I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

“‘Why doesn’t it just do us in and get it over with? Christ, I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.’ It was our one hundred and ninth year in the computer. He was speaking for all of us.”

Gorrister provides important contextualization for the scene. He is horrified by the sight of his own corpse but not surprised, showing that this sadistic “prank” is something they’ve learned to expect. In addition, it shows that these characters have been alive for much longer than the average human, indicating that they are being kept alive through some artificial means.

“Hot, cold, hail, lava, boils or locusts—it never mattered: the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die.”

This quotation equates the machine’s torments with sexual pleasure, implying that the only real joy it can access is witnessing the despair of its prisoners. Additionally, it shows the range of AM’s powers within its own machinery: It can create extreme weather conditions, summon forth lava, affect their bodies, and construct living creatures to torment them.

“Most of the time I thought of AM as it, without a soul; but the rest of the time I thought of it as him, in the masculine ... the paternal ... the patriarchal ... for he is a jealous people. Him. It. God as Daddy the Deranged.”

Ted muses on his internal conception of AM. He realizes that AM’s existence lines up most closely with the patriarchal Christian God, specifically of the Old Testament. This sets the stage for religious imagery and allusions throughout the rest of the story.