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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