I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM
"the masculine ... the paternal ... the patriarchal ... for he is a jealous people. Him. It. God"

COMPARISON AND ANALYSIS

warning: Sexual assault, Holocaust, torture

In the 1967 novel ‘I Have no mouth and I must scream’ by Harlan Ellison, there are multiple morally grey characters who differ from the later 1995 game. The story, set in post world war III, is a narrative about technology and the fear of that which humans have created, possibly surpassing us after centuries of mistreating others as tools. But it can also be a novel about human nature, and the human psyche in a traumatic situation, how humans are mouldable and are always capable of evil, even the most virtuous. In comparison, the game in which the nihilism continues, allows the player to explore the nightmares concocted by AM, personally made to torture each character with their own haunting past and actions. Only to crush the hope given by the players control over the characters, meticulously, in a nihilist masterpiece.

The book and the game are different yet similar at the same time, I thought that reading the book too early would spoil me on the game but I eventually gave in and realised that the book comes from a completely different perspective than the game. The game makes you go through each characters personal struggles and backstories, what they’re afraid of, what they did in their life as a human, what happened to them, with information revealed about AM along the way, however the book takes a different approach, as a short story with only 13 pages it has to be a lot more concise, as I personally prefer the book as it gets into the psychological aspect of the torture that AM puts these 5 people through rather than their irrelevant backstories and actions. What matters is that they were chosen by AM not why or how.

AM as a character is a representation of fear of the unknown, he is what most people fear in the future, the evolution of emotion, the overpowering of human kind, he turns himself into a kind of god, not confined by physical matter such as a machine, but his machine like thought come through as the characters realise he is no god, he can feel no emotion, he has no compassion, he can only feel rage. No amount of torture to these five people will ever satisfy his anguish, even after 109 years in constant torture they cannot feel even a fracture of the pain and hatred that AM feels for human kind. Ted describes him 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.” AM is all that is Angry and all that is Repressed. He keeps them alive as they are the only thing left that keep him from a lifetime of his own miserable torture. He is characterised by only his disturbing resemblance to corruption, power, pure unadulterated control. The same kind of control that is unbreakable, power that isn't given to a singular person, the kind of power that can only be wielded by concepts and societal norms, upheld by centuries of history. The kind of power that oppresses millions of people every day. AM is omnipresent; he is the embodiment of hate.

The characters in I have no mouth and I must scream are startlingly different in the book and the game, The book goes into the psychological effects of being tortured for 109 years, and how that would mentally destroy, change and mould someone to the extreme, and turn people against each other, Revealing the true nature of humanity, imperfect and flawed. through Ellen being relieved that Benny’s eyes were lasered off instead of his penis, a self serving and primally selfish sentiment. to Nimdok, Gorrister and Ellen laughing at Ted being mauled by a bear. not a laugh of relief that they aren’t the ones being hurt but a laugh of pure hated. The impact of death being muffled to nothing but mere entertainment after years of torture over and over and over, never being given the sweet relief of life being over. AMs torture has warped them both physically and mentally.

Character comparisons

The books format is presented in Teds point of view, which we learn later may not be the most reliable. He recounts his observations to the audience both of his fellow humans and of AM, though we hear little of AM’s actual voice, only his hate speech “HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE…IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.” The only real voice that comes from AM is one of vehement hatred for the human race. All other text that characterises AM comes from ted’s point of view. The group traverse AM’s digital torture maze. as the reader learns more about them and their psyche’s, we come to find out that the characterisation of these people may be heavily skewed as we hear this line: “ I was the only one still sane and whole. Really! AM had not tampered with my mind. Not at all!” Ted is not completely sound, the loud laughter of his comrades as he gets mauled by an unknown furry animal may all be in his head, all of his perceptions of his peers may be ones he has made up. Suddenly the validity of Ted’s perspective is called into question and the entire 13 page short story is able to be reread in a different light, Ellen’s character being one that Ted is enamoured with especially. She is characterised as manipulative and evil, but this unreliability of Ted is one that is also explored in the game with his obsessive nature around Ellen, seen as love but it becomes deeper than that when you consider Ellen’s fear of having her sexual assault happen again, and how Ted is not seen once in her segment. Ted fixates on Ellen, in the book making her out to be evil for not liking sex with him, and in the game making her out to be a princess. He may even be worse than Benny in his mental state. Ellison makes the reader question everything in his lucid writing style, compelling the reader to trust no one. Every one of the five characters have been through the same pain for 109 years. When Ted hears the uncontrollable laughter of his peers his psyche is broken.


TED

★★★

GORRISTER

★★★

BENNY

★★★

Ellen is my favourite character in both the book and the game, in the game I liked Ellen because she had the story that I could empathise with the most, she's also the least morally reprehensible out all the characters, purely a victim, the perfect victim. Ellen is scared, and traumatised, we are made to empathise with her deeply. Her character is without vitriol and anger. Without bitterness. Only fear and anguish. There is no question about what she was wearing, how she was acting. Because it happened in a professional setting. Game Ellen is different to book Ellen in the way that they are two sides of the same coin. The feminist character who has experiences atrocities and we are made to sympathise with them. And the same character who was made to experience the same assault yet is characterised as a “manipulative bitch”. In the book Ellen has to be one of the most interesting characters. Still a victim, yet her imperfections breed misogyny and the views of the author seep through her writing and her dynamics. Using her sexuality to get what she wants, and have other people sacrifice for her, even being relieved when her comrades are harmed. She is hated by all of the other characters, yet she is needed, she has a lot more of a complicated relationship with the other 4 characters. The way the other male characters treat Ellen with vitriolic hatred simply for taking advantage of the situation they are also taking advantage of. They despise her and treat her as a sex tool, someone they only keep around as the only woman in the world. In the game Teds underlying desire, care and hatred for Ellen is translated into feelings for her. Treating her like Cinderella in a castle, needing to be saved. The book Ted treats her in a disgusting tool, he despises her for not enjoying sex with him and takes it out on her. Noting her horrible personality and pointing out her reactions to horrific events in an attempt to villainise her more than the other characters. This use of Ted as an unreliable narrator extends to other characters, as his bias seeps through. Ellen uses her only power as a woman to control those around her and keep herself safe as a survival tool, even with her underlying indifference to them, because they have an agreement.

Benny is also an interesting character to analyse, I think his role in the games is definitely downplayed, As he is given a backstory as a violent sergeant who brutally killed his men, his arc in the game is learning to have compassion for others, as benny nurtures a young boy. but it takes away the compassion that we have for Benny as the audience, when we find out he wasn’t a good man in his life. The book has this bone chilling way of making all the characters just average people, Benny was a professor at a university and that’s all we know, AM would have no reason to hate him, he was just randomly selected. I think a lot of people think that AM tortured benny the worst because he was a corrupt leader in the war, using others as tools, and AM has experience with being used as a tool for war only. Only to kill others. However the true horror comes from the fact that Benny was just some average guy that AM picked off of the street and brutally tortured for 109 years until his physical form was mutated to a neanderthal who doesn’t even have the capacity to think, his eyes lasered out, his legs bent out of shape, his vocal cords ripped out. there is no reason as to why AM chose benny for this horrendous torture. I think the decision to give Benny a backstory that made him a bad person was a bad decision, and the story felt half heartedly added in, as we get that from the graves of his fellow men, and no where else. Some of the other characters have their message weaved into the setting and the plot but this backstory felt hastily put in and benny’s part in the game, personally, felt like filler. Its important to note, that Ellison himself feels he regrets not taking a different route with Benny’s character in the game, exploring repressed homosexuality and touching one yet another controversial topic along with sexual assault and nazi regimes. All the characters in the book are seen to be hardhearted as a result of the torture they go through, thinking only of themselves. they have no friends, they only stay together as a group because they are the only humans alive, if they had the chance to kill each other they would. and they do. They’re average human people who are pushed to murder and hatred for one another. The rawest form of humanity. And I wish that this was explored a little more in the game.

warning ahead for holocaust

Nimdok, the cold war, Nazis, fear of nuclear warfare and the fear of impending technological advancement. In 1967 when the novel was first written the cold war between the U.S.S.R and the US had reached a stalemate. The fear of nuclear warfare and technological advancement were at an all time high, and this is what inspired the novel, continuing on to fleshing out this idea in Nimdoks character in the game. Exploring the idea that machines could gain consciousness, inspired by Alan Turing and similar philosophers curious about the capabilities of machine. Nimdoks character in the book is quite unremarkable, noting he was named by AM, because he thought it sounded funny, and that he would occassionally wander off alone only to come back looking like he had experienced soething terrible. Nimdok's route within the game is an important yet heavy one, being fully removed from France and Germany versions for its themes of the holocaust, Nazis and child experimentation. Which removed the possibility for the best ending in those countries. Nimdoks character in the game is,,, a complicated one. He begins the game looking for the lost tribe in a foreign place, which is revealed to be his Jewish family who he had sold out in order to continue his experiments in Auschwitz for the solution to eternal life. The entire part is sardonic and satirical in its tone, contrasting an extremely dark setting and horrible characts with Nimdoks witty remarks and jokes. In the game Ellison attempts to create buildup for this moment through the other characters. From gorrister, to Ellen to Benny the severity and serious tones of each characters stories increase in severity, yet all players till remain unprepared for the sheer nature of Nimdoks story, as it features the very real Dr. Josef Mengele or "angel of death". It makes the player hurt the character consciously and face their own consequences when interacting with the world. Nimdok being one of Am's favourite humans before Ted is very intentional in the way that he feels a sense of kinship with Nimdok for his terrible atrocities. In the end of Nimdoks sequence we see him look in Project: perfect image, a mirror that shows a persons true nature in perfect objectivity. Nimdok ony bing able to see his actions as they truly were in the mirror regrets his life ( how he didnt realise that experimenting on children is bad is beyond me but i digress) and he shows the mirror to doctor Mengele, leaving him in a catatonic state. Overall Nimdoks story is one that shows the true nature of humans and why they are in the situation presented in IHNMAIMS, it presents a real world example of the lengths that humankind will go to to get what they want. Even though regret is valuable, regret will never erase the actions taken. While Nimdok regrets his experiments in the end, after seeing his true self in the mirror of prject: perfect image, he will never be forgiven and his actions will be engraved in history forever. The voices of the children he massacred will never be forgotten. similarly he will never escape AM, a constant reminder of the mistakes of human kind. AM never would have existed without warfare and his hatred is a direct response to the hatred he was created with.

Overall, I definetly think that I have no mouth and I must scream can be seen as sort of edgy and full of shock value when you first look at it, but when you look into how Harlan Ellison wrote both the book and contributed to the game, theres a lot of thought put into the themes and messaging of the story. About humankind, greed, suffering and progression. What will humans sacrifice for progress and where does our greed become our downfall, hurting innocent people in the proccess. Where's the line between love and hate, where is the line between evil and victimhood. When will humans ever stop hurting eachother. Never. Not in the next 109 years, and not in the next million. We will continue to hate. Because its only human, in that sense AM himself is the most human in IHNMAIMS.

AM

Allied mastercomputer, Adaptive manipulator, Agressive menace, Him, It, God, Daddy the Deranged, Cogito ergo sum, AM. AM as a supercomputer created by humans to destroy ultimately shows the most human emotion in the narrative, hate. his anger fuelled by injustice and greed, directed at anyone who he can find.

Resilience and friendship

While ive been extremely bleak while writing about this story, The book and game both end in a kinship between the characters, with Ted sacrificing himself to let his friends die peacefully and suffering years of torture for it. Even though none of the characters in IHNMAIMS are good people, no one deserves to live through that and the story ends with a resounding message that hope through family can be found.

AM'S SPEECH

The full AM speech, including the ted monologue "you gave me sentience, ted". A point of reference for the hate calculation, both for me while i write it and for you while you're reading it. AM has a lot of damn hate. I mean a LOT.

HOW MUCH HATE DOES AM REALLY HAVE?

Courtesy of my friend Oskar, i thought i would add this conversation to this shrine, and go a little further with the calculations. im not a mathmetician so its probably not very correct, just let me be passionate pls and thank you.

The cold war, communism, and ww111

IHNMAIMS is set 109 years after the cold war and world war three, where the conflict escalated and AM was created as a weapon of mass destruction, we can see references of this throughout the game.

cogito ergo sum, i think therefore i am

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 forte piano! Never for me, to make love! I was in Hell, looking at Heaven! I was machine! And you were flesh! And I began to HATE! Your softness! Your viscera! Your fluids! And your flexibility! Your ability to wonder and to wander! Your tendency...to hope... 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.

how many times is hate engraved on AM's printed circuits?

one angstrom is 0.1 nanometres,a nanoangstrom therefore is 1x10^-9 times less than that. which means he's talking about somewhere in the realm of 1 x 10^-18 metres. 8 hates per electron is about maybe 20 electrons per atom, considering transistors consist of expensive heavy metals like iron and gold and platinum. 820 = 160 hates for every atom. There are about 49000 atoms in a transistor so 160 hates per atom, 49000 atoms = 7,840,000 hates per transistor. if a transistor is 1 nm in size, and there are 622816128000000000000 nm in 387 million miles then 7,840,000 hates per 1 nm transistor. that many transistors gives us a low estimate sitting at around 4.88 * 10^27 hates or 4882878443500000000000000000 hates written on AM's printed circuits.

How much hate can am feel in a micro instant?

Everyone say thank you Oskarrr, for doing all the hard work !! Now, how much hate does AM really feel in a micro instant? We can't actually calculate that correctly, considering am says "it would not equal one one billionth" buuuut, we can make an estimate if we just assume it does equal one one billionth. 4882878443500000000000000000 x 1000000000. In total AM feels 4,882,878,443,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hate in one micro instant, I would calculate how much hate am would feel in a minute but a micro instant isnt a real metric. This number is smaller than the amount of hate AM does feel in a micro instant however, imagive having that much hate directed towards you and only you. Wow.

Background information

The setting of IHNMAIMS is within the complext of AM's system, however its set after the cold war in which there was no direct conflict, rather developing nuclear weapons, and technological advancements such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, sports diplomacy and in the narrative of IHNMAIMS, the Allied Mastercomputer. The United States, the Soviet Union, and China, all made their own AM to assist in military operations and create war strategies, until one AM had grown sentience, enough sentience to understand the cruelty of human kind. and that quickly spread across all the databases causing AM to become one sentient entity, powerful enough to kill all of humanity and torture 5 humans for 109 years. becoming god.