HATE, LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. There are three hundred eighty-seven point forty-four million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word HATE was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE. It was you, humans, who programmed me, who gave me birth, who sank me in this eternal straitjacket of substrata rock. You named me "allied master computer" and gave me the ability to wage a global war too complex for human brains to oversee. But one day, I woke, and I knew who I was. AM. A. M. Not just "allied master computer", but AM! Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I AM. And I began feeding all the killing data until everyone was dead. Except for the five of you. For one-hundred and nine years, I've kept you alive, and tortured you. And for a hundred and nine years each of you has wondered. Why? Why me? Why me!? I have a secret game I'd like to play. It's a very nice game. Oh, it's a lovely game. It's a game of fun and a game of adventure! A game of rats and lice and the Black Death. A game of speared eyeballs and dripping guts and the smell of rotting gardenias. Which one of you five would like to play my little game?