Abort, Retry, or Fail implies that there are three options which will lead to three different outcomes. My
experiences lead me to believe that this is not the case. That all three options lead to the same outcome, which was usually to just repeat the Abort, Retry, or Fail message.
After studying Computer Science at Boston College and various theories and other such topics, I decided that what was really going on was that the programmers feared that the user would become aware very quickly that they had no control. Similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure book that only had one option at every "branch" in the story line, this would just not do. It would lead to a bunch of users who felt used.
As such, they created the Abort, Retry, or Fail message which implies the options and some choice which might lead to different outcomes.