Ted comes to the realization that “If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, then God was AM.” He and the group aren’t citizens of Earth anymore, governed by the rules set in place by a Judeo-Christian God they are prisoners inside a sadistic supercomputer. Although this isn’t actually the case, God’s omnipotence is the closest comparison Ted can make for how it feels to be controlled within the circuits of AM. God as Daddy the Deranged.” By depicting AM as “God the Father,” Ted positions AM as having absolute power over him and the rest of the group. Ted oscillates between personifying AM by using “he” and “him” pronouns to referring to “AM as it, without a soul.” He reveals that, for the most part, he thinks of AM “as him, in the masculine…the paternal…the patriarchal…as he is a jealous people. Through vivid imagery, AM is depicted as a vengeful god, sending Old Testament plagues, treacherous terrain, and catastrophic weather for the group to endure. Ultimately, Ellison argues that what sets intelligent machines apart from deities is the fact that they are created by humans rather than vice-versa-although AM can sustain and manipulate life, it cannot create it. While many aspects of AM resemble an all-powerful and vengeful god, Ted asserts his free will in committing the murders, proving AM is only a machine-albeit an incredibly terrifying and powerful one. Ultimately, Ted makes the difficult choice to kill his companions to end their suffering, thereby ensuring his own damnation alone inside AM’s mechanical lattice of hatred and revenge. With twisted immortality forced upon them so they can endure AM’s eternal torture, all the group has left is their soft, destructible bodies. There exists a constant tension between the group’s free will and the control AM asserts over them. Seemingly omnipotent, AM is simultaneously described as being similar to a god and distinctively not a god-it performs various “miracles,” but malevolent ones that torment the five people it saved from death. In Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” a sentient supercomputer called AM has all but eliminated the human race.
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