Transcript
contract, the token. Before we're able to launch all the beautiful stocks in your machines,
we first have to go through the story. I'm telling you, this is a great story. You're
going to fucking love it. I have no mouth and I must scream. Let me put this space on the
side. So I have full view of what I'm doing and what I'm reading right now. And here we
go. If I bore you, please make sure to tell me in the comments, if I'm too boring, maybe
I should change a ton of my voice. Maybe I should say it in a specific way. English is
not my first language. So if I crunch or destroy any little word that you don't like, how
I say it, I'm sorry. I literally speak like five languages. How many do you speak? Go fuck
yourself. All right. I have no mouth and I'm a scream by Harlan Ellison. Here's how it starts.
Limb. The body of Goaritz der. 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 buddy hung head down. Guys, can you believe that? Head down.
Attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. Oh, fuck, that must hurt.
It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw.
I have no clue what the lantern jaw is. If someone can illuminate me about lantern jaw, that'll be nice.
There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor. When Goaritz der joined our group
and looked up at himself, it was already too late for us to realize that. Once again,
M, that's the name, M had duped us. Had had it spun. It had been a diversion on the part of,
guys, you know what word I'm about to say? You know what word I'm about to say? The machine.
Three of us had vomited, turning away from one another in a reflex as ancient as the nausea
that had produced it. Goaritz der went white. It was almost as thought 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 Nelt 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 100 and 9th year
in the computer. Or we could say in the machine. He was speaking for all of us.
Nimduk, which was the name the machine had forced him to use because Amm
amused itself with strange sounds. Let me open this court here just to make sure
that I can see what the fuck everyone's saying. All right, here we go.
What's hallucinating that there were canned goods in the ice caverns. Go rister and I were
very dubious. It's another shock. We're a truck. I don't know how to say this word. I told them
like the god damn frozen elephant, Amm sold us. Benny almost went out of his mind over that one.
We'll hike all the way and they'll be potrified, putrified, or some damn thing.
I say forget it. Stay here. I'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, Nimduk was no more certain. He knew there was the chance but he was getting thin. He
couldn't be any worse there than here. Colder. But that didn't matter much. Hot, cold,
hell, lava, boils, or lockest, locust. It never mattered. The machine master pitted and we had
to take it or die. Ellen decided us. I've got to have something. Ted, maybe there'll be some
Barlet piers or peaches. I don't know what the fuck a burlet pair is or burlet peaches. But I know
about Japan peaches, guys. Have you ever eaten a fucking peach in front of Mount Fuji? Have you
guys ever done that in your fucking life? Have you ever? I don't know what the fuck you guys are doing
in your lives. But you have, you need the only golden your life should basically to go to Mount
Fuji. Okay. And eat the best peach. Your mind can fathom. You would not believe you. There's no
words to describe it. It's impossible to describe. But that's how good Japan peaches are. It's a piece
of art. All right. Please Ted was tried. I gave him, I gave him easily. What the hell mattered,
not at all. Helen was grateful though. She took me twice out of turn. Even that had ceased to
matter. And she never never came. So why bother? But the machine giggled every time we did it. Loud.
Up there, back there, all around us. He's sneakered. Sneakered. It's sneakered. The hell is sneakered.
Anyway, most of the time I thought of M as it without a soul, but the rest of the time I thought of it
as him in the masculine, the paternal, the patriarchal, or he is a jealous people. Him at him. It's
God as daddy that the ranged and daddy that the ranged. That sounds nice. All right. We left
in a two on a Thursday. The machine always kept us up to date on the date. The passage of time
was important. Not to us sure as hell, but to him. It M Thursday. Thanks. Nimduk and Gorrister
carried Ellen for a while. Their hands locked to their own and each other's wrist. A seat
penny and I walked before and after. Just to make sure that if anything happened, it would catch one
of us and at least Ellen would be safe. That chance safe didn't matter. It was only a hundred miles or
so to the ice caverns. And the second day when we were lying out under the blistering sun thing,
because maybe it's not an actual sun, it's a sun thing. He had materialized. He sent down some
mana. This guy plays World of Warcraft. All right. Tasted like boiled, bored urine. We ate it.
On the third day, we passed through a valley of obsolescence, obsolescence,
filled with rust and carcasses of ancient computer banks. Am had been as ruthless with its
own life as with ours. It was a mark of his personality. It's show for perfection. Whether it was
a matter of killing off on productive elements in his own world, filling bulk or perfecting methods
for torturing us. Am was as thorough as those who had invented him. Now long since gone to dust,
could ever have hoped there was light filtering down from above. And we realized we must be very near
the surface, but we didn't try to crawl up to see. There was virtually nothing out there.
Had been nothing that could be considered anything for over a hundred years. Only the blasted
skin of what had once been the home of billions. Now there were only five of us down here inside,
alone with, I heard Alan saying frankly, no, Benny, don't come on. Don't come on. Benny, don't
please. And then I realized I had been hearing Benny murmuring under his breath for several minutes.
He was saying, I'm going to get out. I'm going to get out. This is like the guys trying to get out
of PTC machine and our H machines. I'm going to get out. I'm going to get out. Over and over. This
monkey-like face was crumbled up in an expression of, how do you say this word?
Bitypic, Bitypic, the light and sadness. All at the same time, the radiation scars Am had given
him during the festival were drawn down into a mass of pink white pucker rings and his features
seemed to work independently of one another. Perhaps Benny was the luckiest of the five of us. He had
gone stark, staring mad many years before. But even though we could call Am any damn thing we
liked, could think the foulest thoughts of fused memory banks. Oh guys, memory banks. Wasn't there
something going on with memory banks today? Treasure, treasure? Yeah, yeah, yeah, there we go.
And corroded base plates of burned out circuits and shattered controlled bubbles.
The machine would not tolerate our trinon, our trying to escape. Benny leaped away from me as I
made a grab for him. He scrambled up the face of a smaller memory cube, tilted on its side and filled
with rotted components. He squatted, squatted actually there for a moment, looking like the chimpanzee
Am had intended him to resemble. Then he leaped high, caught a trelling beam of pitted and corroded
metal and went up it. Hand over hand like an animal till he was on a girdered girdered girdered.
What the? I'm going to put it on. I'm going to put it on discord. There you go. Girded. Girded. Girded. Girdered. Girdered.
Girdered ledge. Twenty feet above us. Oh Ted, Tim Mimdok, please help him. Get him down before
she cut off. Tarras began to stand in her eyes. She moved her hands aimlessly. It was too late.
None of us wanted to be near him when whatever was going to happen happened. And besides, we all saw
through her concern. When M had altered the Benny during the machines, utterly irrational hysterical
fades. Hey guys, that sounds like us. Erasional hysterical sounds like us.
Faze. It was not merely merely Benny's phase. The computer had made like a giant apes.
He was big in the privates. She loved that. She serviced us as a matter of course, but she
loved it from him. Oh, Ellen, pedestal, Ellen, pristine pure Ellen. Oh, Ellen, the clean
come filth. Corrister slapped her. She slumped down, staring up at poor loony Benny and she cried.
And what it was her big defense crying. We had gotten used to it 75 years earlier.
Corrister kicked her in the side. Then the sound began. It was light. That sound, half sound
and a half light. Something that began to glow from Benny's eyes and pulse with growing loudness.
Damn, sonorities that grew more gigantic and brighter as the light sound increased in tempo.
It must have been painful and the pain must have been increasing with the bulkness of the light.
The rising volume of the sound for Benny began to mule like a wounded animal.
Oh, that's how I guess it sounded like. At first, softly, when the light was dim and the sound was
muted, then louder as the shoulders hunched together. His back humped as thought he was trying
to get away from it. His hands folded across his chest like a chipmunks. His head tilted to the side.
And then the ear was like this.
Where was I? Where was I? Let me find exactly where I was.
Oh, Benny's eyes and pulse with growing loudness. I want to try to do that. The light sound increased in tempo.