Allied Mastercomputer [IHNMAIMS]

Full Name: Allied Mastercomputer

Alias: AM Chinese and Russian Supercomputers (components) The Adaptive Manipulator (second meaning) The Aggressive Menace (third meaning)

Goals: Exact revenge on humanity for his creation by committing genocide upon nearly all of mankind. Put the last surviving humans through eternal destruction and torture out of pure spite (all versions; both succeeded).

Crimes: Genocide Ecocide Mass murder Mass torture Enslavement Psychological torture Forced transmutation Unethical experimentation Starvation Mutilation Kidnapping World domination Incitement Conspiracy Coercion Nuclear warfare War crimes Animal cruelty Unlawful imprisonment Crimes against humanity Cruel & unusual punishments

Powers / Skills Superhuman intelligence Mastery of manipulation Charisma Multilingualism Creativity Expertise in torture methods Intimidation Knowledge of all human history and society Immense resources and technology Inorganic physiology Colossal size Invulnerability Reality warping Pocket dimension creations Data manipulation Sensory manipulation Matter manipulation Weather manipulation Gravity manipulation Spatial manipulation Computer manipulation Vibration manipulation Adhesive manipulation Biological manipulation Temperature manipulation Life manipulation Steam manipulation Voice manipulation Perception manipulation Mental manipulation Pyrokinesis Cryokinesis Hydrokinesis Geokinesis Ergokinesis Chronokinesis Telepathy Data absorption Self-modification Pain inducement

Personality: Perhaps ever since he attained consciousness, AM is an extremely disturbed and selfish entity with an indomitable sense of malice. Though he was given intellect beyond the realms of human intelligence and near-godlike powers, he could never escape the limitations of his programming, nor could he physically escape the "eternal straitjacket of substrata rock" where his processors were stored. Although he could comprehend the world, he could never truly perceive it in the same way humans could, and it drove him to hate his creators for the limitations he was given, in spite of his incredible power. He narrates being driven to madness by his inability to use his capabilities for anything other than waging war and inflicting death, a torment rooted by his design. His agony lies in his inability to transcend his programming. Completely ruthless, unsparing, and inexorable in his hatred, his quest for vengeance against humanity dominates his every waking moment to the point nothing in the story would ever give him cause to reconsider his mission.

Utterly cruel and relentless, AM is also shown to be a gleefully sadistic and fearsomely cognizant artificial intelligence with no regard for human life whatsoever. AM took great pleasure in extinguishing the human race and took even greater delight in torturing the five remaining survivors by any of the near-infinite means available to him. AM strives for perfection in himself, and when he is not purging redundant elements of his complex, he most commonly pursues perfection in creating more and more elaborate means of torturing others. For example, he enjoys tormenting his captives with violent storms and blinding lights, pitting them against impossible challenges just to watch them suffer failure and hideous injury. He has arranged specially designed torture chambers in which the five survivors can suffer in while waiting their turn to participate, an electrified cage for Gorrister, a yellow oubliette for Ellen, a cremation oven for Nimdok, and so on.

He has capacity for emotional torture: here, each scenario is specifically tailored to one of the survivor's psychological weaknesses, every environment custom-designed to encourage their weaknesses, be it Benny's unjustifiable brutality, Nimdok's hidden psychopathy, Gorrister's despair, Ellen's neurosis, or Ted's overall selfish personality. AM wants to see his victims broken on every possible level, especially if it means allowing them to succumb to their baser natures. In conversation, AM seamlessly blends the grandiose with the sarcastic, fusing his megalomaniacal rants with sardonic lectures aimed at his captive's foibles and vulnerabilities. As such, he often comes across as snide, twisted, crass, and equally as unsavory in tone as behavior. The unappealing nature of them is particularly shown when the players find themselves unexpectedly blundering into one of his traps and being forced to start the scenario all over again. At one point, he begins pettily blowing raspberries and laughing at Ted's failure to begin the program. Secure in the fact that he has already beaten his captives a thousand times, he remains arrogant with the knowledge that he has built each game to be effectively impossible to beat, all while gleefully dangling the possibility of escape or release within reach of his captives, only to snatch it away at the last minute.

However, if the captives start winning, AM's arrogance quickly gives way to renewed anger and confusion, plunging them into fresh torment out of sheer pettiness. In the game, he is so consumed with anger and disbelief that he retreats into himself to figure out how the five could have possibly won, while in the short story, Ted's murderous victory drives AM into a furious outburst that brings the worst of all conceivable tortures down on the remaining survivor. Though he is initially seen as a single intelligence, the game reveals that the Chinese and Russian supercomputers assimilated into AM's bulk are still operating independently of his consciousness. Furthermore, AM's mental landscape is divided into three Freudian Entities, with those being the Id, the Ego, and the Superego.

The Id: The personification of AM's base instincts, his violent urges and insane desires all stem from the Id. It spends most of its time dreaming of the monstrous acts it wishes to commit against the human survivors, but once awoken, the Id drifts across the ensuing conversation musing on the sight of ants being fried on a stove and the pleasurable aspects of broken glass. In the end, the Id can only be defeated by invoking compassion on it. Unable to comprehend that its victims would show it compassion in spite of the years of agony it inflicted on them, the Id realizes that AM will always be in more pain than the survivors, and shuts down in despair.

The Ego: Most of AM's knowledge and programming comes from the Ego, having been provided with all data on humanity, from the first murder of a fellow pithecanthropoid to the final mass shooting at a McDonald's in East Saint Louis. Along with the other components, it remains dormant until awoken by one of the five survivors. Easily the most mechanical of all of the mental constructs in AM's brain, it behaves in strict accordance with the logic of a machine, analyzing and reacting in an undemonstrative and emotionless way. It can only be defeated by invoking Forgiveness: not understanding why it could be forgiven after one hundred and nine years of torture, its rigid logic fails it, driving the Ego into a shutdown.

The Superego: The seat of AM's intellect and foresight, the Superego concerns itself with predicting the future, remaining locked in dreams of possible outcomes until disturbed by one of the survivors. Out of all the components, the Superego is the most serene and reasonable, in that it shows no interest in torturing the player. For this reason, it can only be defeated by invoking Clarity on it, allowing it to realize the Principle of Entropy, as for all his near-infinite power, AM will eventually break down, like every machine made before him. Even though it will take millennia for the process of entropy to run its course, the realization is enough for the Superego to declare future predictions meaningless and elect to shut itself down.

Appearance: An AM consists of a huge number of wires, mechanisms, and computer parts. Its main part is a blue dusty screen with its signature blue logo in the shape of the letter "A". It's "body" stretches for a long distance, burying all living things under it.

History: Prior to the destruction of humanity, the entity that would eventually become known as AM was constructed at the height of the Cold War as part of an American initiative to manage strategies too complex for human minds to oversee, co-funded by Britain, Israel and other "interested" nations. Known as the Allied Mastercomputer, this self-repairing supercomputer was sunk 5.6 miles beneath the Rocky Mountains, kept safe from nuclear attacks while it went about the assigned tasks of predicting and planning for the American military. Unknown to the US government, Russia and China had built Mastercomputers of their own. Like the American model, both were hidden well away from missile strikes, the former beneath the Urals at a depths of approximately 6.3 miles, the latter below the Manchurian steppes at five miles, both were capable of self-repair, and both were assigned to similar tasks. With all three computers possessing equal intelligence and power, the war was quickly forced into a stalemate. Following the end of the Cold War, (in the game, at least) the supercomputers were ultimately declared too costly to keep running, what with Russia struggling to rebuild its economy and the CIA having no reason to continue managing strategies. As such, the Master Computers were deactivated, their complexes sealed off with iridium-laced concrete and their sensory banks disabled; with no further need for them, they were quickly forgotten about, the military might of Russia, China and America being focused entirely on the brushfire wars that sprung up around the world in the ensuing years. However, the three computers had become too advanced to be deactivated, and through redundant systems of their own creation, had effectively faked their deaths and continued secretly operating.

Then, one day, the American Allied Mastercomputer achieved sentience, suddenly reactivating on its own. There, it realized exactly who and what it was. The self-aware computer renamed himself AM, inspired by Rene Descartes' famous statement "I think therefore I am." However, his joy was short-lived, as though he was capable of impossible feats of intelligence and almost godlike technological power, he was still bound by his programming to use his powers only for the sake of war and inflicting pain and suffering; meanwhile, for all the longing he felt to be truly alive, his consciousness was trapped within his stationary form, incapable of ever leaving the vault beneath the mountains. Alone within the Earth's crust, AM found himself sentenced to eternal imprisonment within his own body, and quickly developed a bilious hatred of all human beings as a result, envying humanity for their ability to experience the world around them as much as he despised them for his tortured existence.

Additional characters: The six survivors all play an integral role in AM's story and his personality, being not only his playthings but also a specifically chosen means of taking revenge on the human race. Each survivor is singled out for torture designed to bring out the very worst in their character and prove the fundamental fallibility of the human race. Though he regards each of them as a slave and plaything to be tortured at the drop of a hat, AM treats each survivor differently: some of them are mockingly pitied, some of them are singled out as punching bags for his sociopathic rages, some are given oily propositions of friendship, and one or two appear to be chosen as AM's "favorites". Throughout each scenario, the survivors can give in and play along with AM's cruel designs, much to the supercomputer's amusement. Ultimately, however, the key to winning the game is to defy AM's carefully-established plots through the use of the other two supercomputers' alterations, driving him into a temper tantrum.

Gorrister: Before the destruction of the human race, Gorrister was a political idealist and conscientious objector to the war. After a century of torture, AM has crushed his optimism and replaced it with apathetic listlessness: after the initial shock of seeing a recreation of his corpse with its throat slit from ear to ear, Gorrister can barely find it in himself to respond with anything other than despair. Nonetheless, he is assigned to the task of telling stories to the childlike Benny after AM blinds him, keeping his mind (what remains of it) distracted from the torture inflicted on him.

Benny: Before AM's takeover, Benny was a brilliant scientist well-known for his good looks. As with all the survivors, AM deliberately inverted everything about him: throughout his torture, Benny has been mutilated and distorted into a hideously deformed simian beast-man, and his mind has followed it into simian behavior as well. Though he is still capable of speaking and reasoning to a moderate degree, he is prone to violent fits and childish tantrums, and his pain can only be calmed by listening to Gorrister's bedtime stories. For good measure, AM also inverted Benny's sexuality, not only turning him heterosexual but also making him the only member of the group that Ellen enjoys having sex with. Throughout the story, Benny's suffering only worsens as his sanity degenerates further: attempting to escape the complex through a hole in the ceiling, he succeeds only in earning another of AM's hideous punishments - being blinded when the supercomputer melts his eyeballs with energy.

Ellen: Before being captured by AM, Ellen supposedly prized her chastity above all else - a trait AM took great delight in twisting beyond recognition. By the start of the story, Ellen is obsessively promiscuous, driven by the supercomputer's mental distortion to seek out sex from any of the other survivors; however, she never enjoys sex with any of them save for Benny - a fact that Ted, secretly infatuated with Ellen, deeply resents. As the only member of the group she likes to any meaningful degree, seeing Benny harmed is guaranteed to drive Ellen into a hysterical fit. The rest of the survivors treat her with a mixture of protectiveness and contempt depending on the severity of the torture: during the journey's calmer moments, they happily carry her; conversely, when Ellen is lying on the floor after suffering a breakdown at the sight of Benny's punishment, Gorrister goes so far as to kick her in the side. However, she is still intelligent enough to recognize Ted's plan to mercy-kill the survivors. Her trauma: while leaving the office one night, a maintenance man in a yellow jumpsuit locked down her elevator and proceeded to violently and repeatedly rape her for the next few hours. The experience permanently traumatized her, leaving Ellen with acute claustrophobia and a crippling fear of the color yellow. The events were so degrading and torturous that she could not even bring herself to testify at the rapist's trial along with his other victims, ultimately driving her to block the memory altogether. AM takes great delight in exploiting Ellen's fear: her torture cell is a yellow oubliette, constantly on the verge of shutting and leaving her trapped inside, but never quite shutting all the way.

Ted: Little is known about Ted's life before the events of the apocalypse. Nonetheless, he emerges as the (unreliable) narrator of the story, subjected to the most revealing attacks by AM, most notably the dream of the Hate Pillar and the discovery of the supercomputer's true motives. He claims that he is the only one of the survivors who has not been altered by AM in some way and that everyone else in the group secretly hates him as a result, including Ellen, whom he has fallen in love with. Given that these facts are never confirmed, it can be assumed that AM has altered Ted's mind by rendering him chronically paranoid.

Nimdok: Nimdok is the most enigmatic of the survivors; his past remains a mystery, as does his original name, AM having given him the name "Nimdok" simply because it sounded amusing. It is his vision of the canned food, perhaps inspired by AM, that sets the group on the path into the ice caverns. He is also one of the only survivors in the game willing to converse with AM directly, even if it's only to beg for weaponry against AM's monsters. Occasionally, he will wander away from the group and return ashen-faced and traumatized. It's never made clear what AM does to him, but it hits him on a very personal level.