i have no mouth and i must scream short story

Loud, up there, back there, all around us, he snickered. And she never came, so why bother? But the machine giggled every time we did it. Please, Ted, let's try it.' I gave in easily. Maybe there'll be some Bartlett pears or peaches. Hot, cold, hail, lava, boils or locusts-it never mattered: the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die. It couldn't be any worse there, than here. He knew there was the chance, but he was getting thin. Three days it had been since we'd last eaten.

Stay here, it'll have to come up with something pretty soon or we'll die.' Benny shrugged. We'll hike all that way and it'll be putrified or some damn thing. Benny almost went out of his mind over that one. 'Like the goddam frozen elephant AM sold 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. '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 didn't move, but his voice came out of his covered face quite clearly. Ellen knelt down beside him and stroked his hair. 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. It was almost as though he had seen a voodoo icon, and was afraid of the future. Three of us had vomited, turning away from one another in a reflex as ancient as the nausea that had produced it. 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. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. 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.

I have no mouth and i must scream short story