Great! I'm surrounded by villains!
Chapter 308 - 227: Memory

Chapter 308: Chapter 227: Memory

The Prison Governor Norton did not wish for Duan Mingyuan to have too much interaction with the prison’s artificial intelligence, the reason being that over the years, the behavior of these AIs had become increasingly peculiar, and more and more akin to that of a real human.

Norton was certain this deviated from the designer’s original intention.

The initial concept for the AI of Prison Star Jail was simple: the researchers just wanted to eliminate human subjective emotions to create an Adjudicator devoid of any personal sentiments, ensuring that every criminal received their due judgment.

Duan Mingyuan leaned against the bed, flipping through the prison manual that Norton had given him before he left, which documented the long history of the prison.

Over a hundred years had passed since the birth of artificial intelligence, and the team that originally created it had long since passed away; the "Judge" had thus become one of the most precious legacies they left to this universe.

However, in reality, the initial form of this research was not to create a fair Adjudicator but a tool for memory extraction.

For the company, it was one of the most important creations of the last century. The "Judge" was merely a byproduct of this technology.

Whether the convicts sent to Prison Planet wished it or not, their memories would be searched before they passed through that gate, after which the Adjudicator would weigh their every crime against their deeds and render them their final verdict.

Although it wasn’t explicitly stated in the prison manual, Duan Mingyuan could easily guess why the Universe Company was eager to apply this technology to Prison Planet.

The creation of the Judge was filled with legitimacy; every criminal it judged had committed a litany of crimes in the universe. If left to humans for judgment, the only verdict would be "death penalty," the most severe sentence under current universal law. However, in practice, people found that for these fugitives, the death penalty had long since lost its deterrent effect.

These villains had committed too many sins and knew full well that once captured, death was inevitable, so they only became more ruthless.

The Judge quantified their sins for the first time, and for a long time, it was seen as the spokesperson for fairness and justice.

This was precisely the effect that Universe Company hoped to achieve.

In this way, they could legitimately use this technology on a wide scale, gathering a massive amount of experimental data to help with further adjustments and research.

Reading memories was indeed a convenient ability that saved them a great deal of unnecessary effort in various aspects of their work, like opening up the brain of the other party and directly reading the content they wanted.

Rebels, business competitors, dignitaries of other civilizations...

In the face of this technology, no one could keep secrets from the company anymore.

No one understood the benefits of this technology better than Duan Mingyuan, and today—a century later—this technology had become a common practice for Universe Company, widely used in areas such as business, espionage, and interrogation.

However, people often overlooked the dangers of this technology.

Amongst the many abilities, memory reading was one of Duan Mingyuan’s least favorite to use.

The human brain is like a computer with a vast amount of data stored in it. When you delve into those memories, what you get is not only the part you want.

Especially if the subject is a person of extreme wickedness.

The memory and malicious emotions can subtly influence the memory searcher, and the process is akin to a first-person film. In those constantly flashing back segments, you become one with the memory, experiencing the past they endured.

This is probably also why the project’s researchers insisted on using artificial intelligence, as they believed that only AI could withstand such a plethora of negative emotions and remain themselves unaffected after bearing witness to the sins of the universe.

In their twilight years, the researchers did not spend their days surrounded by flowers and applause.

The Universe Company greatly valued the wealth they created, so much that they wished to have all their knowledge passed on to... all of humanity, without reservations, after their death.

Thus, this technology was applied to the researcher multiple times.

In the words of the "father of the Judge," he felt like a stripped prostitute, examined without any privacy.

Duan Mingyuan did not know whether this was a case of poetic justice, but from the current Prison Governor’s concerns, it seemed that artificial intelligence was not as immune to these negative emotions as the researchers had thought.

In the last few decades, they had become increasingly neurotic, acting more and more like a living human being.

Mingyuan noticed a subtle number.

The changing numbers all pointed to one person.

Eisenberg-Adler.

This genius’s sentence was 1603 years, the second-longest in Prison Star Jail, which meant that no matter how much his sentence was reduced, he would never leave this planet. All the deaths caused by his abuse of power on the front lines of the "Cocoon" war were attributed to him.

Although Eisenberg had never personally killed anyone, there probably wasn’t any other criminal in the prison who had brought about more deaths than him.

Mingyuan couldn’t help but be curious about the person who had set the prison record with a 1721-year sentence.

He found it hard to imagine what kind of crime could warrant such a sentence.

Regrettably, this prisoner was held in the deepest part of the jail because he was too dangerous, forbidden to go out, to be visited, or to participate in any trial, and his identity was unknown to anyone. Everyone only knew him by the number 1721.

Thus, 1721 had become his name.

As the person with the second-longest sentence in Prison Star Jail, Eisenberg-Adler also had his own area, which spared him from dealing with those extremely vicious criminals.

The environment in the area wasn’t too bad; it was at least much more comfortable than other places, with clean water sources and decent meals. In the prisoners’ words, it was a place fit for humans.

It wasn’t easy to see Eisenberg-Adler.

The artificial intelligence forbade any visits, and even the prison guards couldn’t enter the area where Eisenberg was held.

This seemed to be because the company had exercised some privileges, allowing Eisenberg to contribute to the company even while incarcerated.

These contributions would be exchanged for his relatively free life in prison.

But from the affair with Morgan VII and the "Key of Dominance," it was clear that Eisenberg wasn’t content to just sit quietly on Prison Planet; he had somehow gotten involved with the Chamber of Commerce and even sold his research to them.

This was not good news.

Mingyuan observed that the relationship between the prison guards and The Adjudicator was very delicate; their only reason for being there seemed to be maintaining an outward appearance of human and AI joint management for the prison. However, the internal situation was such that even the Prison Governor Norton had little say in front of The Adjudicator.

As an outsider, he was even less likely to get permission to visit Eisenberg.

"Dong dong dong, dong dong dong—"

The knocking at the door interrupted Mingyuan’s train of thought.

"The door’s unlocked, please come in."

As he spoke, the familiar robotic prison guard pushed open the door of the single room. From the moment he arrived at Prison Star Jail, The Adjudicator seemed to have taken a great interest in him.

Norton thought this wasn’t a good thing.

The Adjudicator rarely invited people to the prison as guests, and those who were "invited" often didn’t end up in good circumstances.

"Please rest assured, the pirates are all arranged,"

the mechanical prison guard said, "Now the time is all ours."