AM’s torture is psychological as well as physical: despite Ted’s earlier assertion that AM has not tapped into his mind, the computer presently inserts itself into Ted’s brain, filling him with self-loathing thoughts and horrible sensations. However, in this moment of reflection and paranoia, Ted begins to cry and prays to God for an escape-or for death.Ī month into their journey, AM creates an enormous, monstrous “bird of winds,” whose flapping wings create a hurricane, and the group is thrown around and injured in the storm. Ted believes that he is the only one in the group who is still of sound mind, since AM has spared Ted compared to its treatment of the others. He despises them in return, particularly Ellen, whom he thinks of as a “dirty bitch” and a “slut” because she has sex with Ted and the other three men. Ted is convinced that his companions hate him and are conspiring against him because he is the youngest in the group and the least affected by AM, by his own estimation. They cower in terror, and a traumatized Ted continues to hide long after the others have recovered and gone back to laughing around the fire. An enormous, animalistic presence moves toward the group in the darkness, filling the air around them with an overwhelming rancid smell. An immense sound, metallic and insect-like, fills the chamber. Suddenly AM’s computer banks begin humming and lighting up. It is unknown why these five were chosen or what AM’s motivation is for holding them captive and torturing them. The supercomputer killed off the human race but kept five people-Ted, Ellen, Benny, Gorrister, and Nimdok-alive in its chambers. But as the conflict developed into World War Three, the computers linked themselves into a single entity and became AM in its current all-encompassing form. Later, as the group huddles around a fire, Gorrister tells Benny the origin story of AM: during the Cold War of the 20th century, the US, Russia, and China all had an AM supercomputer. AM has gradually mutilated Benny’s body and mind to resemble those of a monkey, and Ted reflects that Benny went insane years ago. AM possesses total power over them, and Ted thinks of the computer as something of a god: sometimes a “ him,” sometimes and “ it.” AM holds the entire Earth inside of it and now aims to perfect itself by killing off its obsolete parts.Īs the group of five begin to make their way to the ice caverns, Benny makes a futile attempt to escape from AM, and AM painfully blinds him as punishment. “What the hell,” Ted thinks to himself-nothing matters anymore. The group, including Nimdok, is skeptical of this, but they haven’t been fed in three days and so decide to venture the 100-mile distance to the caverns on foot. It is the group’s 109th year trapped inside AM, an enormous supercomputer, and Ted, the narrator, feels that Gorrister is speaking for all of them when he admits that he doesn’t know how much more he can take of AM’s torture.Īfter this incident, Nimdok has a hallucination of canned food in the ice caverns that lie within AM’s depths. When Gorrister joins them on the ground, looking up at his own body, the group realizes that Gorrister isn’t really dead-this is just another one of AM’s sadistic tricks. Tim, Ellen, Benny, and Nimdok are in a computer chamber, staring up at the corpse of Gorrister that’s hanging from the ceiling.
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