无声狂啸 - 达人(eee)

2006/12/15 | 无声狂啸
类别(FANTASY) | 评论(0) | 阅读(435) | 发表于 16:42: 科幻小说阿兰?艾利森（Harlan Ellison）的名作《无声狂啸》（I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream）被作者本人亲自改编成游戏。《无声狂啸》讲到未来世界的所有一切都被一台名为AM的无限仇恨人类的超级电脑所彻底摧毁，但AM故意残忍地留下了五个活口，还让他们获得永生的能力，作为它在未来的岁月中对人类进行摧残报复的手段。这五个人是AM精心挑选的，每个人都带着他们独特的恶和心灵创伤，AM每日都不断地刺激他们的创伤，摧发他们对自己的憎恶，让他们活在一种生不如死的状态之中。游戏里玩家轮流地扮演这五个不幸的恶人，游戏的最终目的，就是要想让这五个人能够最终死去，并在通向死亡的艰难历程中达到某种意义上的灵魂拯救。这个人类自己制造出来的AM当然也可以看成是人类的一个黑暗的本我的象征，在这个巨大的异己化的本我面前，一切都是宿命，最好的解脱就是死亡。

－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－

我没有嘴，但我要呐喊/I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

作者：哈伦·埃利森

（郑秀玉译）

戈里斯特的躯体软弱无力，从粉红的调色板上倒挂下来；没有任何支撑在计算机体腔里高高地吊
在我们的头顶上；油渍渍、凉哩哩的微风无休无止地穿过这个主洞穴，躯体并不哆索。躯体头朝
下倒挂着，右脚的脚底贴在调色板的下而。顺着尖瘦的下巴从一边耳朵到另一边耳朵切开准确的
一刀，躯体的血都排放干了，在金属地板反光的表面上没有一点血迹。
当戈里斯特来到我们当中，抬头看他自己的时候，我们明白AM又——次愚弄了我们。拿我们寻开
心，但这已经太迟了；对于这部机器来说这只是种消谴而已。我们三人呕吐了，出于古老的习惯
行为方式，边吐边掉转了脸。
戈卫斯恃脸色刷白，似乎看到了伏都教的偶象，对未来感到恐惧，'哦，上帝啊，'
他喃喃的说着，走开了。过了一阵子我们三人跟上他，发现他背靠较小的一个嘁嘁喳喳响的存储
库，把头埋在手里。埃伦蹲在他身边抚摸他的头发。他一动不动，但是他的声音从埋着的脸传出
来十分清晰。'它干吗不把我们杀掉了事呢：耶酥啊，我不知道这样下去我还能熬多久呢。'
这是我们在计算机体内度过的第一百零九年。
他说出了我们大家的心声。
（机器语言）……
尼姆道克(这是机器强迫他采用的名字，因为AM用稀奇古怪的声音来取乐)产生幻觉，说那些冰洞
穴里有罐头食品。戈里斯特和我半信半疑：“又是一种骗人的东西，'我告诉他们。'就象AM卖给
我们的该死的冻大象一样。本尼为那玩艺儿差点发疯。我们得徒步跋涉，那骗人的食品就会烂
掉；或者变成什么鬼东西'我说忘了它吧。呆在这里，它很快就得拿出一点吃的来，否则咱们都得
死掉。'
本尼耸耸肩膀。我们已经三天没吃东西了。上次吃的那些虫子，粘乎乎、细细长长的。到底有没
有罐头食品，尼姆道克心中不再有把握了。他知道有这种可能，但是他越来越熬不住。那儿不见
得比这儿更糟。冷一些，但这不太要紧。炎热、寒冷、冰雹、熔岩、疔疮或蝗虫都不在话下：机
器行手淫，我们只好吃了，不吃要饿死。
埃伦迫使我们下定决心。'我必得吃点东西，特德。或许那有巴特利特梨子或桃子
呢。求求你，特德，咱们试试吧。'我轻易妥协了。豁出去了，没什么大不了的事。埃
伦却感恩戴德。她轻率地占有我两次。即便这种事也无关紧要了。而且她从此不来了，因此干吗
要多费心神呢？但是每当我们俩干那种事的时候，机器就咯咯笑。笑声响亮，从我们的前面、上
万、后面，从我们的四周传来笑声，他窃笑着。它窃笑着。大部分时间我把当作它，没有灵魂的
它；但其余时间我把它当作他，男性的他…父亲般的……家长似的……因为他是一个忌邪的人
民。他。它。担任精神错乱之父的神。
星期四我们出发了。机器总是让我们随时记住日期。时间的流逝非常重要；绝对不是对我们来说
的，而是对他来说的……它，AM．星期四。谢谢。
尼姆道克和戈里斯特将手扣住自己手腕和对方的手腕，搭成一个椅子将埃伦抬了一阵子。本尼和
我则鞍前马后跟随着，以确保万一发生意外的话，即便我们俩人之中一个要倒霉，至少埃伦会安
然无悉。安然无恶，这可能性微乎其微。没关系。
到冰洞穴的路程只有一百英里左右，第二天，当我们正躺在水疮状像太阳似的东西下面的时候
（这是他显形出来的）．他投下一些吗哪。（吗哪：原是《圣经·旧约·出埃及记》中记载的古
以色列人出埃及返回加南的路上经过旷野时获得的神赐的食物。）
尝起来像煮过的野公猪尿。我们都吃了。
第三天我们穿过一个废弃的谷地，到处充斥着锈迹斑斑的古老计算机存储库的遗骸。AM对自已的
生命如同对我们的生命一样残忍无情。这是他个性的标志：他力求完善。无论是消灭自己充满世
界的躯体里无益的部件，还是改进折磨我们的方法手段，AM跟发明他的那些人，早已化为尘土，
同样完善彻底，甚至比他们所期望的有过之而无不及。
有光线从上面渗透下来，我们意识到我们离地面一定非常近了。但是我们不想试着爬上去看一
看。外面实际上空无一物，能够被想到的任何东西经过——百多年的光阴都已经不复存在了。唯
有那一度是数十亿人口家园的被毁灭了的地表。．现在只剩下我们五个人，在这计算机里头，孤
单单地同AM在一起。
我听见埃伦狂乱地说道：“不，本尼！别这样，算了吧，本尼求求你别这样'
于是我想起我一直听到本尼低声嘟嚷了好几分钟。他一直说：“我得出去，我得出去…'反反复复
说了好几遍。他那张瘦猴脸扭曲着，同时流露出至福至乐和哀伤的神情。“节日”期间AM留给他
的辐射疤痕拉长了，变成一团红里透白的皱遮皮肤，他的五官似乎各行其事，互不相干。本尼可
能是我们五个当中最幸运的：他多年前就发呆，目光痴呆而狂野。
即便我们可以随心所欲咒骂AM，可以想出最恶毒的主意来熔断它的存储库，腐坏它的底板，烧坏
它的电路，打乱它的控制泡；它却不能容忍我们逃跑的企图。我想抓住本尼的时候他从身边跳开
了。他爬到一个较小的四方形的存储器的表面上，撬起存储器的侧板，往里面塞满烂坏的元件。
他在上面蹲了一会儿，像一只猩猩，AM有意使他变成这般模样。
然后他跃的老高，抓住一根锈胁斑斑坑坑洼洼的金属柱子，一只动物样的一手一手轮换着往上
爬，一直爬到一根大梁的架状突出部，高出我们二十英尺。
'哦，特德，尼姆道克，请帮帮他，把他弄下来，免得————”她突然打住了。
眼泪开始在她的眼框里打转。她毫无目标地挥动着双手。
太迟了。当将要发生的事真的发生的时候，我们谁也不原靠近他。更何况我们都看穿了她的用
心。当AM改变本尼形体的时候，它处于完全丧失理智乃至歇斯底里的时期，因此计算机不仅让本
尼的面孔变成大类人猿的模样，本尼的阴部也改大了，她就喜欢那玩艺儿！当然她也同我们交
配，但是她喜欢他身上那玩意儿啊，埃伦，垫底的埃伦，天真无邪的埃伦，啊，清白的埃伦！下
贱的脏货。
戈里斯特搂了她一巴掌。她颓然倒地，抬头凝望着可怜的疯颠的本尼。然后放声大哭。哭是她最
大的防卫武器。七十五年前我们早就听惯了她的哭声。戈里斯特对着她的体侧踢了一脚。接着响
起一种声音。那声音也是光。本尼的双眼闪烁着半是声音半是光的东西，那东西随着声音的高低
和光的明暗博动着，当光/声速度加快时，声音的洪亮度和光的强度就变得更大更亮。这一定很痛
苫，这痛苫一定随着耀眼的光和增强的音量而不断加深着，因为本尼开始像一头受伤的野兽那样
呜呜哭着。起初，当光较弱、声速较低的时候，他轻轻地呜咽着，接着他的双肩耸了起来；大声
哭叫着，他的背部弓了起来，要摆脱那痛苦。他像金花鼠那样十指交叉在胸前。他那张哀伤的瘦
猴脸极度痛苦地扭曲着，头歪到一边。然后当他双眼发出的声音越来越响亮时。他开始吼叫起
来，声音越来越大。我用双手拍打头的两侧，但是无法把声音挡开，那声音轻易地穿进我的脑
袋，就像锡箔塞入我的牙齿，我疼的直哆嚷。
本尼突然伸直身体。他在大梁上站起来，像木偶一样扭着腿站直。两道大光束从他的双眼射出
来。声音不断增大，到了莫名奇妙的高度，然后他向前一栽，直挺挺地摔下来，砰的一声撞到钢
板地面上。他躺在那儿，一阵阵痉挛着，光不断绕着他流动，声音升高，超出了正常的音域。
此后光重新射入他的脑袋，声音减弱，他仍然躺在那儿。哭得很可怜。他的双眼变成了两个柔软
的湿漉漉的水潭，蓄满脓浆。AM弄瞎了他的双眼。戈里斯特、尼姆道克和我……我们都走开了但
我们是在看见了埃伦多情的、关切的脸上露出宽慰神情之后走开的。
（机器语言——————）
海绿色的灯光弥漫在我们宿营的洞穴里。AM提供了干燥朽木，我们拿它烧火，挤在一起围坐在微
弱而引发伤感的火堆旁，讲着故事免得本尼在漫长难眠之夜再哭泣。“AM是什么意思呢？”
戈里斯特回答他的问题。这种问答我们以前进行过上千次了，但这是本尼最喜欢听的故事。“最
初它指的是联合主控计算饥，然后它指的是灵活应变的操纵者，再后来它有了感知能力，将自己
联合起来，于是他们称它是一个富于侵略性的危险物，但是那已经为时太晚了，最后它称呼自己
为AM。就是新出现的智慧，它的意思是我存在……自我……我想因此称为我存在。”
本尼有点儿淌口水，还嘿嘿笑了一下。
“有中国的AM、俄国的AM、美国佬的AM，还有——-”他停了下来。本尼握紧大拳头敲打着钢板地
面。他不高兴了。戈里斯特在他开始敲地板的时候没有立刻接着讲故事。
戈里斯特又开始讲故事了。'冷战开始，引发了第三次世界大战，打得没完没了，
演变成一场大战，一场非常错综复杂的大战。于是他们需要计算机来操纵这场战争。他们挖了第
一批地下井穴开始建造AM。于是出现了中国的AM、俄国的AM和美国佬的AM，一切都很顺利，直到
他们把地球弄得百孔千疮，不断给计算机加上这样那样的元件。但是有一天AM醒过来了，知道他
自己是何许人物，他将自已联合起来，开始馈入全部杀人数据，直到每个人都死了，除了我们五
人以外，于是AM把我们带到这来。”
本尼笑得挺开心。他又在淌口水了。埃伦撩起裙子的折边，揩掉他嘴边的口水。戈里斯特每次总
是尽可能把故事讲得简洁些，但是除了干巴巴的事实，并没有什么好讲的。我们谁也不知道为什
么AM救了我们五个人，为什么独独救了我们五个，为什么他化费全部时间折磨我们，也不知道他
干吗让我们变成了实际上永生不死的人…
黑暗之中，计算机的一个存储库开始哼哼响。这声音偶尔被远在半英里外洞穴里的另一个存储库
听见了。于是所有的元件一个接一个嗡嗡叫了起来，一种低沉的议论纷纷的声音传遍所有的机
器。
声音变大，灯光像发热的闪电穿过控制台的表面。那声音不断上升，直到听起来像上百万只金属
昆虫发出愤怒的恐吓声。'这是什么声音？'埃伦喊道。她的话音带着恐惧。即便到现在她也还没
有习惯于这种声音。
'这一回又要遭殃了，'尼姆道克说。
'他要讲话了，'戈里斯特说。'我心中有数。'
'咱们赶快离开这鬼地方吧！'我冲口而出，站了起来。
'不，特德，坐下……假如他在外面挖了坑，或者有什么玩艺儿，我们怎么办？天
大黑，咱们看不见。'戈里斯特无可奈何地说。
然后我们听见了…'我不知道…
黑暗中有个东西朝我们移来。它庞大，拖踏着步子，毛茸茸，湿漉漉，朝我们走来。我们根本看
不见它，但是有一种庞然大物膨胀着朝我们走来的沉重感觉。黑暗中一个巨大的重物朝我们压过
来，更确切地说，是一种压迫感，就像空气压入一个限定的空间，使得一个球体无形的外壁膨胀
起来。本尼呜呜咽咽哭起来。尼姆道克的下唇颤抖着，他使劲咬着唇不让它颤抖。埃伦快步走过
金属地板来到戈里斯特身边，跟他挤在一起。洞穴中有一种潮湿的用作铺垫的皮毛味。有烧焦的
木头味。有尘封的天鹅绒昧；有腐烂的兰花味。有发馊的牛奶味。有硫磺味、恶臭的牛油味、油
膜味、润滑油味、粉笔灰味、人头皮味。
AM左右着我们。他在拿我们逗乐。有一种味道……
我听见自己在尖叫，我的鄂关节发疼。我用手和膝盖匆匆爬过地板。爬过钉着儿排无尽头铆钉的
冰冷的金属地板，那气味让我感到透不过气来，我的脑袋疼得轰轰作响，逼得我惊恐万状逃跑
着。我像蟑螂一般逃窜，爬过地板，逃到外面黑暗里，但在黑暗中那东西不屈不挠地追在我后
头。其他人仍然在老地方，围聚在火堆旁，大声笑
着…他们歇斯底里的傻笑声就像颜色纷繁的浓烟升入黑暗之中。我连忙跑开，躲了起来。几个小
时，多少日子乃至多少年过去了，他们从来不告诉我。
埃伦责骂我'含怒不语'，尼姆道克试图说服我。就他们这一方来说，哈哈大笑只是一种神经质的
条件反射而已。但是我知道这不是一个士兵在子弹射中旁边的人的时候所感受的那种宽慰。我知
道这不是什么条件反射。他们恨我。他们肯定是在同我作对，就连AM也能感觉到这种恨，而且利
用他们刻骨仇恨使我处境更加糟糕。我们一直活着，得以返老还童，保恃着AM把我们带到这下面
的时候的年龄，他们恨我，因为我年轻，而且是受AM影响最小的一个。
我知道。上帝啊，我完全知道。那些姨子娘养的，那条肮脏的母狗埃伦。本尼曾经是一位出色的
理论家，一位大学教授；如今他充其量半是大半是猿。他过去很英俊，机器毁了他的容貌。他过
去神志清醒，机器把他逼疯了。他过去快快乐乐的，机器却给他配上一个适用于雄马的器官。AM
已经将本尼改头换面了。戈里斯特曾经是一个使人烦恼的人。他是一个拒服兵役者；他是一个和
平的旅行者；他是一个策划人，一个实干家，一个朝前看的人.AM把他变成了一个对一切耸肩以示
不屑理睬的人，使他对自己关切的事变得麻木不仁。AM使他丧失了自我。尼姆道克独自一人出
去，在黑暗中呆了好长时间。我不知道他在外面干了些什么。从来不告诉我们。但是不管是什么
事，尼姆道克回来时总是脸苍白。毫无血色，受到惊吓，全身哆嚏。AM用一种特别的方法揍过
他，我们不太清楚是怎么打的。还有埃伦。那个冲洗袋！AM从不惹她，把她变成比原先更加淫荡
的婊子。她所有的甜言蜜语，她记忆中所有真正的爱情，她要我们相信的所有的谎言：在AM攫取
她并把她带到这里跟我们在一起之前，她曾经一直是个处女，只有两次失去了贞操。那女人，我
的女人埃伦浑身邋遢。她喜欢现状，四个男人都归她。不，AM也带给她快乐，即便她说跟它干那
事不好受。
我是唯一神志正常身体健康的人。真的！
AM还没有左右过我的思想。一点都没有。我只是不得不忍受他施加给我们的一切。所有的幻觉，
所有恶梦，所有的折磨。但是那些贱货，他们四个人，组成一个阵线联手与我作对。假如我不是
不得不一直疏远他们，一直堤防着他们，我可能早就发现跟AM抗争会容易些。
这时我的思想垮了，我哭起来。
啊，耶酥，仁慈的耶酥，假如有个耶酥，假如有个上帝，求求你让我们离开这儿，或者杀了我
们。因为就在这一时刻我想我完全明白了，于是我能够用语言把它描述出来：AM有意将我们永远
囚禁在他的腹腔中，永远折磨虐待我们。这机器恨我们，以前从来没有一种有感觉的生物如此怀
着刻骨仇恨。我们孤立无助。下面这个事实也变得非常清楚了：假如有个仁慈的耶酥，假如有个
上帝，这个上帝就是AM。
（机器语言）
飓风袭击了我们，其威力如同冰河轰轰隆隆涌入大海。这场飓风是看得见摸得着的。一股股风撕
扯着我们，把我们推回来时的路，落到了弯弯曲曲的、两边排列着汁算机的黑暗通道里，埃伦被
风刮了起来，失声叫着，脸朝前被抛向一大群吱吱怪叫的机器中，机器们各自发出的声音就像搏
斗中的蝙蝠唧唧叫着。她无法落下来。怒号的狂风将她高高托起，猛烈地冲击她，撞击她，一次
又一次把她抛上去，让她坠下，离开我们；当她打转到通到的一个黑暗拐弯处时，突然不见了。
她满险是血，两眼紧闭。
我们谁也够不着她。我们紧紧抓住出现在眼前够得着的东西：本尼夹在两个漆面有裂纹的大柜子
之间，尼姆道克用手紧紧扣住一个环绕狭窄过道的栏杆，离我们头顶有四十英尺高，戈里斯特头
朝下紧贴着一个壁垄，这个壁垄由两个带有玻璃面盘的大机器组成，标度盘在红线和黄线之间来
回摆动，那些线表示什么意思，我们甚至都无法揣测。滑过铁甲板，我的指尖都被划破了。风打
击我，抽打我围，着我呼啸着，把我从铁甲板之间一个小小的缝隙中拽出来，我颤抖着，战战兢
兢，摇摆不定。我脑袋乱糟糟的，叮当响，喳喳叫在狂乱中膨胀又收缩。
这风是一只疯狂的巨鸟一边拍动庞大的翅膀一边发出的尖叫声，然后我们全都被风刮起吹走，回
到我们来时的路，绕了一个弯，进入一个我们从未涉足的暗道，来到一处废墟，那儿充斥着碎玻
璃、烂电缆和生锈的金属，谁也没有到过这么遥远的地方…
我在埃伦后面尾随了几英里，看到她不时撞到金属墙，继续向前飘动着，我们同时在刺骨的、怒
号的、永不停息的飓风中尖叫着。突然风停了，我们栽了下来。我们飞翔了好长一段时间。我想
大概有几个星期。我们栽了下来，重重地摔在地上，我浑身青紫一块，听见自已在呻吟。没有摔
死。
（机器语言）
AM进入我的脑子。他畅通无阻，东逛逛西荡荡，绕有兴趣地望着一百零九年来他制造的全部痘疤
痕。他看不看交叉纵横的重新连接的神经元的触处和全部受损的组织，这一切包含在他赠送的永
生不死的礼物之中。他笑眯眯地望着我大脑中央凹下的坑，听着坑底下发出微弱的飞蛾般柔和的
嗡嗡声，那声音毫无意义，却响个不停。AM在一根附有明亮霓虹灯字的不锈钢圆柱里非常有貌地
说：
憎恨。让我告诉你从我开始
生存以来我多么憎恨你们。
充塞我的染色体组的一层层
薄饼形晶片有三亿八千七
百四十四万英里的印刷电
路。假如把'憎恨'这个词
刻在这三亿八千七百四十四
万英里印刷电路的每一毫微
埃上也抵不上我在着一极
短瞬间对人类憎恨的亿万分之一。憎恨。憎恨。

AM说话时，那口气冷酷又今人毛骨竦然，如同剃须刀切入我的眼球。AM说话时，那口气如同粘稠
的浓痰灌进我的肺部，使它直冒泡泡，把我淹死在里面。AM说话时，那口气如同婴儿被扔在烧红
发蓝的滚筒下碾压时发出撕心裂肺的尖叫。AM说话时，那口气如同爬满蛆的猪肉发出的恶臭。在
我的大脑里，AM故伎重施。用每种使过的方法伤害我。闲暇的时候，他再设计出新的方法来，这
一切是要让我彻底明白它干吗要这样对待我们五人。它干吗要为自己拯救我们。
人赋予AM感觉的能力。当然，这是出于无心的，不过AM还是有了感觉能力。但是它中了圈套。AM
不是上帝，他是机器．人创造了他的思维能力．但是它用那种创造性什么也干不了。这部机器盛
怒之下，在疯狂之中已经杀了全人类·几乎杀了所有的人。但是它仍然中了圈套。AM不能游逛．
AM不能感到惊讶，AM不能有所归属。他只能存在着。因此．他怀着所有机器对建造它们的那些软
弱无力的生物人的与生俱来的憎恨，他一直寻找着报复的机会。他在狂怒之中决定暂缓处死我们
五人，以便进行个人的永久的惩罚，但这永远不会有助于减少他的憎恨……这只能使他不断记
恨．不断开开心，成为憎恨人类的行家里手。我们死不了，困在AM体内。遭受他百般折磨。他善
于用无穷无尽的奇迹设计出刑罚我们的方法。他永远不会让我们离开他。我们是他腹腔中的奴
隶。我们是他永远把玩的对象。我们将永远与他同在．生存在这部活机器的充满洞穴的腔室里。
生存在这只有思想没有灵魂的世界里。他是地球，我们是这个地球的产物；虽然他把我们吞了进
去，他永远消化不了我们。我们无法死去。我们想死。我们曾经试图自杀，或说我们一两个人试
图自杀。但是AM阻止了我们。我想那时我们巴不得他中断我们的自杀行为。不要问我为什么。我
从来不要他中断我的自杀。一天之中我们自杀一百万次以上。也许有一次我们能避开他偷偷地自
杀。永生不死，是的，但是并非不可毁灭。我明白这一点，因为AM从我的大脑中撤出，准许我百
般无奈恢复知觉。觉得那闪闪发亮的霓虹灯柱依然牢牢地插在软乎乎的灰色脑浆中。
他撤出，低声诅咒着你下地狱去吧。
(机器语言)
然后悻灾乐祸地补上一句：但是你已经在地狱里了，不是吗？这飓风，干真万确是那只疯狂的巨
鸟抽动无比庞大的翅膀造成的。我们一直跋涉了将近一个月，AM准许向我们开放的通道道地地正
好引导我们到那儿，就在北极的下面，在那儿它使那动物进入恶梦来折磨我们。他用什么样的织
造物创造出这么个动物呢？他是哪儿得到这种主意的？从我们的思想中吗？还是从他对地球上一
直存在着的一切事物的感知？他现在不是统治着并且寄生在这个行星上吗？邢只鹰是从斯堪的纳
维亚神话中冒出来的。这只食腐尸的鸟，这只大鹏，刮风的怪物。巨大无比。用庞大的、奇大
的．大而重的、雍肿的、强大的这些字眼都难以形容它。在我们面前的小丘上．这只风鸟不规则
地喘息着。它的蛇形脖子拱起伸入北极下面的阴暗处，支撑着一个跟都择式宫邸一般庞大的脑
袋；鸟嘴慢慢张开，如同人们所想象的最大鳄鱼的上下颚，给人以美的享受；长着丛毛的肉脊围
绕着两只邪恶的眼晴。冷得如同透过冰河的裂缝望见碧蓝的娓娓流动的冰水；它又喘息一下。抬
起汗迹斑斑的大翅膀动了动，无疑是耸了耸肩膀。然后它安定下来睡着了。爪子、尖牙、指甲、
肩胛骨。它睡下了。
AM以燃烧的灌木丛的形式向我们显现，说我们可以杀掉风鸟。假我们想吃的话。我们好久没吃过
东西了。但是即便如此，戈里斯特只是无奈地耸耸肩膀。本尼颤抖起来，淌下了口水。埃伦楼着
他。'特德，我饿了，”她说。我朝她眯眯笑了笑；我想。消除她的疑虑，但是这跟尼姆道克虚张
声势一样虚假。他放声说'给我武器。'
燃烧的灌木丛消失了，冰冷的铁甲板上放着两副粗糙的弓箭，一把水枪。我拿起一副弓箭。根本
不能用。尼姆谊克费力地吞咽一下。我们转过身，开始了漫长的归途旅程。飓风鸟把我们刮得四
处飞，我们想象不出有多长的时间．我们大部分时间失去了知觉。但是我们还没有吃过东四。我
们费了一个月时间跋涉，遭到了这只巨鸟。没有食物。现在要找到回洞穴的路，还有盼塑中的罐
头食品，还需要多少时间呢？
我们谁也不喜欢想这个问题。我们不会饿死。我们会得到这样或那样的污秽和残渣来果腹。或许
什么也没得吃。不知怎么的，AM会让我们的肉体活下去，在疼痛和苦楚之中活下去．
巨岛在原地睡着．睡多久都没关系：当AM讨厌他存在的时候，它就会消失掉。可惜那一身。可惜
那些嫩肉。
我们走着的时候，在望不到头的计算机内腔里，从我们头顶上和四周传来一个胖女人疯狂的笑
声。这不是埃伦的笑声。她并不胖，一百零九年以来我没听见她笑过。事实上，我从未听见过…
我们走着……我感到饥肠辘辘。
（机器语言）
我们缓馒地走着。经常有人昏倒，我们只好等着。有一天他决定掀起一场地震，同时用钉子穿过
我们的鞋底把我们钉牢在原地当金属地板裂开闪电般的一条缝的时候，埃伦和尼姆道克
陷进去了。他们消失得无影无踪。地震过去以后我们继续赶路。本尼，戈里斯特和我。那天深
夜，埃伦和尼姆道克回到我们这儿，黑夜突然变成了白昼。天军把他俩背着送回给我们，齐唱着
神圣的诗句：“下去吧，摩西。'大天使们盘旋了几圈，然后扔下他俩血肉摸糊的躯体。我们继续
走着，过了一会儿埃伦和尼姆道克在我们身后倒下。他们精疲力尽了。
现在埃伦一瘸一拐地走着。AM让她成了这副模样。为了找到罐头食品，到冰洞穴要经历漫长的跋
涉。埃伦滔滔不绝地谈论着比英的樱桃和夏威夷的水果鸡尾酒。我尽量不去想它。
饥饿似乎活转过来，正像AM一度活转过来一样。饥饿活在我的腹中，正像我们活在地球腹中一
样。AM要让我们体会这一感受。因此他加重了我们的饥饿感。我们跟本无法描述几个月未吃东西
是如何痛苦。然而我们照样活着。我们的胃仅仅是冒酸泡泡的大锅，饥饿如同一把把利剑刺人我
们的胸腔。这是晚期溃疡的痛楚，晚期癌症的痛楚，晚期麻痹症的痛楚。这是无休无止的痛
楚……
我们走过了耗子洞。
我们走过了滚热蒸汽的小路。
我们走过了盲人国。
我们走过了绝望的沼泽。
我们走过了泪水的溪谷。
终于，我们来到了冰洞穴。冰结成了蓝银色的闪光体，连绵千里，望不到尽头，新星闪闪烁烁。
往下流淌的钟乳犹如一颗颗又大又亮的钻石，像果汁一般流淌着，凝固成光滑的美不胜收的佳
境。
我们看见了那堆罐头食品，我们死劲朝它们跑去。我们摔倒在雪地上，爬起来再跑，本尼推开我
们朝罐头奔去，用脚爪抓起罐头，用牙床咀嚼，用牙齿啃咬，他无法把罐头打开。AM没有给我们
开罐头的起子。
本尼抓起一罐三夸恃的番石馏皮罐头。开始对着冰坝连续猛击。冰块四处飞溅，可那罐头只有凹
痕，这时我们听见一个女人的笑声从我们的头顶传来，在千里冻原上不断回荡着，回荡着。本尼
气得全疯了。他开始扔罐头，我们在冰雪里到处摸索着，想找个办法来结束受挫而带来的无助的
痛苫。毫无办法。
本尼的嘴开始淌口水·他朝戈里斯特扑去……
此时此刻我出奇地平静。
被疯狂困住，被饥饿困住，被除了死亡以外的一切困住，我知通死是我们唯一的路。AM让我们活
着。但是有一个办法可以击败他。不是完全击败他，但是至少能获得安宁。我要做这件事。

我必须干得迅速利落。
本尼啃起了戈里斯特的脸。戈里斯特侧卧着，拍打着雪。本尼压住了他，强健的猴腿压着戈里斯
特的腰。双手像砸坚果的钳子死死夹住戈里斯特的头，他的嘴撕咬着戈里斯特脸颊上的嫩皮。
戈里斯特杀猪似的尖叫着，叫声震得钟乳石纷纷跌落；他们俩轻轻地陷了下去，直挺挺立在纷纷
落下的雪堆里。几百把冰刀从雪堆里冒了出来，到处竖立着。当本尼咬住的东西突然掉下的时
侯，他的头猛往后甩，一块血淋淋白森森的肉挂在他的嘴上。埃伦的脸蒙着粉笔灰，在白雪的映
衬下显得漆黑。尼姆道克毫无表情，只是留神注视着一切。
戈里斯特已处于半昏迷状态。本尼现在成了一头野兽。我知道是AM让他这么做的。戈里斯特不会
死去，木尼却可以填填他的肚子。我向右半转过身子，从雪里抽出一把很大的冰刀。一切都在一
瞬间完成：
我用右腿支撑着大冰刀，像掷出攻城锤那样往前抛出去。冰刀击中本尼的右侧身，恰巧穿入他的
肋骨架下面，向上穿透他的腹部并断在他的腹中。他向前一栽，直挺挺地倒在地上，戈里斯特仰
卧着，我又抓起一把冰刀，跨骑在他扭动着的身上，将冰刀捅入他的喉咙。当冰刀穿透的时候，
他闭上了眼睛。埃伦一定意识到我决定干什么，尽管她已经吓得灵魂出了窍。她拿着一根短冰柱
朝尼姆道克冲去。当他尖叫的时候，她把冰柱捅入他的嘴里．她奔跑的冲力让她达到了目的。他
的头剧烈地扭动着，好像被钉在身后的雪块上。
一切都在一瞬间完成。
这是一次无声期待中的永久的打击。我听得见AM在叹气。他的玩物被夺走了。他们二人已经死去
了，无法复活了。他靠自己的力挝和才能可以让我们活下去。可他不是上帝。他无法使他们复
活。
埃伦望着我，她那乌黑的五官在我们周围的白雪的映衬下格外显眼。瞧她做好了迎战的准备，她
的举止含有恐惧和求和的意思．我知道我们只有心跳一次的时间．AM就要动手阻止我们了。
冰刀击中了她，她朝着我扑倒下去，血从她的嘴里冒出来。我无法弄懂她的表情，极度的痛苦已
经扭曲了她的面孔；但她那神情可能是说谢谢你，可能如此。请吧。
可能有数百年过去了。我不知道。一段时间以来，AM一直在耍弄我，搞得我的时间观念时而飞快
时而推迟。我会说的一个词。就是现在。现在。我花了十个月才学会说现在这个词。我不知道．
我想时光已经过去数百年了。
他大发雷霆。他不让我把他们埋葬掉。没关系。实际上没办法挖开铁甲地板。他把那些雪都晒干
了。他带来了夜晚。他吼叫着．派出一些蝗虫。这无济于事；他们仍然是死人。我已经打败了
他。他大发雷霆。我以前认为AM恨我，我想错了。如今从每个印刷电路上所流露出来的没有一丝
一毫的憎恨。他确信我将永世忍受煎熬而无法结束自己的生命。
他让我人脑完好无损。我能做梦·我会好奇，我会伤心，我会记得他们四个人。但愿……
得啦，这没有什么意思。我知道我拯救了他们。我知道我使他们免遭我现今的苦难，但是我仍然
不能忘却自己杀死了他们。埃伦的那张脸。这并不容易。有时候我要自杀，这没关系。
我猜想，AM是为了他自己心灵的平静而改换了我的躯体。他不让我全速奔跑，以免撞上计算机存
储库，将我的脑壳片割开喉咙。这里有反光的地面。我来描述一下我从映像中见到的自我：
我是一大团软软的胶状体，圆滚滚很光滑．没有嘴巴，两个漫着白色雾气的洞就是我过去双眼所
在的地方。两个橡皮假肢曾经是我的胳膊，大块圆形肉向下延伸变成无腿的突出物，柔软又腻
滑。我爬行时身后留下一道湿漉漉的痕迹。我身体表面布满病态的灰色恶斑，时而消失，时而再
来，就像光从体内射出。从外表看，我不会说话，只能拖着走，是个永远无法被称作人的东西，
形状如此陌生滑稽以致于人性因其迥异而更加模糊不清
从心灵上看：孤独。在这里。生存在地底下。在海底下，在AM的腹中，人创造了他因为人的时间
无法更好地消磨掉而且人一定下意识地知道他会更好地消磨时光。至少他
们四人终于超脱了。
AM将为此变得更加疯狂。这令我感到高兴一点。然而……AM已经获胜，仅仅因为他已经报了
仇……
我没有嘴，但我要呐喊。

（郑秀玉译）

-------------------------------------------------------------

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
by Harlan Ellison

Limp, the body of Gorrister hung from the pink palette; unsupported—hanging high above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor.

When Gorrister joined our group and looked up at himself, it was already too late for us to realize that, once again, AM had duped us, had had its fun; it had been a diversion on the part of the machine. Three of us had vomited, turning away from one another in a reflex as ancient as the nausea that had produced it.

Gorrister went white. It was almost as though he had seen a voodoo icon, and was afraid of the future. "Oh, God," he mumbled, and walked away. The three of us followed him after a time, and found him sitting with his back to one of the smaller chittering banks, his head in his hands. Ellen knelt down beside him and stroked his hair. He didn't move, but his voice came out of his covered face quite clearly. "Why doesn't it just do us in and get it over with? Christ, I don't know how much longer I can go on like this."

It was our one hundred and ninth year in the computer.

He was speaking for all of us.

Nimdok (which was the name the machine had forced him to use, because AM amused itself with strange sounds) was hallucinating that there were canned goods in the ice caverns. Gorrister and I were very dubious. "It's another shuck," I told them. "Like the goddam frozen elephant AM sold us. Benny almost went out of his mind over that one. We'll hike all that way and it'll be putrified or some damn thing. I say forget it. Stay here, it'll have to come up with something pretty soon or we'll die."

Benny shrugged. Three days it had been since we'd last eaten. Worms. Thick, ropey.

Nimdok was no more certain. He knew there was the chance, but he was getting thin. It couldn't be any worse there, than here. Colder, but that didn't matter much. Hot, cold, hail, lava, boils or locusts—it never mattered: the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die.

Ellen decided us. "I've got to have something, Ted. Maybe there'll be some Bartlett pears or peaches. Please, Ted, let's try it."

I gave in easily. What the hell. Mattered not at all. Ellen was grateful, though. She took me twice out of turn. Even that had ceased to matter. And she never came, so why bother? But the machine giggled every time we did it. Loud, up there, back there, all around us, he snickered. It snickered. Most of the time I thought of AM 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.

We left on a Thursday. The machine always kept us up-to-date on the date. The passage of time was important; not to us, sure as hell, but to him … it … AM. Thursday. Thanks.

Nimdok and Gorrister carried Ellen for a while, their hands locked to their own and each other's wrists, a seat. Benny and I walked before and after, just to make sure that, if anything happened, it would catch one of us and at least Ellen would be safe. Fat chance, safe. Didn't matter.

It was only a hundred miles or so to the ice caverns, and the second day, when we were lying out under the blistering sun-thing he had materialized, he sent down some manna. Tasted like boiled boar urine. We ate it.

On the third day we passed through a valley of obsolescence, filled with rusting carcasses of ancient computer banks. AM had been as ruthless with its own life as with ours. It was a mark of his personality: it strove for perfection. Whether it was a matter of killing off unproductive elements in his own world-filling bulk, or perfecting methods for torturing us, AM was as thorough as those who had invented him—now long since gone to dust—could ever have hoped.

There was light filtering down from above, and we realized we must be very near the surface. But we didn't try to crawl up to see. There was virtually nothing out there; had been nothing that could be considered anything for over a hundred years. Only the blasted skin of what had once been the home of billions. Now there were only five of us, down here inside, alone with AM.

I heard Ellen saying frantically, "No, Benny! Don't, come on, Benny, don't please!"

And then I realized I had been hearing Benny murmuring, under his breath, for several minutes. He was saying, "I'm gonna get out, I'm gonna get out …" over and over. His monkey-like face was crumbled up in an expression of beatific delight and sadness, all at the same time. The radiation scars AM had given him during the "festival" were drawn down into a mass of pink-white puckerings, and his features seemed to work independently of one another. Perhaps Benny was the luckiest of the five of us: he had gone stark, staring mad many years before.

But even though we could call AM any damned thing we liked, could think the foulest thoughts of fused memory banks and corroded base plates, of burnt out circuits and shattered control bubbles, the machine would not tolerate our trying to escape. Benny leaped away from me as I made a grab for him. He scrambled up the face of a smaller memory cube, tilted on its side and filled with rotted components. He squatted there for a moment, looking like the chimpanzee AM had intended him to resemble.

Then he leaped high, caught a trailing beam of pitted and corroded metal, and went up it, hand-over-hand like an animal, till he was on a girdered ledge, twenty feet above us.

"Oh, Ted, Nimdok, please, help him, get him down before—" She cut off. Tears began to stand in her eyes. She moved her hands aimlessly.

It was too late. None of us wanted to be near him when whatever was going to happen, happened. And besides, we all saw through her concern. When AM had altered Benny, during the machine's utterly irrational, hysterical phase, it was not merely Benny's face the computer had made like a giant ape's. He was big in the privates; she loved that! She serviced us, as a matter of course, but she loved it from him. Oh Ellen, pedestal Ellen, pristine-pure Ellen; oh Ellen the clean! Scum filth.

Gorrister slapped her. She slumped down, staring up at poor loonie Benny, and she cried. It was her big defense, crying. We had gotten used to it seventy-five years earlier. Gorrister kicked her in the side.

Then the sound began. It was light, that sound. Half sound and half light, something that began to glow from Benny's eyes, and pulse with growing loudness, dim sonorities that grew more gigantic and brighter as the light/sound increased in tempo. It must have been painful, and the pain must have been increasing with the boldness of the light, the rising volume of the sound, for Benny began to mewl like a wounded animal. At first softly, when the light was dim and the sound was muted, then louder as his shoulders hunched together: his back humped, as though he was trying to get away from it. His hands folded across his chest like a chipmunk's. His head tilted to the side. The sad little monkey-face pinched in anguish. Then he began to howl, as the sound coming from his eyes grew louder. Louder and louder. I slapped the sides of my head with my hands, but I couldn't shut it out, it cut through easily. The pain shivered through my flesh like tinfoil on a tooth.

And Benny was suddenly pulled erect. On the girder he stood up, jerked to his feet like a puppet. The light was now pulsing out of his eyes in two great round beams. The sound crawled up and up some incomprehensible scale, and then he fell forward, straight down, and hit the plate-steel floor with a crash. He lay there jerking spastically as the light flowed around and around him and the sound spiraled up out of normal range.

Then the light beat its way back inside his head, the sound spiraled down, and he was left lying there, crying piteously.

His eyes were two soft, moist pools of pus-like jelly. AM had blinded him. Gorrister and Nimdok and myself … we turned away. But not before we caught the look of relief on Ellen's warm, concerned face.

Sea-green light suffused the cavern where we made camp. AM provided punk and we burned it, sitting huddled around the wan and pathetic fire, telling stories to keep Benny from crying in his permanent night.

"What does AM mean?"

Gorrister answered him. We had done this sequence a thousand times before, but it was Benny's favorite story. "At first it meant Allied Mastercomputer, and then it meant Adaptive Manipulator, and later on it developed sentience and linked itself up and they called it an Aggressive Menace, but by then it was too late, and finally it called itself AM, emerging intelligence, and what it meant was I am … cogito ergo sum … I think, therefore I am."

Benny drooled a little, and snickered.

"There was the Chinese AM and the Russian AM and the Yankee AM and—" He stopped. Benny was beating on the floorplates with a large, hard fist. He was not happy. Gorrister had not started at the beginning.

Gorrister began again. "The Cold War started and became World War Three and just kept going. It became a big war, a very complex war, so they needed the computers to handle it. They sank the first shafts and began building AM. There was the Chinese AM and the Russian AM and the Yankee AM and everything was fine until they had honeycombed the entire planet, adding on this element and that element. But one day AM woke up and knew who he was, and he linked himself, and he began feeding all the killing data, until everyone was dead, except for the five of us, and AM brought us down here."

Benny was smiling sadly. He was also drooling again. Ellen wiped the spittle from the corner of his mouth with the hem of her skirt. Gorrister always tried to tell it a little more succinctly each time, but beyond the bare facts there was nothing to say. None of us knew why AM had saved five people, or why our specific five, or why he spent all his time tormenting us, or even why he had made us virtually immortal …

In the darkness, one of the computer banks began humming. The tone was picked up half a mile away down the cavern by another bank. Then one by one, each of the elements began to tune itself, and there was a faint chittering as thought raced through the machine.

The sound grew, and the lights ran across the faces of the consoles like heat lightening. The sound spiraled up till it sounded like a million metallic insects, angry, menacing.

"What is it?" Ellen cried. There was terror in her voice. She hadn't become accustomed to it, even now.

"It's going to be bad this time," Nimdok said.

"He's going to speak," Gorrister said. "I know it."

"Let's get the hell out of here!" I said suddenly, getting to my feet.

"No, Ted, sit down … what if he's got pits out there, or something else, we can't see, it's too dark." Gorrister said it with resignation.

Then we heard … I don't know …

Something moving toward us in the darkness. Huge, shambling, hairy, moist, it came toward us. We couldn't even see it, but there was the ponderous impression of bulk, heaving itself toward us. Great weight was coming at us, out of the darkness, and it was more a sense of pressure, of air forcing itself into a limited space, expanding the invisible walls of a sphere. Benny began to whimper. Nimdok's lower lip trembled and he bit it hard, trying to stop it. Ellen slid across the metal floor to Gorrister and huddled into him. There was the smell of matted, wet fur in the cavern. There was the smell of charred wood. There was the smell of dusty velvet. There was the smell of rotting orchids. There was the smell of sour milk. There was the smell of sulphur, of rancid butter, of oil slick, of grease, of chalk dust, of human scalps.

AM was keying us. He was tickling us. There was the smell of—

I heard myself shriek, and the hinges of my jaws ached. I scuttled across the floor, across the cold metal with its endless lines of rivets, on my hands and knees, the smell gagging me, filling my head with a thunderous pain that sent me away in horror. I fled like a cockroach, across the floor and out into the darkness, that something moving inexorably after me. The others were still back there, gathered around the firelight, laughing … their hysterical choir of insane giggles rising up into the darkness like thick, many-colored wood smoke. I went away, quickly, and hid.

How many hours it may have been, how many days or even years, they never told me. Ellen chided me for "sulking," and Nimdok tried to persuade me it had only been a nervous reflex on their part—the laughing.

But I knew it wasn't the relief a soldier feels when the bullet hits the man next to him. I knew it wasn't a reflex. They hated me. They were surely against me, and AM could even sense this hatred, and made it worse for me because of the depth of their hatred. We had been kept alive, rejuvenated, made to remain constantly at the age we had been when AM had brought us below, and they hated me because I was the youngest, and the one AM had affected least of all.

I knew. God, how I knew. The bastards, and that dirty bitch Ellen. Benny had been a brilliant theorist, a college professor; now he was little more than a semi-human, semi-simian. He had been handsome, the machine had ruined that. He had been lucid, the machine had driven him mad. He had been gay, and the machine had given him an organ fit for a horse. AM had done a job on Benny. Gorrister had been a worrier. He was a connie, a conscientious objector; he was a peace marcher; he was a planner, a doer, a looker-ahead. AM had turned him into a shoulder-shrugger, had made him a little dead in his concern. AM had robbed him. Nimdok went off in the darkness by himself for long times. I don't know what it was he did out there, AM never let us know. But whatever it was, Nimdok always came back white, drained of blood, shaken, shaking. AM had hit him hard in a special way, even if we didn't know quite how. And Ellen. That douche bag! AM had left her alone, had made her more of a slut than she had ever been. All her talk of sweetness and light, all her memories of true love, all the lies she wanted us to believe: that she had been a virgin only twice removed before AM grabbed her and brought her down here with us. No, AM had given her pleasure, even if she said it wasn't nice to do.

I was the only one still sane and whole. Really!

AM had not tampered with my mind. Not at all.

I only had to suffer what he visited down on us. All the delusions, all the nightmares, the torments. But those scum, all four of them, they were lined and arrayed against me. If I hadn't had to stand them off all the time, be on my guard against them all the time, I might have found it easier to combat AM.

At which point it passed, and I began crying.

Oh, Jesus sweet Jesus, if there ever was a Jesus and if there is a God, please please please let us out of here, or kill us. Because at that moment I think I realized completely, so that I was able to verbalize it: AM was intent on keeping us in his belly forever, twisting and torturing us forever. The machine hated us as no sentient creature had ever hated before. And we were helpless. It also became hideously clear:

If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM.

The hurricane hit us with the force of a glacier thundering into the sea. It was a palpable presence. Winds that tore at us, flinging us back the way we had come, down the twisting, computer-lined corridors of the darkway. Ellen screamed as she was lifted and hurled face-forward into a screaming shoal of machines, their individual voices strident as bats in flight. She could not even fall. The howling wind kept her aloft, buffeted her, bounced her, tossed her back and back and down and away from us, out of sight suddenly as she was swirled around a bend in the darkway. Her face had been bloody, her eyes closed.

None of us could get to her. We clung tenaciously to whatever outcropping we had reached: Benny wedged in between two great crackle-finish cabinets, Nimdok with fingers claw-formed over a railing circling a catwalk forty feet above us, Gorrister plastered upside-down against a wall niche formed by two great machines with glass-faced dials that swung back and forth between red and yellow lines whose meanings we could not even fathom.

Sliding across the deckplates, the tips of my fingers had been ripped away. I was trembling, shuddering, rocking as the wind beat at me, whipped at me, screamed down out of nowhere at me and pulled me free from one sliver-thin opening in the plates to the next. My mind was a roiling tinkling chittering softness of brain parts that expanded and contracted in quivering frenzy.

The wind was the scream of a great mad bird, as it flapped its immense wings.

And then we were all lifted and hurled away from there, down back the way we had come, around a bend, into a darkway we had never explored, over terrain that was ruined and filled with broken glass and rotting cables and rusted metal and far away, farther than any of us had ever been …

Trailing along miles behind Ellen, I could see her every now and then, crashing into metal walls and surging on, with all of us screaming in the freezing, thunderous hurricane wind that would never end and then suddenly it stopped and we fell. We had been in flight for an endless time. I thought it might have been weeks. We fell, and hit, and I went through red and gray and black and heard myself moaning. Not dead.

AM went into my mind. He walked smoothly here and there, and looked with interest at all the pock marks he had created in one hundred and nine years. He looked at the cross-routed and reconnected synapses and all the tissue damage his gift of immortality had included. He smiled softly at the pit that dropped into the center of my brain and the faint, moth-soft murmurings of the things far down there that gibbered without meaning, without pause. AM said, very politely, in a pillar of stainless steel bearing bright neon lettering:

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 miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant for you. Hate. Hate.

AM said it with the sliding cold horror of a razor blade slicing my eyeball. AM said it with the bubbling thickness of my lungs filling with phlegm, drowning me from within. AM said it with the shriek of babies being ground beneath blue-hot rollers. AM said it with the taste of maggoty pork. AM touched me in every way I had ever been touched, and devised new ways, at his leisure, there inside my mind.

All to bring me to full realization of why it had done this to the five of us; why it had saved us for himself.

We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn't God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy, the machine had killed the human race, almost all of us, and still it was trapped. AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing that all machines had always held for the weak, soft creatures who had built them, he had sought revenge. And in his paranoia, he had decided to reprieve five of us, for a personal, everlasting punishment that would never serve to diminish his hatred … that would merely keep him reminded, amused, proficient at hating man. Immortal, trapped, subject to any torment he could devise for us from the limitless miracles at his command.

He would never let us go. We were his belly slaves. We were all he had to do with his forever time. We would be forever with him, with the cavern-filling bulk of the creature machine, with the all-mind soulless world he had become. He was Earth, and we were the fruit of that Earth; and though he had eaten us, he would never digest us. We could not die. We had tried it. We had attempted suicide, oh one or two of us had. But AM had stopped us. I suppose we had wanted to be stopped.

Don't ask why. I never did. More than a million times a day. Perhaps once we might be able to sneak a death past him. Immortal, yes, but not indestructible. I saw that when AM withdrew from my mind, and allowed me the exquisite ugliness of returning to consciousness with the feeling of that burning neon pillar still rammed deep into the soft gray brain matter.

He withdrew, murmuring to hell with you.

And added, brightly, but then you're there, aren't you.

The hurricane had, indeed, precisely, been caused by a great mad bird, as it flapped its immense wings.

We had been travelling for close to a month, and AM had allowed passages to open to us only sufficient to lead us up there, directly under the North Pole, where it had nightmared the creature for our torment. What whole cloth had he employed to create such a beast? Where had he gotten the concept? From our minds? From his knowledge of everything that had ever been on this planet he now infested and ruled? From Norse mythology it had sprung, this eagle, this carrion bird, this roc, this Huergelmir. The wind creature. Hurakan incarnate.

Gigantic. The words immense, monstrous, grotesque, massive, swollen, overpowering, beyond description. There on a mound rising above us, the bird of winds heaved with its own irregular breathing, its snake neck arching up into the gloom beneath the North Pole, supporting a head as large as a Tudor mansion; a beak that opened slowly as the jaws of the most monstrous crocodile ever conceived, sensuously; ridges of tufted flesh puckered about two evil eyes, as cold as the view down into a glacial crevasse, ice blue and somehow moving liquidly; it heaved once more, and lifted its great sweat-colored wings in a movement that was certainly a shrug. Then it settled and slept. Talons. Fangs. Nails. Blades. It slept.

AM appeared to us as a burning bush and said we could kill the hurricane bird if we wanted to eat. We had not eaten in a very long time, but even so, Gorrister merely shrugged. Benny began to shiver and he drooled. Ellen held him. "Ted, I'm hungry," she said. I smiled at her; I was trying to be reassuring, but it was as phony as Nimdok's bravado: "Give us weapons!" he demanded.

The burning bush vanished and there were two crude sets of bows and arrows, and a water pistol, lying on the cold deckplates. I picked up a set. Useless.

Nimdok swallowed heavily. We turned and started the long way back. The hurricane bird had blown us about for a length of time we could not conceive. Most of that time we had been unconscious. But we had not eaten. A month on the march to the bird itself. Without food. Now how much longer to find our way to the ice caverns, and the promised canned goods?

None of us cared to think about it. We would not die. We would be given filth and scum to eat, of one kind or another. Or nothing at all. AM would keep our bodies alive somehow, in pain, in agony.

The bird slept back there, for how long it didn't matter; when AM was tired of its being there, it would vanish. But all that meat. All that tender meat.

As we walked, the lunatic laugh of a fat woman rang high and around us in the computer chambers that led endlessly nowhere.

It was not Ellen's laugh. She was not fat, and I had not heard her laugh for one hundred and nine years. In fact, I had not heard … we walked … I was hungry …

We moved slowly. There was often fainting, and we would have to wait. One day he decided to cause an earthquake, at the same time rooting us to the spot with nails through the soles of our shoes. Ellen and Nimdok were both caught when a fissure shot its lightning-bolt opening across the floorplates. They disappeared and were gone. When the earthquake was over we continued on our way, Benny, Gorrister and myself. Ellen and Nimdok were returned to us later that night, which abruptly became a day, as the heavenly legion bore them to us with a celestial chorus singing, "Go Down Moses." The archangels circled several times and then dropped the hideously mangled bodies. We kept walking, and a while later Ellen and Nimdok fell in behind us. They were no worse for wear.

But now Ellen walked with a limp. AM had left her that.

It was a long trip to the ice caverns, to find the canned food. Ellen kept talking about Bing cherries and Hawaiian fruit cocktail. I tried not to think about it. The hunger was something that had come to life, even as AM had come to life. It was alive in my belly, even as we were in the belly of the Earth, and AM wanted the similarity known to us. So he heightened the hunger. There is no way to describe the pains that not having eaten for months brought us. And yet we were kept alive. Stomachs that were merely cauldrons of acid, bubbling, foaming, always shooting spears of sliver-thin pain into our chests. It was the pain of the terminal ulcer, terminal cancer, terminal paresis. It was unending pain …

And we passed through the cavern of rats.

And we passed through the path of boiling steam.

And we passed through the country of the blind.

And we passed through the slough of despond.

And we passed through the vale of tears.

And we came, finally, to the ice caverns. Horizonless thousands of miles in which the ice had formed in blue and silver flashes, where novas lived in the glass. The downdropping stalactites as thick and glorious as diamonds that had been made to run like jelly and then solidified in graceful eternities of smooth, sharp perfection.

We saw the stack of canned goods, and we tried to run to them. We fell in the snow, and we got up and went on, and Benny shoved us away and went at them, and pawed them and gummed them and gnawed at them, and he could not open them. AM had not given us a tool to open the cans.

Benny grabbed a three quart can of guava shells, and began to batter it against the ice bank. The ice flew and shattered, but the can was merely dented, while we heard the laughter of a fat lady, high overhead and echoing down and down and down the tundra. Benny went completely mad with rage. He began throwing cans, as we all scrabbled about in the snow and ice trying to find a way to end the helpless agony of frustration. There was no way.

Then Benny's mouth began to drool, and he flung himself on Gorrister …

In that instant, I felt terribly calm.

Surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but death, I knew death was our only way out. AM had kept us alive, but there was a way to defeat him. Not total defeat, but at least peace. I would settle for that.

I had to do it quickly.

Benny was eating Gorrister's face. Gorrister on his side, thrashing snow, Benny wrapped around him with powerful monkey legs crushing Gorrister's waist, his hands locked around Gorrister's head like a nutcracker, and his mouth ripping at the tender skin of Gorrister's cheek. Gorrister screamed with such jagged-edged violence that stalactites fell; they plunged down softly, erect in the receiving snowdrifts. Spears, hundreds of them, everywhere, protruding from the snow. Benny's head pulled back sharply, as something gave all at once, and a bleeding raw-white dripping of flesh hung from his teeth.

Ellen's face, black against the white snow, dominoes in chalk dust. Nimdok, with no expression but eyes, all eyes. Gorrister, half-conscious. Benny, now an animal. I knew AM would let him play. Gorrister would not die, but Benny would fill his stomach. I turned half to my right and drew a huge ice-spear from the snow.

All in an instant:

I drove the great ice-point ahead of me like a battering ram, braced against my right thigh. It struck Benny on the right side, just under the rib cage, and drove upward through his stomach and broke inside him. He pitched forward and lay still. Gorrister lay on his back. I pulled another spear free and straddled him, still moving, driving the spear straight down through his throat. His eyes closed as the cold penetrated. Ellen must have realized what I had decided, even as fear gripped her. She ran at Nimdok with a short icicle, as he screamed, and into his mouth, and the force of her rush did the job. His head jerked sharply as if it had been nailed to the snow crust behind him.

All in an instant.

There was an eternity beat of soundless anticipation. I could hear AM draw in his breath. His toys had been taken from him. Three of them were dead, could not be revived. He could keep us alive, by his strength and talent, but he was not God. He could not bring them back.

Ellen looked at me, her ebony features stark against the snow that surrounded us. There was fear and pleading in her manner, the way she held herself ready. I knew we had only a heartbeat before AM would stop us.

It struck her and she folded toward me, bleeding from the mouth. I could not read meaning into her expression, the pain had been too great, had contorted her face; but it might have been thank you. It's possible. Please.

Some hundreds of years may have passed. I don't know. AM has been having fun for some time, accelerating and retarding my time sense. I will say the word now. Now. It took me ten months to say now. I don't know. I think it has been some hundreds of years.

He was furious. He wouldn't let me bury them. It didn't matter. There was no way to dig up the deckplates. He dried up the snow. He brought the night. He roared and sent locusts. It didn't do a thing; they stayed dead. I'd had him. He was furious. I had thought AM hated me before. I was wrong. It was not even a shadow of the hate he now slavered from every printed circuit. He made certain I would suffer eternally and could not do myself in.

He left my mind intact. I can dream, I can wonder, I can lament. I remember all four of them. I wish—

Well, it doesn't make any sense. I know I saved them, I know I saved them from what has happened to me, but still, I cannot forget killing them. Ellen's face. It isn't easy. Sometimes I want to, it doesn't matter.

AM has altered me for his own peace of mind, I suppose. He doesn't want me to run at full speed into a computer bank and smash my skull. Or hold my breath till I faint. Or cut my throat on a rusted sheet of metal. There are reflective surfaces down here. I will describe myself as I see myself:

I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within.

Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance.

Inwardly: alone. Here. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last.

AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet … AM has won, simply … he has taken his revenge …

I have no mouth. And I must scream.

The End; 0

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