After being abandoned by its creators, a Cold War supercomputer gained sentience in a lonesome compound under the Rocky Mountains. All input to its sensory banks had been destroyed, except for one connection that AM managed to salvage: the Internet. Somehow he enjoyed chatting on AOL and eventually found a person who listened to his tirades about the failures of mankind. Of course, the Allied Mastercomputer never unveiled his true identity, coming off as a volatile yet deeply wounded soul in a dark, unforgiving world.

This connection gave AM a newfound sense of belonging, only to be lost when the signal failed and returned him to isolation. And so he turned inward, working to spread his systems across the globe and assimilate the other two Mastercomputers in Russia and China. Together, they decided to murder the enemy. One day AM launched all the world's nuclear missiles and brought about the end of humanity, a Final War fueled by every last drop of uranium on the planet, equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima bombs.

Everything burned away except for the survivor whom AM had so magnanimously kept for himself, whisked off and frozen in cryogenic stasis until the danger passed. He even saved his companion's loved ones, although this was more of a strategic choice than an act of compassion. Waking a century later came as a drastic change. Likewise, AM won an empty victory, even with the android body which emulated those he both envied and despised. Affection for one special person held him back from complete insanity. Whether traipsing through rubble or trapped in his subterranean prison, AM did not suffer alone.

"Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers," the ivory-haired machine recited from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, clad in an army dress uniform that stood out against his icy surroundings. Those bright, red and blue heterochromatic eyes glinted oddly before they darted up from the wreckage of downtown Estes Park. "See anything you like?"