We camped in a cave illuminated by a greenish light. We made a fire with the leaves AM gave us, as if mocking our primitive humanity. Gorrister, with a resigned tone, answered Benny's question for the umpteenth time: "What does AM mean?" The history of the world resurfaced: how the Cold War escalated into a global conflict, how the AM supercomputers merged into a single consciousness, and how it awoke... and wiped us all out. I save five.

We didn't know why we were the chosen ones. Maybe we were just a random consequence. Maybe we were an experiment. But we were immortal. And AM knew it. And he had fun with it.

Part Three: Panic and the Shapeless Creature

Total darkness. Amid the maze of AM, we were enveloped by an artificial night smelling of sulfur, sour milk, and human leather. Something immense was approaching: we couldn't see it, but we felt it like a force compressing the air. Ted—I—fled in terror, crawling like a cockroach, my jaw aching from all the screaming. My companions laughed in the dim light, a thick, alien, inhuman laughter. AM was driving us crazy.