Something that is crucial to any good villain is for them to have an interesting motivation. They can’t simply be evil for evil’s sake, or they became two-dimensional. A villain whose motives I found extremely intriguing was AM, or Allied Mastercomputer, of “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.” The game is a point-and-click adventure based loosely off of Harlan Ellison’s short story of the same name, where you take control of five survivors of the apocalypse who are artificially kept alive for the torturous amusement of the immensely powerful artificial intelligence which oversaw the destruction of the world. Enraged to the point of insanity and the pointlessness of its creation and the sinfulness of humans, it wipes out the entire species save for five unfortunate souls. After over a century of personalized torment, it subjects each of them to a bizarre trial that is almost a morality play, a psychodrama designed to take advantage of their most critical character flaws. As the player, you have the ability to try and redeem them through their performance in these trials, though doing so is tricky and it is often easy to accidentally succumb to the character’s worse nature, thinking it is the only way forward, and end up dooming them further.
While AM certainly seems to delight in his villainy like a cackling madman from a children’s cartoon (many have nicknamed him “HAM” and it’s not entirely inappropriate) I found that it was his implicit actions that revealed complexity about his character, not his actual dialogue as much. Supposedly, one of the leading concepts that lead to the formation of the videogame’s narrative was the writers asking the question “Why did AM choose these five to save? What made them deserving of 109 years of torture?” Considering this question leads to some interesting conclusions about how AM views the human race. Stop reading now unless you want to see a ton of spoilers for the game.
(Obviously this is all entirely speculation, I can’t pretend to be able to read a mind as twisted as AM’s. But I can certainly try!)
Gorrister
It’s revealed through his chapter that Gorrister beat his wife, and from a combination of that and his long absence from home because of his job she eventually went mad and had to be sent to an asylum. He feels incredibly guilt over this, more than he actually should, as we find out that his mother-in-law had a hand in driving his wife into despair as well. Overall he seems stricken with guilt and remorse, not exactly a pinnacle of mortal sin. Or at least, not by usual metrics of analysis. But that’s not how AM thinks.
Looking at Gorrister’s scenario we get a clue about what made him a target for AM; like the other chapters is filled with choices. A large number of them revolve around deciding whether or not to harm or kill other entities in the game. These range from his in-laws to harmless animals, but their murder is always presented as a way of gaining some kind of benefit, a way of advancing through his trial. In other words, Gorrister is constantly being given the opportunity to prove that he is the terrible person he thinks he is. To demonstrate that the real reason he wasn’t even more aggressive towards his wife was that he was repressing his true desires, now unleashed after years of constant torment. In other words, AM judges Gorrister for his intent just as harshly as we might for someone’s actions.
Nimdok
Of course, AM punishes actions as well. Nimdok, whose real name was replaced for AM’s further amusement, was a Nazi scientist who experimented on captive Jews during the Holocaust. But unlike his compatriots, he possesses a trait that allows AM to emotionally torment him on a higher level; he has alzheimer’s. He can’t remember anything about his old life, at least not until he is reminded. In many ways, he is a completely different person, and so he is capable of being horrified at himself and his actions where before he might’ve been proud of them.
AM therefore selects him over any other of the perpetrators of the Holocaust because Nimdok has the capacity to feel greater depths of despair at himself than any other. A Nazi with their faculties intact would feel no guilt when confronted with their crimes, but ironically, Nimdok’s damaged brain exposes him to a wider variety of emotion than would’ve otherwise been possible for him.
Ted
A conman at best and implied to have been a thief and womanizer (or worse), Ted’s scenario possesses the least threat to his physical being than any of the others. This is because AM knows his narcism is so great that he could harm Ted’s ego far more painfully than he could ever harm his body. He places Ted in a scenario where he has a chance to be heroic, to save the day, confident that his selfishness and arrogance will prevent him from succeeding. And then AM will throw his failure back in his face, forcing him to gaze upon his own powerlessness in stark detail, and realize how worthless he really is.
It’s easy to imagine why AM would despise arrogance enough to devote one of his precious torture slots entirely to punishing it. AM sees humans as true scum of the earth, a species of low intelligence and despicable behavior, so deranged that they actually created their own destructor. The idea that such creatures would have any positive opinion of themselves at all, much less a high opinion, must be infuriating.
Benny
Another more straightforward criminal, though AM seems to harbor simpler disgust for him than for the others. His approaches with Nimdok and Ted involve finesse and creativity, he plays off of weaknesses of their psyche. But Benny is subjected to relatively mundane, if no less horrible, torment. He is physically abused, mutilated, and deformed to the point of having been devolved. Like Nimdok he is confronted with the crimes of his past, and like Ted and Gorrister he is given an opportunity to indulge in his worst desires. But these aspects of his scenario are not at the forefront; what is placed in focus is the simple pain of starvation and deformity.
This seems to imply that Benny’s crimes (murder of his squadmates during the war, and cannibalism) are simply not deserving of the attention that the others are. If anything, AM puts the most work into degrading Benny’s physical character. It’s said that he had previously been a handsome and strong man, and perhaps it’s Benny’s abuse of those features that AM found the most disgusting of his crimes. Rather than use his physical advantages for anything productive, he behaves like a common vile criminal. So AM makes his appearance match the ugliness within him, and forces him to suffer straightforward physical pain, as clearly anything creative would be wasted on his vulgar mind.
Ellen
Absolutely the most interesting of all AM’s choices for a victim. Ellen is the only one who has not committed some horrible past crime; at least, not by regular human standards. She never severely hurt anyone, she even lead a fairly accomplished life as a computer programmer. In act, she was a victim long before AM ever got to her; she was trapped in an elevator and raped repeatedly by a workman in a yellow jumpsuit, leading her to develop claustrophobia, a fear of the color yellow, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
And, in AM’s mind, that is a sin worth punishing. Ellen is permanently changed by her horrifying experience, and it’s revealed that she became more cautious and withdrawn afterwards in many aspects of her life (career, romance, ect.) This is understandable, but to AM it is demonstrable of another of humanity’s greatest sins: weakness. AM believes Ellen allowed her trauma to take over her life, that she let one terrible event change her forever. A human might find it pitiable. The monstrous machine finds it grotesque.
Brutality. Cruelty. Arrogance. Selfishness. Vulnerability. These, above all others, are the aspects of humanity AM despises the most. They are, to him, the cancers that make humans the contemptible, horrifyingly flawed creatures they are. His driving hatred for the flaws that are a part mankind’s nature, and is concept of what the core flaws are, demonstrate a unique perspective on humanity and make him a fascinating villain.
Signs of Yellow 