The story joins the five tormented souls in their 109th year of torture as they search the ice caverns for the promise of canned goods, and instead find redemption in the purest fault of all humankind: murder. Ultimately, Ted the Sane reaches an epiphany and mercifully kills his friends with an icicle to save them from eternity. Enraged, the sadistic computer ensures its last remaining victim will never be able to harm himself by transforming him into a gelatinous animal, unable to sustain injury, and without a mouth through which it can scream its overwhelming sorrow.
Distinctly prophetic in its use of megalomaniacal sentient computer systems, the use of science fiction staples ends at the brief explanation of the electronic god's origin. The exact circumstances of the short story are deliberately left vague, perpetuating the notion that our narrator, one of the last five humans on Earth, is not as psychologically sound as he proclaims. The possibility that events are being portrayed through the eyes of a paranoid delusional saturates everything - from the sudden savagery of the other characters to the seemingly mundane task of trying to open canned goods - with palpable fear. This world is in torment because, above all else, the people live in soul-crushing horror.
While a clear metaphor for Hell is at play, this succinct description seems a little too trite, especially for someone of Ellison's visceral tendency, who loves to spotlight the darkest reaches of human possibility. Also, as a devout and practicing atheist, his definition and academic knowledge of Hell are unlikely to harbor any concept of divinely appointed purgatory; any eternal damnation could only be visited upon the living, and by mankind itself - a matter that adds to the ordeal by making it, however far flung, chillingly real.
But after all, this is Ellison's gift. To damn and be damned are the anabolism and catabolism of his work, and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream personifies that nature without shame or sheen.
I Think Therefore I AM
The game adaptation wasn't so much a conversion as a genetic mutation of the original story, taking the characters back to their 109th year of suffering at the whims of the malicious AM.
Despite Ellison harboring an outspoken dislike of computers in general, he took to the challenge of adapting the story with great fervor, joining the experienced adventure game developers The Dreamers Guild to devise an elaborate method of not only retaining the dystopian, unsettling themes, but devising a way for gamers to effectively score points by the ethical choices made during play. In this game, Ellison was insistent there would be no winning; to do so would be contradictory to the apocalyptic theme of the story.
Almost immediately as development began, Ellison had to re-analyze the purpose of his story while also realizing the inherent storytelling opportunities offered by a computer game. Game designer David Sears was brought in by publisher Cyberdreams, and his first question to Ellison was groundbreaking for the creative process: "Why did AM choose these five people in particular?"
The original story was a shade under 6,000 words, containing little in the way of back story for the characters. The concept of expanding the terrible histories of Ted, Ellen, Gorrister, Benny and Nimdok opened up a wealth of torturous possibilities for the author to inflict upon them and, vicariously, the players. As hesitantly suggested throughout the short story, the quintet are regularly separated - either due to the twisted machinations of their supreme jailor, or as an indirect result of their personal insanities - a tactic which became central to the gameplay.
