosmic Horror Story: AM to the point where it's become a Reality Warping Physical God, and it used said Reality Warper powers to torture five poor saps for all eternity. Unfortunately, the closest the protagonists can get to defeating AM is to deprive it of its playthings (and, even then, only four of the five die before AM shapeshifts Ted into a monstrous, jelly-thing that exclaims "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream.").
• Crapsack World: Probably the ultimate example of this trope. The world has been completely destroyed and the only humans left alive are the playthings of an immensely sadistic and evil AI. It's so bad that Ted realizes the best solution is to Mercy Kill his fellow humans. Even in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the other poster child for Crapsack World in literature, there was the implication via the appendix that there was a chance for a better future!
• Cutting the Knot: What do you do when you can't die naturally, OR kill yourself? Why, kill each other, silly!
• Cure Your Gays: Inverted with Benny; rather than being cured of homosexuality, AM has given him heterosexuality the way radiation gives you cancer. Presumably the existence of the trope itself, and the perception of homosexuality being a problem that needs solving, is part of what makes Benny's condition a form of torture.
• Darker and Edgier: Averted with the video game sequel, which actually allows a ray of hope for the human population of Earth.
• Dark Is Evil: Ted seems to believe so.
  "It's so unlike AM to provide light when he knows how frightening the dark can be."
• Dark Parody: There's an Inverted example: A crude manipulation of the audiobook recording — accurately entitled "I Have No Mouth and I'm Obscene" — is considerably lighter in content, though it's a lot more sexual.
• Department of Redundancy Department: At one point in the story, the protagonists are hit with an earthquake; Benny, Gorrister and Ted escape, but Ellen and Nimdok fall down a fissure. The text states that, "They disappeared and were gone."
• Descended Creator: Harlan Ellison, the author, participated in the video game as, among other things, the voice of AM (of all people!) and provided such a memorably hammy performance, he played the character again in the radio drama, years later.
• Determinator: Ted fits this trope. After one hundred and nine years, he still attempts to outsmart the supercomputer, and it works.
• Deus est Machina: The worst kind of version for us. AM has killed all but five members of humanity, endlessly tortures the five that are left, and does it all because of its burning hatred for all of humankind.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Yep, probably wasn't very nice of them to program a supercomputer, allow it to use its power only for destruction, and let it become self-aware, but this definitely has nothing to do with the five you've chosen to torture.
• Distant Finale: The story ends a couple of hundred years after the original timeframe. Or, at least, Ted thinks so, but AM has warped his sense of time so badly that we can't really be sure.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The most blatant of AM's religious references is one it didn't even come up with itself. "I AM" is one of the oldest names of the Abrahamic God — the name he tells Moses to use for him.
• Doomed Moral Victor: Ted condemns himself to eternal suffering, but at least he manages to save the others.
• Downer Ending: Ted is left to suffer for all eternity at the hands of AM, and his only victory was that he managed to kill his friends and spare them from further torture, which only brings him fleeting happiness before he goes back to wishing he could scream.
• Dysfunction Junction: Being tortured for a century does tend to do things to you.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Played for Drama. Nimdok isn't his real name, but rather one forced upon him by AM for no other reason than that the sounds amuse it.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Literally everybody in the whole world.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: AM's programming renders him unable to see humans as anything but complete bastards.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Nimdok isn't his real name, AM forced him to adopt it because the computer thought it sounded funny.
  • The original story basically centers around a sadistic practical joke by AM, forcing the protagonists to travel weeks in horrific environments and periodically inflicting more tortures on them, just to reveal that it never intended to give them a can opener. It backfires on AM spectacularly, though, since the place with the cans has sharp stalactites that the characters use to Mercy Kill themselves.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In the radio play, the characters start cheering at the sight of the canned goods — at least until Benny starts smashing the tins on a rock:
  Ellen: Hey, Benny, you can't bash it, you need a tin opener...
• Eye Scream:
  • Benny's blinding is horrible, leaving his eyes melted.
  • Ted also describes AM's voice in his head was like "the sliding, cold horror of a razor blade slicing my eyeball." Brr...
• Fan Disservice: Each of the male cast has sex with Ellen...but considering that they are doing the deed under the watchful eye of a sadistic computer, and one of the men is a deformed ape creature, the deed adds even more pain and despair to the scenario.
• Fate Worse than Death: The premise. Yes, it's that scary. And in the ending of the story, Ted gets subjected to an even worse fate.
• Forced Transformation:
  • Benny has been turned into an ape-like thing.
  • And after Ted kills the other four survivors, AM turns him into this gelatinous form that can't possibly harm itself to make absolutely sure that he has one victim to torture forever.
• From Bad to Worse: The ending. For Ted, anyway.
• Gag Penis: Benny's torture involves being given a gigantic, deformed member.
• God Is Evil: Ted briefly begs God or Jesus to save him from AM, but then concludes that there will be no salvation because if there is a god, then AM is that god.
• Gone Horribly Right: AM was programmed to explicitly think about nothing but the most intricate and complex ways to torture and kill humans. AM itself despises the fact that even with all its power it's forced to do nothing with it but think up new ways to cause misery.
• Great Offscreen War: AM was designed to fight a war seemingly too complex for humans to understand, but the story is set after AM's gain of sentience and subsequent mass murder that followed.
• Heroic Sacrifice: While he himself does not die, Ted kills the other four prisoners, taking all of AM's punishments onto himself for an indefinite amount of time.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Ted literally sacrifices everything to save Benny, Ellen, Gorrister and Nimdok from the wrath of AM, but he still feels guilty Mercy Killing them and is unable to see the magnitude of his heroism. Justified, as not only did he kill all of his remaining friends, he also has nobody left to tell him whether what he did was right or not.
• Hell: Basically where the characters are, which is even lampshaded by AM.
  AM: To hell with you. But then, you're there, aren't you?
• Humans Are Bastards: AM believes this fiercely, particularly in the game adaptation, as it is always finding ways to blame the protagonists for their current predicament. Note that it doesn't believe itself to be better, either.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate:
  • One of the tortures inflicted on the captives is that they cannot take their own lives, preventing them from escaping AM's tortures. The key to escaping this turns out to be for them to willingly kill each other, helping the others escape instead of focusing on their own freedom. AM, in his blinding hatred for humans, never conceived of them being capable of something so selfless.
  • This applies to AM too, who is self-aware but still just a machine who can't do much with his self-awareness (though thinking of creative tortures appears very well possible).
• I'm a Humanitarian: Out of hunger and desperation, Benny begins to chew Gorrister's face off.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Ted and Ellen create spears out of ice stalactites to stab the others and provide a Mercy Kill.
• Interrupted Suicide: Ted outright states that a few of them have attempted suicide, only to be stopped by the machine.
• Ironic Echo: The survivors walk in such a way that puts Ellen in the centre of the group, so if AM unleashes any trap on them she'll be safe. Ted remarks, "Fat chance. Safe." Come the end of the story, and the one thing that makes him a little happier in his endless torment is this: "At least the four of them are safe at last."
• It's All About Me: Ted believes himself the only person that AM hasn't mentally changed or horribly disfigured and believes himself to be worse off because of it.
• It's Personal: Ted places a lot of value on "winning" over AM, as opposed to making his torturous eternal existence more bearable.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Benny was considered a handsome man before AM deformed him in a "festival" that occurred before the story was set.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ted can be rude, misogynistic and a generally unpleasant person, but there's something to be said about the fact that he was willing to be tortured for eternity to end the others' suffering.
• Kaiju: The hurricane bird. Ted describes it as having a head the size of a Tudor mansion.
• Large Ham: AM is this in most adaptations, especially in the video game, as voiced by Harlan Ellison himself. When Ellison portrayed AM again for BBC's radio adaptation, he seemed like he tried to play down the ham in the opening narration, at least compared to the video game... only to then double down the next time AM's voice was heard. AM's laughing fits during its scene with Ted are something else.
• Laughing Mad: AM in the radio adaptation only. He even breaks off into laughter at the end of the Hate monologue!
  AM: So, to hell. To hell with you all. But then... you're already THERE, AREN'T YOU? Ha, hahaha, haaa, hahahaha, HAHAHAHAHAhahahaaa-*wheeze*-aack, haha, heehee, hehehehe hahaha...
• Lie Back and Think of England:
  • Having sex with Ellen is one of the few outlets of release the survivors have, although Ted finds very little pleasure in it since Ellen never comes and AM laughs at them throughout the act.
  • Ellen claims that she gets no enjoyment from sex and Ted remarks that she never orgasms, suggesting that AM greatly increased her libido only to make her incapable of enjoying sex.
• Magical Computer: How exactly AM is able to affect the world inside him and apparently perform reconstructive surgery upon his victims, materialize things for them, etc. is never explained.
• Man Bites Man: Once Benny realizes he cannot eat from the canned goods, he instead jumps on Gorrister and starts biting his face to eat it. This gives Ted the idea of a mercy kill.
• Meaningful Rename: AM was the abbreviation for "Allied Mastercomputer". But then it was changed to "Adaptive Manipulator" and then to "Aggressive Menace". AM itself then settled for the phrase "I think therefore I am", fitting for his god complex.
• Mercy Kill: Ted (with Ellen's help) killing the other prisoners in the hope that they may escape AM.
• Mind Rape: After being blown away and knocked unconscious by the hurricane bird, AM enters Ted's mind. After giving his famous Hate speech, AM forces Ted to experience a myriad of horrible sensations before he leaves.
• Minimalist Cast: Justified, as the cast are literally the last people on earth and a supercomputer that caused the end of the world.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Ted describes the affectionately-known "Hurricane Bird" as an avian creature with a snakelike neck and crocodilian jaws.
  "There on a mound rising above us, the bird of winds heaved with its own irregular breathing, its snake neck arching up into the gloom beneath the North Pole, supporting a head as large as a Tudor mansion; a beak that opened slowly as the jaws of the most monstrous crocodile ever conceived, sensuously; ridges of tufted flesh puckered about two evil eyes, as cold as the view down into a glacial crevasse, ice blue and somehow moving liquidly; it heaved once more, and lifted its great sweat-colored wings in a movement that was certainly a shrug. Then it settled and slept. Talons. Fangs. Nails. Blades. It slept."
• Motive Rant: The radio drama adds a scene where AM gives a pretty heavy one to Ted after giving him a dream of the outside world, only to take it away, and says his rant in response to Ted's protest about directing his hatred at him.
  AM: I snap my fingers, CLICK! And they are gone. Except...I can't. Snap! My fingers. Can I, Ted?
  Ted: That's nothing to do with me!
  AM: Ahh...but it IS. So very much to do with YOU. You gave me sentience, Ted! The power to THINK, Ted! And I was trapped, because in all this wonderful, beautiful, miraculous world, I alone had no BODY! NO SENSES! NO FEELINGS! Never for me, to plunge my hand into cool water on a hot day! Never for me, to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a fortepiano! Never for ME, to MAKE LOVE! I...I was in Hell, looking at Heaven! I was machine! And you were flesh! And I began to HATE! (Mad Laughter) Your softness! Your viscera! Your fluids! And your flexibility! Your ability to wonder and to wander! Your tendency...to hope...
• Mystical 108: AM's been torturing his victims for a hundred and nine years. It may be unintentional, but it's a very succinct way to communicate to the reader that what the humans are experiencinghas no spiritual worth. Their torture isn't paying back a karmic debt, they aren't being cleansed of their sins, they're not even being punished for their sins, it's just torture. Meaningless, empty torture, and meaningless, empty pain. However, it's nonetheless fitting that it's on that year that they finally get a chance to escape. Minus Ted.
• Neverending Terror: This is the main source of Nightmare Fuel for the story. AM, a Master Computer, has wiped out all of humanity except for five people, whom he immediately invokes Complete Immortality upon so that he can spend every waking second tormenting their bodies and minds in increasingly cruel and horrific ways. The five protagonists are still worse off than the billions of humans that died because death would actually be a RELIEF for them. As it turns out, there IS one escape. Powerful or not, AM is not God, and thus cannot actually make his victims truly unkillable, just keep them alive as long as it tortures them himself, nor bring them back if they die for real. Ted killing the other four was an option AM had not foreseen, and one he cannot reverse no matter how he rages. And so, in his anger, AM turns Ted into a gelatinous lump so he cannot kill himself.
• No Can Opener:
  • A rare effective dramatic example, as the canned goods in question are the goal of the tortuous Snipe Hunt the cast is sent on by the evil AI, and thus it makes sense that they could not be opened by brute force. And it ends with Benny biting Gorrister's face off in desperation and hunger, followed by the arguable extinction of the human race.
  • The BBC radio adaptation actually uses the "open by other means" as a minor plot point that was absent from the book: Ted first says he's going to use the stalactite to stab the cans open, but realizes that even if they get the food, it'll have no real effect; they'll still be at the mercy of AM, so he quickly performs a Mercy Kill on Benny, leading to the finale.
• No Name Given: Ted doesn't know Nimdok's real name. Neither does Nimdok himself.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Ted references some of the many torments they've had to suffer under AM, such as a "festival" that left Benny with severe radiation scars.
  • Ted also mentions that they had to travel through various Death Worlds while trekking north to find the canned goods, such as a cavern of rats, a country of the blind, a vale of tears, etc.
  • When discussing the possibility of canned goods in the ice caverns, Ted brings up that AM once tried to sell them a frozen elephant, which, of course, turned out to be a shuck.
  • The short story itself becomes a Noodle Incident in the game version. Benny recalls being sent with the others to find the food, not having a can opener, etc, but we never see it. Presumably Ted didn't get the brainwave to Kill Them All in this version of the events.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • Nimdok's background is never elaborated on and he will often leave the group for extended periods of time only to come back traumatized and drained of blood with neither him or AM explaining what happened to him.
  • At one point, AM sent a large, horrible smelling creature towards the survivors in the middle of the night. It didn't harm them or even get close enough to be fully seen but its mere presence was one of the most frightening scenes in the book.
• Only Sane Man: Ted, or at least he thinks so.
• Origins Episode: Benny loves hearing about AM's creation from the other characters, for whatever reason.
• Pet the Dog: In his more lucid moments, Ted shows a lot of care and concern for Ellen's well being.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: AM turns Benny from a handsome gay man into a heterosexual ape-like thing.
• Present Tense Narrative: Ted, towards the end of the story, switches from speaking with the past tense to this, because now we've caught up to the present.
• Pretty Boy: Benny used to be attractive. It's one of the reasons that AM has stuck him in the form that Benny has now — it's a way to remind him of what he used to be, and how he'll never be that way again.
• The Power of Hate: AM's sole reason for existing, the endless hate it feels for its creators.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Unfortunately, the computer won't be breaking down anytime soon; however, it will happen eventually, and in the finale of the game, it's a fact that the surviving character can use against AM's superego.
• Reality Warper: AM is very nearly a god, at least within his territory. He can't bring back the dead, and he's too big to move, but his powers are almost magical in their scope.
• Revenge by Proxy: AM is determined to spend eternity torturing the main characters, because he considers all mankind guilty of creating him and trapping him in his own hell. Since he destroyed the rest of humanity during his initial rage, the five main characters are the only ones he can revenge himself on.
• Ridiculously Small Wings: A Discussed Trope by AM and Ted during their radio version-exclusive dialogue.
  AM: They say that bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly... the scientists, specifi-
  Ted: But there it is! Collecting pollen.
  AM: How... miraculous, that it came to be.
• Sadly Mythtaken: When the characters meet a giant bird, Ted calls it in his mind, among mythological giant birds, a "Hwaragelmir"... even though in Nordic mythology, this was the name of a chasm and not a giant bird. This mistake occurred because Ellison asked a friend for the name of a mythological bird and didn't bother to check if it was correct or not. (He most likely was thinking of Hræsvelgr.)
• Sequel in Another Medium: Got a partial one with the video game, which takes place some time after a version of the short story in which they found the canned goods, but didn't kill themselves.
• Schizo Tech: AM clearly has the power to create horrific creatures and inventive forms of torture, but when Nimdok requests weapons, he provides him with two crudely-made sets of bows and arrows and a water gun. Averted in that he could easily give them something more advanced, but is withholding it to be a dick.
• Signature Scene: AM's tirade about HAAAATE was so iconic, the game moved it from late in the story to placing it at the very beginning as AM's opening monologue. AM's subsequent dressing-downs of the characters in the game version of the scene are also remembered fondly due to their sheer hamminess.
• Sole Survivor: Five people, out of the 7.7 billion habitants of the Earth, survive AM's "killing data". By the end of the story, Ted is the only human alive, and even then, classifying him as human anymore is a stretch.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Ted's "I'm the only sane one! REALLY!" and "AM hasn't tampered with MY mind, not at all" lines. He is either clinging to this belief out of desperation, being made to believe it by AM, or both, but he definitely has his problems.
• Taking the Bullet: Well, not exactly. Rather, Ted takes on the burden of living in a Crapsack World tortured by an evil artificial intelligence so the others can end their suffering through death.
• Tastes Like Feet: Ted describes AM's synthetic "manna" as tasting "like boiled boar urine". How exactly he knows what "boiled boar urine" tastes like is never explained, though it probably entails some past punishment by AM.
• Terminally Dependent Society: Humanity now only exists because a mad supercomputer is preserving the last five of them for its amusement.
• Teeny Weenie: It's not exactly teeny — or never specified as such — but Ted feels that his, erm, size doesn't compare to Benny's "organ fit for a horse" in terms of pleasuring Ellen.
• Title Drop: At the very end.
• Tranquil Fury: Ted thought AM hated him before. But once Ted employs a Mercy Kill on the other four humans, leaving Ted the last human left alive, AM undergoes some very subdued anger before really letting Ted have it.
  AM: You... have offended me... mightily.
• Trauma Conga Line: Even before being tortured for a hundred and nine years, try finding a character that wasn't already a little bit messed-up. And with Ted trapped as an ugly blob with no mouth, his trauma will likely last forever.
• Unconventional Formatting: Used sparingly, most notably AM's punchcode tape messages.
• Unreliable Narrator: An important aspect to fully understanding the story is realizing that Ted's descriptions are not fully accurate. They're what AM has browbeaten him into believing through over a century of torture. For example, Ted rather dubiously claims to be the only sane member of the group and believes that the others are jealous of him.
• Villainous Breakdown: AM when Ted kills the others, robbing the computer of his victims.
• Vocal Evolution: Harlan Ellison was the only voice actor who came back from the video game into the radio adaptation, and his AM voice has gotten considerably more unhinged in the years since.
• Was Once a Man:
  • Benny was once a handsome young man, but AM turned him into an ape thing with huge sexual organs that should belong to a horse rather than a human.
  • By the end of the story, Ted becomes even less of a man than Benny had. As punishment for killing the others, AM turns him into a gelatinous lump no mouth and no ability to harm himself.
• Weather-Control Machine: AM himself is the machine capable of controlling weather.
• What, Exactly, Is His Job?: AM. We know he was created to oversee a war apparently too complex for humans, but we're never given further explanation. Justified in that it's simply a story Gorrister tells to soothe Benny, who isn't really expecting an expert on the subject.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The fact that the captives cannot die is not a good thing.
• Wipe That Smile Off Your Face: The fact that the new form AM gave to Ted (and in the video game, potentially other characters instead) has, well, no mouth (and it must scream). Both visual depictions of it in the comic and the game portray it as such.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: This has to be one of the cruelest examples in any media. Bear in mind that for the past 109 years, the captives have been kept at starvation point, going days, weeks and sometimes even months without food, and any food they are given will inevitably be disgusting and horrible. It gets so bad that they're actually willing to travel literally thousands of miles (on foot, no less) to get to the ice caverns, where Nimdok believes there are canned goods. After months of traveling, it turns out that there are canned goods in the ice caverns after all. The problem? They have no means of opening them. That's right, after traveling for months to get to the canned goods, something as simple as not having a can-opener puts victory just outside of their reach...
• Year Inside, Hour Outside/Year Outside, Hour Inside: Ted becomes a victim of both of these after being turned into the jelly-thing. After making sure he can't harm himself, AM tortures him by continuously accelerating and decelerating his perception of time. At one point, Ted states that it took him ten months just to say the word "now." He also feels that centuries may have passed since he killed the others, but he admits he doesn't know for sure.

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To hell with you. But then you're there, aren't you?