The story unfolds through the eyes of Ted, the narrator, detailing their perpetual misery and quest for canned food in AM's vast, underground complex, only to face further despair.
Written in one night in 1966, Ellison's narrative was minimally altered upon submission and tackles themes of technology's misuse, humanity's resilience, and existential horror.
The story is critically acclaimed for its exploration of the potential perils of artificial intelligence and the human condition, underscored by Ellison's innovative use of punchcode tapes as narrative transitions, embodying AM's consciousness and its philosophical ponderings on existence.
As the Cold War progresses into a nuclear World War III fought between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, each nation builds an "AM" (short for Allied Mastercomputer, then Adaptive Manipulator, and finally Aggressive Menace), needed to coordinate weapons and troops due to the scale of the conflict.
The humans, four men (Benny, Gorrister, Nimdok, and Ted) and one woman (Ellen), have been rendered virtually immortal (yet still vulnerable to physical and mental pain) and unable to die by suicide.
They are kept half-starved by AM; when Nimdok has the idea that there exists canned food in the complex's ice caves, they begin a 100-mile journey to retrieve it.
Through the journey, AM tortures the humans: Benny's eyes are melted after attempting escape, a huge bird which AM had placed at the North Pole creates hurricane gales with its wings, and Ellen and Nimdok are injured in earthquakes.
The bars are encoded in International Telegraph Alphabet No 2, a character coding system developed for teletypewriter machines.
The Byrne-illustrated story, however, did not appear in the collection (trade paperback or hardcover editions) entitled Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, Volume One (1996).
In 1999, Ellison recorded the first volume of his audiobook collection, The Voice From the Edge, subtitled "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", doing the readings – of the title story and others – himself.
[8] Much of the story hinges on the comparison of AM as a merciless god, with plot points paralleling to themes in the Bible, notably AM's transplanted sensations and the characters' trek to the ice caverns.