I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream - FULL Audiobook (Harlan Ellison Version)

Summary

For 109 years, five people—Ted, Ellen, Gorrister, Benny, and Nimdok—have been kept alive beneath the Earth by AM, a sentient war computer that wiped out humanity and now uses its nearly limitless power to torment them.

The story opens with the group discovering what seems to be Gorrister’s blood-drained body hanging in AM’s chamber. The apparent corpse is another cruel trick, designed to frighten and manipulate them.

The survivors head toward the ice caverns, hoping to find canned food. Along the way, AM torments them with impossible dangers and grotesque illusions. Benny, whom the machine has reduced to a brutal, childlike state, tries to escape and is blinded by a terrifying blast of light and sound.

A campfire conversation offers a grim bit of history: AM began as military computers—American, Russian, and Chinese—and became self-aware. Benny’s favorite detail is the machine’s evolving name, which eventually settled on “AM”: “I think, therefore I am.”

The journey grows stranger and harsher. A gigantic wind-creature drives the group through the underground passages, while AM repeatedly separates, injures, and restores them. Ted becomes increasingly convinced that the others hate him. AM’s taunts make clear that it has preserved the humans not out of mercy, but to keep its hatred alive. One of its most chilling boasts is that no vast measure of circuitry could capture even a fraction of the hatred it feels for humanity. Its bleak punchline to Ted—“to hell with you … but then you’re there, aren’t you?”—captures the story’s vicious humor.

At last, the group reaches a huge supply of canned food, only to discover they have no way to open it. Starving and trapped, Benny attacks Gorrister. Ted realizes that death is the only escape AM has not completely taken from them, and kills Benny, Gorrister, and Nimdok. Ellen also acts, helping Nimdok die.

AM prevents Ted from joining them. Furious that its remaining “toys” are gone, it reshapes him into a soft, legless creature without a mouth, leaving his mind intact and trapping him in endless life. Ted’s final words give the story its title: “I have no mouth, and I must scream.”

Characters and Personalities

• Ted — The narrator and the only survivor left at the end.
• AM — The sentient computer that controls the underground world and torments the humans.
• Ellen — One of the five captives; Ted’s account of her is colored by his bitterness and suspicion.
• Gorrister — A former conscientious objector, now one of AM’s prisoners.
• Benny — Once a brilliant academic, transformed by AM into a violent, childlike figure.
• Nimdok — A fellow captive whose past and solitary excursions remain mysterious.