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 ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 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.