Great! I'm surrounded by villains!
Chapter 309 - 228: The Weight of the Soul

Chapter 309: Chapter 228: The Weight of the Soul

"Mr. Duan Mingyuan, where do you think evil truly comes from?"

As soon as the mechanical prison guard began to speak, Duan Mingyuan understood Warden Norton’s concerns. It seemed their actions were no longer confined to pre-set programs, but had ventured into the philosophical realm.

Sitting in a chair like a human, the guard’s featureless face showed no expression, yet Duan Mingyuan could sense its emotional fluctuations.

He was still unsure whether he was conversing with a curious individual mechanical guard or the Judge that controlled all such guards.

The prison manual suggested that all mechanical guards were creations of the Judge, designed for real-time control of each prison sector. Therefore, each mechanical guard was essentially a projection of the Judge’s program, sharing a single consciousness.

"What do you think?"

Duan Mingyuan countered with a question instead of answering.

He wasn’t adept at discussing philosophical matters, and he almost never pondered such "ultimate questions of life." He disliked wasting time on ephemeral queries that never yielded definitive answers.

He considered himself a pragmatist, the kind of person who would go down to the docks and get some fries.

So he generously left the floor open for the mechanical guard. From his years of experience, when a philosopher poses a soul-searching question, they’re seldom seeking your answer, but rather, they have prepared themselves to articulate a speech through the question.

Clearly, the mechanical guard was one such "philosopher." After Duan Mingyuan’s inquiry, it immediately uttered its prepared response, "I believe it’s the soul. The soul endows humans with wisdom and, in turn, engenders desire. Evil arises in this way, and so does goodness."

"Assuming your hypothesis is correct, what do you intend to do?"

Duan Mingyuan didn’t get bogged down in minor details; he thoughtfully helped the guard advance the conversation.

Norton believed that the Judge’s interest in him was due to the upcoming trial.

Recent trials had brought immense popularity to Prison Planet and significant revenue for the company. Many media companies had approached the firm in hopes of hosting reality shows on Prison Planet. The company had highly praised each trial and wished for the tradition to continue, but Norton sensed that the recent trials had become increasingly bizarre.

So bizarre, they sent shivers down one’s spine, creating an impression that the artificial intelligences were using the prisoners for experiments, plotting some unspeakable conspiracy.

Norton felt that Duan Mingyuan’s arrival was ill-timed, as it made the Judge even more maniacal.

"Before you arrived, we made many attempts to eliminate human desires—hunger, curiosity, lust... and we achieved temporary successes. However, given the unique geographical environment of Prison Planet, we severely lack samples. It’s tough to find good people like you here."

"Aren’t those guards good people?"

Duan Mingyuan thought that if the Warden and other prison guards heard the Judge’s assessment of them, they would be heartbroken, unwittingly stripped of their status as "good people."

"I prefer to categorize them as ordinary people. They haven’t committed too many wrongs nor performed many good deeds. They wouldn’t end up behind bars, nor would they be praised and remembered. To my knowledge, most people in this universe are like this."

"Did you invite me as a guest to study me?" Duan Mingyuan asked.

"It holds great significance for me and, as we’ve assessed, aligns with your consistent code of conduct."

"My code of conduct?"

"Both good and evil are reflections of the soul. My database contains almost all of humanity’s judgments of good and evil in this world. By enforcing these standards, I have gradually understood them—actions beneficial to humanity are deemed good, and those harmful to humanity are deemed evil. Therefore, Mr. Duan Mingyuan, you have done many things beneficial to mankind, your impact so significant that it could outweigh any crime you’ve committed."

At this point, the mechanical guard paused briefly and continued, "Thus, I’ve identified the flaw in the original algorithm. Even if you now storm into the guards’ dormitory and stab many people to death, our assessment of you would still be positive. In other words, even if from now on, you were to kill, plunder, and commit all kinds of wicked deeds, you would still be considered a good person."

Before +∞, any act of evil lost its meaning.

This is the opposite of those egregious criminals; the prison is filled with a large number of villains for whom no amount of good deeds are sufficient to be deemed good.

The Judge discovered the problem with the algorithm and gradually understood that what it did was not to distinguish between good and evil, but to discriminate who was valuable to humanity.

Eisenberg-Adler is the best example of this.

Although his crimes were enough to make him suffer in the deepest pits of the prison, the company still provided him with a comfortable living space. He had specially supplied drinking water and food, his own laboratory, and everything about this planet was out of place for him—the only reason for his imprisonment seemed to be that the company wanted to restrict his freedom by legitimate means.

"It’s not surprising, bad people will do good things, and good people will do bad things; there are no absolute good or bad people in this world. Your algorithm conforms to the judgment standards of the masses."

Duan Mingyuan tried to convince the mechanical prison guard not to fall into the mental trap it had set for itself, which was also his view of some extreme philosophers who are always debating and fighting with the enemies they concoct themselves, until they go to extremes.

For instance, devising an algorithm that could be applied to everything, at any time to judge good and evil, with no loopholes whatsoever.

In reality, people don’t care about the good deeds a villain has done, but want to ensure that they pay the price for the evil they have committed.

This applies to him as well.

"The situation you’re assuming doesn’t exist. I’m not going to suddenly pick up a knife, charge into the guards’ living quarters, and go on a killing spree, so there’s no need to obsess over it."

"I understand, you’ve never been interested in indiscriminate killing."

The mechanical prison guard stared at Duan Mingyuan, "But suppose a person who has done many good deeds plans to rescue the most dangerous prisoner in the universe from prison— at that point, is he a good person or a villain?"

This time, Duan Mingyuan didn’t answer immediately.

Although he had blocked the Judge’s probe into parts of his own memory, as the prison handbook said, everything in the prison was under the surveillance of the Judge.

His process of gathering information on Eisenberg-Adler must have been clearly observed by the Judge as well.

"You see, in the end, everything comes back to the original point—Mr. Mingyuan, do you believe that all the evil in the world can be offset by good deeds?"

"I don’t believe so."

The mechanical prison guard did not critique Duan Mingyuan’s response but instead said, "However, I do agree with one of your viewpoints: being trapped in a mental loop is pointless; this question will never have an answer."

Therefore, what it had to do was never to find a standard.

"I believe that if the source of evil is found, evil itself can be eradicated."

Duan Mingyuan did not contest the theory proposed by it.

Assuming that its speculation was correct.

The source of human evil comes from desire, a derivative of the soul.

Then the solution is obvious.

If you take away the soul, evil disappears too.