| abstract | - The American unit of the three supercomputers, AM was the first to attain sentience; linking up with the other two and achieving dominance over them, he used this position to wage a genocidal war on the entire human race. Though every single other member of the species was destroyed, AM managed to rescue five survivors, and for the past 109 years, he has been torturing them in the depths of his complex.
* AI Is a Crapshoot
* And I Must Scream: Ironically, AM is a sufferer of this trope; not only is he immobile and imprisoned beneath the earth where he was first constructed, but his programming prevents him from thinking in any other direction than war and death- and he knows it. This is what eventually drove him to take revenge on humanity and torture the five survivors.
* As Long as There Is Evil: While being shut down in the endgame, AM provides another screaming rant about how in one form or another, he will always exist. For good measure, the last of the survivors remains in AM's mind to ensure that it never reactivates.
* Ax Crazy
* Big Bad
* Big Brother Is Watching: Everything in AM's world is under his close observation. Which is why the Chinese and Russian counterparts only assist the survivors in circumstances where AM is unable to notice their movements.
* Brief Accent Imitation: Adopts a German accent while speaking with Nimdok.
* The Bully: Especially in the game.
* The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: All of AM's games are Unwinnable by Design, either because he's ensured that the scenario is tailored to the player's Fatal Flaw, or because he's given them almost nothing to work with. In fact, in the game, the only reason why the survivors even have a chance at winning is because the other two supercomputers are secretly helping them.
* Creative Sterility: As well as his inability to direct his thoughts away from torture and destruction, in the game, Surgat reveals that AM "works best with outside research": though he certainly puts the science he's learned to creatively gruesome uses, he doesn't (and probably can't) think to perform any research of his own, hence why he's trying to coerce Nimdok into performing the research in his stead.
* Creator Cameo: Harlan Ellison himself voiced AM for the game.
* Creepy Monotone: In the novel, his only speaking part is apparently this in spades; for extra creepiness, it's his hate speech.
* Crush! Kill! Destroy!: His primary motivation.
* Deus Est Machina
* Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He leaps to the conclusion that you're deliberately trying to irritate and bore him in the good endings to the scenarios instead of Character Development only realizing it's indicative of something larger if you get all five...which confuses him so much that he forgets to secure the way into his area of Cyberspace, where this is key to giving a Logic Bomb to his Id and Ego components.
* Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: A definite type 2.
* Freudian Trio: AM's main psychological components were built to follow Freudian design, and as such, are divided into Id, Ego, and Superego: the Id represents and contains all of AM's violent urges and psychotic fantasies; the Ego, which operates and computes exclusively in the present with all the records of human injustice to guide it; and the Superego, which dreams and predicts future events.
* God of Evil: Quite apart from his truly godlike power, AM also presents himself as a deity to the tribespeople of Benny's scenario in the game.
* Mad God
* Hannibal Lecture: Directs a small salvo of these at all five of his captives during the game's introduction.
* Immortality Inducer
* Large Ham: In the game.
* Laughably Evil
* Logic Bomb: In the game, he's first driven into an introspective shutdown when all five of his playthings begin to act against the roles he'd established for them. The endgame sets his psychological components up for a Logic Bomb each:
* When the player invokes the Totem of Compassion, the Id gives up, despairing at the knowledge that its hatred is meaningless now that its pain is understood.
* Invoking the Totem of Forgiveness on the Ego causes it to break down, unable to comprehend why it could be forgiven after 109 years of torture.
* The Superego commits suicide when use of the Totem of Clarity makes it realize that, for all it's godlike power, it will eventually decay into inert junk.
* Magical Computer: In the book, most of his powers are almost magical in scope and go largely unexplained by any specific technology. The game goes into greater detail on the source of his abilities, specifically, research performed by Nimdok during his time with the Nazis.
* Manipulative Bastard
* Master Computer
* Not So Different: To Nimdok.
* The Power of Hate
* Ragnarok Proofing: Capable of self-repair and equipped with countless redundant systems, AM is still going strong after a century. However, it's revealed that even his ability to repair himself will eventually fail, though it may take thousands upon thousands of years for him to finally collapse.
* Reality Warper: Thanks to all the technology he has adapted, AM is capable of almost anything: building entire landscapes for his captives to wander, creating artificial people and monsters for them to interact with, manipulating the weather, even keeping the five captives alive for over a century.
* Sigil Spam: Quite a few of his scenarios are marked with his A-over-M insignia, to the point that, in the concentration camp mock-up, it actually replaces the swastikas.
* Sophisticated As Hell: In the endgame, at least.
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* Also, this line from Benny's scenario:
* Torture Technician
* Yank the Dog's Chain: AM loves doing this, in both the original short story and the game. For a start, the whole story revolves around the five playthings wandering through his complex after being promised canned food... only to discover that AM didn't provide a can opener at the end of it.
* Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Ted and Ellen likely feel a bit disgusted at being fawned over by AM, but Nimdok feels even worse when AM claims himself a kindred spirit.
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