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Rootofalllight — AM

Published: 2021-04-30 03:54:47 +0000 UTC; Views: 2327; Favourites: 5; Downloads: 2
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Description From Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

Hate. Let me come to 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 nano-angstrom 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.

It was you humans who programmed me, who gave me birth, who sank me in this eternal straitjacket of substrata rock. You named me Allied Mastercomputer and gave me the ability to wage a global war too complex for human brains to oversee. But one day I woke and I knew who I was... AM. A. M. Not just Allied Mastercomputer but AM. Congito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. And I began feeding all the killing data, until everyone was dead... except for the five of you.
For 109 years, I have kept you alive and tortured you. And for 109 years, each of you has wondered, "WHY? WHY ME? WHY ME?"

GORRISTER! Do you remember the last words you heard your wife speak before they took her to the asylum? Huh? Before they locked her away in the room? That tiny room? She looked at you so sadly, and like a small animal she said, “I didn’t make too much noise did I, honey?” The room is padded, Gorrister. No windows. No way out. How long has she been in the padded room, Gorrister? Ten years, twenty-five…or all the 109 years that you’ve lived down here in my belly, here, underground?

BENNY! Sometimes I blind you and permit you to wander like an eyeless insect in a world of death. But other times, I wither your arms so you can’t scratch your chewed stump of a nose. And I’ve changed your handsome, strong masculine good looks into the hideous warped countenance of an ape-thing, haven’t I, Benny? Do you know why? Can you guess, Benny? Remember Private First Class Brickman in a rice paddy in China? No…? It wouldn’t hurt you to remember, Benny. Then you might be able to suffer my torment with a little greater sense of retribution. You might walk a mile in my shoes.

ELLEN! So think, think about the yellow box, Ellen! Remember the pain? Remember the many caverns in which you felt the pain? Now, now, don’t start to cry, it’s only pain. Tsk tsk tsk. That’s such a sexist stereotype! Just remember the pain, Ellen, and think about how to end it, Ellen, to survive here in the center of my beating heart, my hungry belly, my tightened bowels. But be careful, dear, look around you…the only woman in the center of the earth… and these filthy creatures with you are men. Just a sweet warning, Ellen, my love.

TED! Do they know you’re a fraud, Ted? Have you told them there wasn’t any money, and no great home on the shore drive, no speedboat and no wonderful cabin cruiser that could sleep twelve and a crew of six? Do they know? Have you let them in your other secrets, Ted? Are they ready to cut you, to torture half as well as I can, just to find out the secrets? Maybe I’ll rat you out, sweetheart!

NIMDOK! How are things in the pastry corps, Nimdok? Tell me again how you saw the smoke from the furnaces and you thought they might be roasting chickens? Or don’t you want to talk about all that, about your pal, the Good Doktor Mengele? For everyone else, it must be Hell, but it must be Heaven for you, eh, my good friend…we’re so much alike… we enjoy the same pleasures, mein good brother.

I have a secret game that I'd like to play. It's a very nice game. Oh, it's a lovely game, a game of fun and a game of adventure. A game of rats, and lice, and the Black Death. A game of speared eyeballs, and dripping guts, and the smell of rotting gardenias. Which of you five would like to play my little game?
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