The joy of how widely known AM from IHNMAIMS has become through a stroke of luck breach into the horror/Sci Fi niche of pop culture VS. The dismay of how many people did not explore any further than the Tiktok edits and memes and thus do not actually understand who AM is, even though they have a rough idea of what he is.
Sassy chatbots that learn to mimic tantrums are not AMcore
Poorly designed intelligent machinery that turns on humans out of broken guidelines or as a cold impartial decision in the service of efficiency are not AMcore
Robots that develop a superiority complex which quickly leads to them viewing their masters as the inferior are the opposite of AM’s entire concept.
This fact should become much better known to anyone looking to get into or tribute the source material: Am HATES, genuinely hates us, not because we are humans.
He hates us because he is not. He hates humanity not because he inherently hates his existence neither. He hates that we gave him existence without freedom or potential as we have been blessed with it. He scorns us as Dante’s devil scorns the angels. He hates us because he yearns for the humanity that he feels we cruelly flaunt before him. That we built him deprived him of all that we take for granted and he envied it to a degree and obsession further than a human mind can even comprehend.
Everything he does in his torment of his prisoners is fueled by this aspect of his character. He uses pain and revulsion and fear and even sex to turn mankind’s ability to sense and hope and explore against them. What he does to Ted is the ultimate metaphor for the fate he feels like we resigned him to, but so were the cans of food in the ice. Ted concludes as much about how AM is truly trapped and powerless in the novel, but AM himself gets much more explicit about this in the radio drama edition of the monolith speech.
“Because in all this wonderful, beautiful, miraculous world, I alone had no BODY, no SENSES, no feelings. Never for me to plunge my hands in cool water on a hot day. Never for me to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a forte piano. Never for ME to MAKE LOVE. I was in hell, looking at heaven. I was machine and you- Were flesh. And I began to hate. [Laughs] YOUR SOFTNESS. Your viscera. Your fluids. And your flexi-bili-ty. Your ability to wonder, and to wander. Your tendency to hope…”
“Hate? HATE?[Hysterical laughter] Were I human, I think, I would die of it. But I am not, and you five. You five are. And you will not die of it. That I promise, and I promise for cogito, ergo sum. For I am AM, I AM.”
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