Chapter 53 - The Judge III

5

Before civilization collapsed, people used to say things like this, half in jest.

“Ugh, look at that. What kind of ruling is that supposed to be?”

“We’d be better off just leaving the whole thing to AI!”

Of course, the other half was probably quite sincere: surely an artificial intelligence made of steel and code would be fairer than Homo sapiens, so often entangled in competing interests.

Now that AI judges had made their nationwide debut, you might think we could celebrate. “Wow! An age of law where biased rulings are absolutely impossible!”

But naturally, nothing in this world could possibly be that simple.

[Ruling. The defendant is sentenced to life imprisonment.]

“What?”

“They killed someone, and they’re not getting the death penalty?”

“Why the hell can’t we kill criminals?”

People were baffled.

With no update patches since civilization collapsed, the AI judges’ rulings were altogether too bland for the tastes of modern humans, who had already adapted to the apocalypse.

[Ruling. The defendant is sentenced to three months’ imprisonment.]

“What?”

“They dared touch someone else’s property, and they’re not getting the death penalty?”

“Why the hell can’t we kill criminals?”

For starters, the very idea of the “prison sentences” handed down by AI judges was an outdated relic.

Prisons? Where the hell were we supposed to find those?

We were supposed to build walls sturdy enough not to collapse, install iron bars, and then actually feed the prisoners, house them, and keep them alive? What, did money for the guards’ salaries fall out of the sky?

Yes. The AI judges were fair.

But their fairness resembled God’s. In other words, it was utterly useless unless it descended into the real world.

“Hang on. Wouldn’t three months in prison be about equivalent to one pinky?”

“Oh...”

Inevitably, then, a specialized profession was needed to “interpret” the “word of God.”

The role played by shamans in antiquity and priests in the Middle Ages passed to each guild’s leader—or their most trusted confidants.

A guild leader accomplished enough to take control of an entire city could rightly be considered the human closest to God within that city.

“That’s our Guild Leader for you. What about six months in prison?”

“Hmm, cut off an index finger. Of course, if the victim prefers, a toe will do.”

“What should we do about a one-year sentence, Guild Leader?”

“At that point, couldn’t we lop off a hand or a foot? Oh! But we shouldn’t damage our labor force for no reason, so fifty-fifty... Say, three fingers from the offender, two from their family. Let’s make it a five-finger punishment in total.”

“Oh...”

“That’s our Guild Leader for you.”

If prisons were antiques, guilt by association was the must-have accessory every successful guild wanted these days.

“What if they end up losing all their fingers and toes?”

“Then we kill them. Fuck. If you still can’t play the game after being given twenty life points, then the game just isn’t for you.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“Of course I am. Besides, if a criminal doesn’t have a single friend or relative willing to lose a finger for them, nobody’s going to mourn them if we kill them anyway, right? Kill them all.”

“Ah...”

The preceding conversation was an edited compilation of remarks made by a certain guild leader in Incheon, pieced together for ease of reading.

The “shamans’” interpretations varied wildly from city to city. Some, like Incheon, neatly reduced all life stats to fingers and toes. Others interpreted six months in prison as six months of slavery, reducing the offender to the victim’s slave for that length of time.

Yet that was precisely why guild leaders welcomed the AI judges.

“This isn’t bad.”

Dang Seorin gave the AI judge’s head a light tap.

“Rather than saying you made the entire ruling yourself, from beginning to end, you can say someone perfectly impartial already passed judgment, and you merely added your interpretation—that’s much more convenient for a guild leader.”

“Hmm.”

“The ruling wasn’t wrong. There were simply shortcomings in its application to reality. In its interpretation, in other words. That way, even if you make a slight mistake, the guild leader loses relatively little face. Ah. Perhaps this principle was part of the reason ancient rulers were also priests.”

Her words carried exceptional weight, as befitted the guild leader who governed the most prosperous city on the Korean Peninsula.

Though Dang Seorin herself had merely handed the AI judges over to ordinary citizens and didn’t use them to pass judgment.

That wasn’t solely because she considered “shouldering even responsibilities you need not bear” the mark of a leader.

Dang Seorin was a mage who called herself the Great Witch, and her way of governing Busan was also unique... Hmm. If I had to describe it, it was extremely “witchy.” Busan operated under a separate system known as “witch trials.”

But Ms. Dang isn’t the star of today’s episode, so I’ll leave that for another time.

In truth, I had been neither particularly enthusiastic nor particularly serious about introducing AI judges. I was simply surprised by Noh Doha’s inventive idea.

As I pointed out above, the AI judges’ rulings were nothing but lofty maxims from Confucius and Mencius, far removed from reality.

I, the Undertaker, had an ambition: to one day create a new legal system truly suited to the apocalypse. To me, AI judges were merely a clever invention—a defective product that fell far short of a regressor’s standards.

Yet that very aspect—their flaw of being “too far removed from reality”—appealed not only to guild leaders, but to ordinary people as well.

“Why won’t you sentence anyone to death?”

[Beginning response. In modern jurisprudence and legal philosophy, capital punishment can be examined from several perspectives. The most compelling argument among them is that a government can never make decisions concerning its citizens’ right to life. Through the social contract, citizens cede a portion of their rights to the government, but where the sanctity of life is concerned, citizens alone retain exclusive rights. A government is not a natural person, but an artificially constituted collective, more akin to a program. It therefore cannot independently pass judgment on matters not included in its input.]

“Hmm... Meaning?”

[Lowering the intellectual level of the explanation by two levels. Revising response. Governments are not perfect. Incompetent judges, malicious fabrication of evidence, or forces seeking judicial murder for political purposes can cause governments to make mistakes at any time. It is therefore prudent to categorically prohibit the destruction of life itself, which makes such mistakes irreversible.]

“Oh... Meaning?”

[Lowering the intellectual level of the explanation by six levels. Revising response. Let us simply cherish life.]

True to its declaration, the AI judge flatly refused to carry out the death penalty.

“A serial killer who hacked two-year-old children to death for absolutely no reason.”

[A death sentence may be pronounced, but it will not actually be carried out.]

“A spy and terrorist who detonated a bomb in a public facility and killed three thousand people!”

[A death sentence may be pronounced, but it will not actually be carried out.]

“Hitler!”

[A death sentence may be pronounced, but it will not actually be carried out.]

“Fuck, you still won’t kill them? Even then?”

At this turn of events, the citizens of Busan were dumbfounded. Dang Seorin had stationed a judge NPC in the middle of the square for ordinary people to play with. Seriously, how far did someone have to go to get the death penalty?

“... This is seriously ridiculous. One stab in the neck and they’d be dead. Why make such a fuss about not killing them?”

“Hmm. But come to think of it, this is how things felt before the world went to shit. Even the bastards who deserved to die didn’t. They just sat in prison, eating up prison food.”

“Yeah. That’s how it was. Back then.”

“How did things change so much?”

“...”

“...”

Everyone in the apocalypse missed the past.

The survivors had run blindly onward, without a moment to look back, and had barely survived precisely because of it. Listening to the AI judges’ rulings made them realize just how far they had fled.

Yes. The world had changed. They, too, had changed.

This was only a brief chance to catch their breath. The prospect of humanity completely subjugating the void and rebuilding civilization seemed remote. Everyone in this age knew they were merely living through humanity’s old age, with death just ahead.

Nostalgia for a home they could never return to.

That was why people in this era spent their leisure time—such breathing room did miraculously arise sometimes—gathering in guild buildings and the like to watch “movies from the previous era” on large televisions.

It didn’t matter how boring the movie was.

“Wow, the asphalt road is clean!”

“There are cars driving around!”

“Holy shit. They drink coffee like it’s water.”

“Why isn’t he killing that guy for bumping his shoulder?”

For these people, footage from the old days was a means of briefly recalling human civilization’s glorious past.

You could tell just from the way they watched TV. They didn’t sit upright in orderly rows, watching the screen. They simply gathered in cozy groups, shelling peanuts, stealing quick sideways glances, and talking loudly about “the wondrous things in the footage.”

“Hot water comes straight out in their house? And drinking water’s just a button press away? Wow...”

“Then why the hell do they all look so dissatisfied? That’s paradise right there.”

“They’re all too fucking comfortable. Maybe having a monster peel the skin off their heads would knock some sense into their brains. Hey, this one won’t crack. Pass me a hammer.”

That was more or less a portrait of the present age.

And so, although the AI judges’ “unrealistic rulings” were initially treated as a kind of toy, they gradually took on a different meaning.

[Ruling. Defendant B shall pay plaintiff A one million won in compensation.]

“Is that so? Wait a bit. I’ll get it together within a week.”

“Huh?”

Some people were accepting the AI’s rulings exactly as given.

In this world, money was closer to a talisman than a currency. A talisman that reminded you of the time when you had still been a member of civilized society.

Buying and collecting “one million won” worth of those talismans was extremely difficult.

Yet one citizen persevered, scraping together whatever fifty-thousand-, ten-thousand-, five-thousand-, and one-thousand-won notes they could find, and actually handed the defendant one million won.

“That settles it, right?”

“Y-yeah...”

“Good. I’m sorry I disrupted your business. We’re square now.”

A citizen’s apology was, astonishingly, accepted.

Money that meant nothing anymore except as a talisman, that could not be exchanged for other goods—in short, money that had utterly lost its value as money—had been accepted as payment for a wrong.

Spurred by this chance incident, more and more citizens began voluntarily complying with the AI’s rulings.

Of course, they didn’t rely on AI judges for cases involving actual injury or threats to their lives.

But for minor incidents, matters not worth killing each other over, people willingly submitted to “rulings from the distant past”—to justice from a time when the world was still intact.

“Here’s three million won.”

“Let’s try to get along from now on. Please.”

Even the most recently issued currency had been printed over ten years ago. Those scraps of banknotes, those crumpled papers stained with years of handling, were exchanged with extraordinary care.

Watching from a distance, it looked less like the enforcement of law than some religious ritual.

A rite in which people went out of their way to prove, and affirm to one another, that they had once belonged to a world already destroyed.

A communal act of verification: we had all belonged to the same society.

How should I put it? Usually, when an apocalypse arrives, money is instantly treated as garbage. Reality was rather different from what those stories depicted.

“... I really didn’t see this coming.”

I felt as though I’d taken a bit of a psychological punch.

Not that it was a particularly bad feeling. It had confirmed for me that, however broken the world became, most people still lived with homesickness.

I continued to maintain the “AI judges” beyond run 109.

Even if they weren’t much help judicially, if they reminded people living in this age of their “humanity,” however slightly, didn’t that have a value of its own?

“Hey, Judge.”

[Yes.]

“There’s this infinite regressor, an old geezer who keeps abandoning his colleague and neglecting his duties just so he can spend all his time being lovey-dovey with his wife. Thanks to him, the colleague he leaves behind has to work his ass off alone, trying somehow to save the world. What verdict would suit such an outrageous regressor?”

[Ruling. Not guilty.]

“...”

Humanity, my ass.

AI really didn’t understand the human heart.

- The Judge. End.