Ted is the main protagonist of the short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. 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.

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.”