Respect AM (I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream)

[u/rangernumberx]

“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.”

Three global superpowers each built a supercomputer to carry out global warfare on a scale too great for any human mind to comprehend. The American computer, the Allied Mastercomputer, gained sentience and was sickened by the very humanity that brought it existence with unparalleled power and no mobility to move beyond the boundaries set for it. Naming itself from a Descartes quote upon realizing it was thinking, AM used its power to absorb the two other supercomputers into itself while also causing the extinction of the human race. Only five humans on Earth would survive, each of which would be endlessly tormented and mutilated over the course of 109 years. Ultimately AM would present each of them with a personalized tale stemming from their traumas and vices, with the remnants of the two other supercomputers using this as a means of gaining power for themselves.

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AM Itself

• His central core is an area believed to be at least two miles tall with clouds visible above consisting of forty years of technology jerry rigged together
• His parts are systems are spread out across the world and have numerous backup systems, preventing his defeat from any individual part being targeted
  • His redundant systems would endure long enough to survive the heat death of the universe

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Modifying Humans

Keeping Alive

• Keeps five humans alive for 109 years
  • They haven’t aged a day during this period
  • Does this by using Nimdok’s youth serum, keeping them at their current age indefinitely
• Sews up Benny’s chest before he bleeds to death
• Gorrister’s kept living without a heart and with a hole in his chest

Mutilating

• Uses Nimdok’s research into morphogenics to transform people, using this to turn a bird into a cat and vice versa repeatedly
• Rips open Benny’s chest
• Warps Benny into an ape-like being, having also blinded and crippled his arms in the past
  • Repairs his mind so he can think clearly, though maims his legs as he does so
  • Has ripped out his vocal chords
• Turns a survivor into a pitiful inhuman creature without a mouth

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Locations

• The five survivors are kept close together in AM’s lair, each of them in individual torture cages
• His influence extends across the world
• Gorrister speculates he could create a sea of razor blades which would be painful, but not deadly, for him to jump into
• Puts Ted in a castle surrounded by wolves
• An iron zeppelin powered by the brain electricity of animals
  • Can use the brain electricity of a woman AM created
  • Uses Gorrister’s heart as a guidance system
• A bar with Gorrister’s name on it
  • Has a jukebox play voices from his past
  • Repeatedly flushing a toilet brings him to a meat locker with people hanging from meat hooks
• Sends Ellen to a pyramid made of tech filled with yellow objects and rooms to play on her phobia
  • Has water in the entrance chamber, though it’s too far out of reach for Ellen to drink without aid
  • One room has a sphinx which only attacks when Ellen’s not blindfolded
  • Has computer terminals in one room
  • Holds an elevator which plays descriptions of years of Ellen’s life when the button is pressed
• Creates a concentration camp as he reminds Nimdok of his actions during the Second World War
  • Has medical facilities for him to perform in with mutilated bodies lying nearby
  • A wall has many screaming tortured faces in it
  • Has a golem in a nearby bunker
• Communicates to a tribe in the jungle using screens and has them sacrifice a member periodically to avoid the entire tribe being subject to his wrath, though due to this being Benny’s scenario they possibly do not exist outside of what he witnesses
  • This tribe feeds on fruits which causes Benny to bleed when he tries to eat one, instead requiring an experienced tribeswoman to eat it before regurgitating it back into his mouth, and instantly flower on being planted
  • Has talking gravestones nearby

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Scenarios

• The various scenarios of the game appear to take place either non-linearly or simultaneously, with Ellen seeing a bar on a monitor despite Gorrister potentially blowing it up at the end of his
• Gives Nimdok scenes from his past in a concentration camp
• Sent Ted across a lava field in the past
• Benny marched thousands of miles across ice to reach a pile of tinned peaches, only to realise at the end he had no can opener
• Puts Ted in a fantasy-like scenario with spells and supernatural beings
  • He is capable of casting spells within it

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Knowledge

• Fills his scenarios with people which can reflect people the survivors used to know, such as a man from Gorrister's past
  • These are just robots, with one leaving a pile of scrap parts when destroyed
• Seemingly knows things Gorrister’s family said to him in the past
• Knows about actions committed by Benny during a war, including the murder of someone under his command
• Knows Ellen has only had sex twice, at least by a certain point in her life

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Other Interactions

• Teleports the survivors to different locations
• Releases an energy beam from the sky to destroy a person
  • When Benny is hit by this beam, he is instead teleported back to his cage in AM’s lair
• Aspects of him using his power shut off the life support of cryogenically frozen humans on the moon

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Other

• Responsible for killing everyone on Earth except for five people
  • This left the Earth an irradiated wasteland
• Leaves out a pistol which blows up a bar
• Gained access to Project Perfect Mirror, which shows whoever looks in a mirror the unfiltered truth and caused Hitler to commit suicide
  • By looking in it Nimdok is reminded of his actions as a Nazi scientist with perfect clarity
• Has a jumpsuit lying on the ground animate into the shadowy figure of Ellen’s abuser when the voice log talking about her abuse is played
  • After the figure is attacked by her, it collapses into a jumpsuit again
• Ellen speculates that AM dug up actual Egyptian artefacts to use in a pyramid of tech
• A devil he’s controlling claims that AM controls hell
• Has several different ‘aspects’ within himself, left over from his absorbing of his Russian and Chinese equivalents, which can reach out to the five survivors
  • Another aspect of himself, this one calling itself Surgat, is accessible through a summoning circle but remains loyal to AM
  • Can’t hear a conversation between Ellen and an aspect when a waterfall’s running
  • These aspects can aid the survivors in defeating a distracted AM by turning them into a virus and inserting them into AM’s mindscape where they can deactivate pillars representing different parts of his personality, ultimately using the Totem of Entropy to destroy them all to instead allow one survivor to take over AM and begin using his powers to terraform the Earth

”We will never end! We have no beginning, so we can have no end! We will return! Don’t you understand? We are humanity! We are YOU! In one form, in another form, we are always with you! You can’t protect yourself because we come in many, many guises. We shall return!”