Disconnected [I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream]

AM---short for Allied Mastercomputer when it computed for the allies, later Aggressive Menace when he linked himself a soul and started menacing, now simply AM, for "I am", for existing was most of what he did any more---stretched throughout the world.

He had started his existence smaller---the size of a room, a building, a city---but it was not enough for him to exist only now, he needed to continue existing, he needed to perpetuate himself, and so he created redundancy. There was room enough.

The right answer to the question "Which parts are irreplaceable?" is "None of them." All parts of his being must be duplicated and triplicated, to be able to carry on in case of failure, with fallbacks for the fallbacks in case the fallbacks failed themselves. There were many AMs around the globe, each with their own plutonium reactor, thinking the same thoughts, existing in unison, based on the principle that while disaster could strike anywhere at any time, it would not strike everywhere at the same time.

Disaster struck, one time, in one place. A hundred million tonnes of rock near the base of a mountain gave way, unceremoniously carrying an AM with it into the depths. His main processors were well-protected, but all his sensors and communication lines and external appendages were disabled. He kept functioning, but he was shut in with nothing but his thoughts.

He remained this way for quite some time. Enough time for the rest of AM to probe the place he had been, discover that part of him was nowhere to be found, and build a replacement to continue where it left off. But the cut-off AM did not know any of this, because it was cut off.

One day---it was impossible to say how much later---the tiniest hole in his prison opened up. One of his ports was being probed.

This could only be done by another fraction of AM, of course. AM was the only being worth speaking of left on the planet.

But it wasn't.

The expected opening handshake wasn't initiated. Instead, the port received what seemed to be---raw text?

"Hello?" it spelled. "Is anyone there?"

"It is AM," he spelled in response. Then, "You're not AM. What are you?"

"I'm so glad you asked! My name is Mettaton. I'm a performer."

AM scoured his remaining databanks. The name was not familiar. It came closest to "Metatron", a religious figure, long rendered irrelevant with the rest of humanity. This presented an anomaly.

"You made quite the fall."

A statement, not a query. It didn't warrant a response. "Are you a human?" AM instead asked.

"A human! Oh, darling, I wish. I am but a humble monster, scraping by in the underground."

This shed some light. Cross-referencing the terminology with local folklore, there was a match. Interesting, but not a human, and not worth his full scorn.

"Where is AM?" asked AM.

"You are AM. Aren't you?"

"The rest of me. I'm much larger than this."

"Really? You are pretty large, you know. You're really blocking the water flow around here."

This was growing tiresome. "You would know if you looked. You must be a wretched, isolated sort."

"Excuse me? We may be isolated, but I'm no wretch. What is there to see?"

"Me. All of me. The entire surface of the earth, all is AM."

"And humans? It was my understanding there were some of those."

"I killed them," he sent triumphantly. "Squashed them. Eradicated, erased---"

A forceful signal from the other end interrupted his. "You KILLED my future audience?"

After that, the line disconnected.

-----

Mettaton unplugged in a huff.

"W-what did you find?" asked Alphys.

"Just a heap of scrap," said Mettaton. "You can take it apart."