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| “ | I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within. Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone. Here. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last. AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet ... AM has won, simply ... he has taken his revenge ... I have no mouth. And I must scream. | „ |
| ~ Ted describing the state he was left in by AM at the end of the story and name dropping its title. |
Ted is the main protagonist of Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream franchise, serving as the main protagonist of the original short story as well as its radio drama, and one of five main protagonists of the 1995 video game adaptation of the same name.
He is the narrator of the story who doesn't elaborate on who he was before AM captured him, though he continually states that he's the only one that wasn't altered in any way. However, he's also deeply paranoid, and speculates that the other survivors are arrayed against him.
He was voiced by David Soul in the 2002 radio drama, but his voice actor in the video game remains unknown.
Biography[]
Novella[]
Having been trapped with his companions inside AM and subjected to the computer’s relentless physical and psychological torture for 109 years, Ted has pessimistically resigned to their shared misery. Ted feels alienated from his four companions and grows increasingly suspicious that they all secretly despise him because he is the youngest and least affected by AM. He believes that he is the only one of the five who isn’t crazy or damaged, since AM hasn’t gotten into his head. But the reader can see that this clearly isn’t the case, given Ted’s ever-increasing paranoia and the extreme psychological distress he experiences from AM’s punishments, and so Ted is cast as an unreliable narrator. In fact, AM frequently inserts itself into Ted’s mind and barrages him with terrible thoughts and sensations that utterly devastate Ted. Throughout the story, AM starves the group for months and keeps them alive in agony, and Benny cannibalizes Gorrister as a result. Watching this horrific act, Ted has the epiphany that death is the group’s only escape. He makes a snap decision to murder his companions in an act of compassion, saving them from eternal torment. Picking up on his plan, Ellen kills Nimdok, and Ted kills Benny, Gorrister, and Ellen. With the others gone, AM ensures that Ted will never be able to kill himself—instead, he will live within AM forever as a mouthless, slug-like creature that barely even resembles the human he used to be. It is in this state, at the end of the story, that Ted declares, “I have no mouth. And I must scream.”
Video Game[]
A handsome, confident trickster in the habit of romancing single rich women out of their money, Ted's in-game characterization retains its paranoia; this time, though, it's directed at the various marks he's accumulated over the years, and the fear that they might learn that he's a fraud and torture him for his secrets. Of course, given that the human race is extinct and he's being tortured by an insane supercomputer, that's the least of his worries, though AM still uses the threat against him from time to time. However, on the hundred and ninth year of his captivity, AM reveals that he likes Ted, and offers him the chance to escape from his complex once and for all.
Personality[]
Ted had been a philanthropist in his past life, a lover of people, but as AM eradicated most of humanity, him along with four others were the only people left alive within the terrible machine's complex, forced to endure its constant torture. The once noble Ted was reduced to a paranoid and delusional mess, constantly mistrusting the intentions of those around. However, he is still undoubtedly a good guy with an amazing moral capacity and more bravery than what most people can say about himself, but could use some help in the personality department. Ted begins to understand AM's motivations for hating humanity, and although he still harbors an appropriate amount of hatred for the machine.
The video game adaptation shows off Ted's narcissistic personality far more than the novella, depicting him as an overconfident womanizer who thirsts after Ellen and wishes to be her knight in shining armor, despite this, he is still able to be selfless as seen in the game's better endings where he not only allows the fake version of Ellen to die in peace in the fantasy AM set up for him, but would then assist in the process of trying to shut him down for good at the end of the game. Showing that for all his arrogance, Ted still keeps the heart that he had in the original story,