Dyson Principles

"Please accept my sincerest apologies," Doctor Schultz said as he helped Xiang Shan replace his arm with the new prosthetic. He kept apologizing. "I truly am sorry. My uncle, at the time... he didn't mean it that way. We are naturally very grateful to you, hero, but..."

"I understand." Xiang Shan gestured with his newly installed right hand, signaling Doctor Schultz not to continue. This hand had originally belonged to Blademan Longconi. Its specifications far surpassed the junk prosthetic he had used before. Its palm even contained an electromagnetic system that could interact with a blade hilt forged from magnetic materials, allowing sword techniques impossible with bare flesh.

Only after receiving an explanation did he understand what had happened to those townspeople.

They could not bear to witness the scene of a biological brain being directly destroyed. To them, such a criminal act was enough to trigger a stress response in itself.

Directly damaging a biological brain violated the Dyson Principles. Those who broke this taboo would lose civilization's protection and every human right available in this age. In a sense, it truly was a punishment more terrifying than the death penalty. Even death-row prisoners had basic human rights, ensuring that they would not suffer punishments beyond the death penalty itself—for instance, abuse.

But an individual who had lost civilization's protection could be subjected to anything.

At the same time, everyone in this era believed that the Father of All Machines watched every individual equally.

Expressed in nonreligious terms, it meant, "There is a supreme dictator capable of watching everyone through any person's visual prosthetics or surveillance system."

Although Longconi had already been attacking Xiang Shan when Xiang Shan destroyed his biological brain, Xiang Shan might have remained within the boundaries of not breaking the taboo.

But most townspeople had no ability to distinguish that in the heat of the moment. Even if, afterward, they could understand after thinking it over and hearing others explain it, at the moment the incident occurred, they had still felt intense fear.

Indeed, whether the act counted as taboo-breaking depended entirely on the mood of the local adjudicator.

Incidents falling into this area between "breaking the taboo" and "not breaking the taboo" could provoke intense fear in everyone. They were terribly afraid that they would draw the Father of All Machines' attention and punishment.

It did not merely "look like mass hysteria." It was this era's unique form of mass hysteria—Fear of Authority.

"There are no specific statutes, no precedents to cite as reference or supplement. Regulations that seem utterly free actually indulge tyrants' authority and power..." Xiang Shan lowered his head in thought. "What the hell are the Dyson Principles?"

He had already learned of the so-called Dyson Principles from Will Grand Dog's memories.

It could be said that the Dyson Principles were this era's only law, even its only morality. There were only six articles. One was even an "Article Zero" with no substantive content at all, and each article had only a few annotations. In this age, any act that did not violate the Dyson Principles was considered permitted.

Article Zero: All individuals who have not explicitly refused to abide by the Dyson Principles, or explicitly committed acts violating the Principles, shall by default be considered to abide by the Dyson Principles and receive civilization's protection. The Dyson Principles are the sole universal principles of human civilization. Any act that does not violate the Dyson Principles shall be permitted.

Article One: All humans have the duty to preserve human genetic diversity. Refusal of this duty shall automatically result in the loss of civilization's protection.

Article Two: It is forbidden to damage another person's biological brain.

Article Three: It is forbidden to manufacture, use, or sell addictive drugs.

Article Four: Private property exists and is protected.

Article Five: Organizations may be established only, and exclusively, in the form of one individual declaring allegiance to another individual.

Those were the only six articles.

"It sounds like something extreme libertarians and anarchists would love. Especially that last article... Is it meant to prevent a collective with a will of its own, something like a government, from emerging? People with that kind of political inclination..."

An image suddenly surfaced in Xiang Shan's mind... savages with faces like wild men. These people might not necessarily believe doomsday rumors like "2012." But they inexplicably worried about all kinds of catastrophes, refused to live their good lives, voluntarily abandoned the conveniences of modern civilization, and insisted on building all sorts of survival shelters. They generally distrusted others, liked forming small cliques, and were obsessively fond of talking about "survival."

To them, this was the expression of "free will."

Thinking of this, Xiang Shan felt as though a piece of his memory was missing. He seemed to remember... a period of wilderness survival... a green rainforest... and...

His memories truly were too incomplete. Even when he found a clue, he could not recall everything.

So-called "lords" were likewise not allowed to possess armies. Those who appeared to have highly uniform prosthetics were nominally free groups willing to follow the lord as an individual and employed by him personally. The officials under a lord were not systematic civil servants either, but the lord's personal assistants. A lord did not even nominally possess the authority to issue orders to the populace. He merely provided "civilization's protection," a person who morally "ought to eliminate bandits"—and even whether the bandits should be eliminated was the lord's own freedom.

—An order that existed in name only.

That was Xiang Shan's view of this era.

Apart from the Human Gene Bank personnel derived from Article One of the Dyson Principles, there was nothing in this era that could be called "order." Everything had regressed to...

The feudal age? The age of slavery?

No, it was different. The mark of modern technology had already been imprinted upon human civilization and deeply influenced this era. The tyrants of this age possessed technologies ancient despots never had. Therefore, even this chaotic tyranny of "freedom" could bind every person.

The strong had the freedom to ravage the weak at will. The weak theoretically also had the freedom to resist, but physical constraints made them unable to exercise that right.

This era appeared free, but some people were undoubtedly freer than others.

"And that is precisely why the light of chivalry will not be extinguished from the earth..." Xiang Shan thought.

Unfortunately, Will's memories of the knights ended there.

It was strange, really. Logically, someone who had lost all his memories and rashly absorbed another person's memories would almost certainly have his personality affected. Yet Xiang Shan now discovered that Will's memories had influenced his personality hardly at all. His way of thinking was no different from what was recorded. It seemed that the memories Xiang Shan had forgotten were even more vast than he had imagined, so vast that...

He did not know just how vast.

He must have been a man with quite a story.

This made Xiang Shan even more interested in memory storage devices. He now had several more memory storage devices in hand. Some came from the giant named Leif, while others came from Paulus and Longconi. Anthony's memory storage device had disappeared; someone had probably picked it up.

The townspeople recognized Xiang Shan's spoils as "Xiang Shan's private property." They did not dare touch them, so they gathered them all and delivered them to Xiang Shan. But Anthony had been killed by Leif, so someone had gotten greedy.

Xiang Shan could not be bothered to pursue the matter. Supposedly, Paulus, Longconi, and Anthony knew one another well and often interacted. Their understanding of this world likely overlapped considerably. None of those three had been particularly skilled martial artists, and Anthony had even been a Gunfire Way practitioner. Xiang Shan felt that he knew Gunfire Way martial arts as well, but he did not know how to handle firearms, so he had little interest in Anthony's Martial Arts Algorithm.

The only thing Xiang Shan found regrettable was that the memory storage device of the mysterious enemy who had appeared at the end had been completely burned and could not be recovered.

He was undoubtedly one of Leif's group, but Xiang Shan had no idea what he had come for.

In addition, those people's prosthetic bodies now belonged to Xiang Shan as well.

—I need to find time to absorb those memories too... At the very least, I need to know what the hell Greenwood Road is...

"...Hero? Hero?" Doctor Schultz's call interrupted Xiang Shan's thoughts.

"What is it?" Xiang Shan asked.

"Your left hand has already been installed," Doctor Schultz said cautiously.

Xiang Shan jumped down from the operating table and looked at his arms. These arms had originally belonged to that blademan. Their streamlined silver shells resembled works of art, utterly at odds with the crudely made external armor on his body. But there was no denying that they were excellent hands. The organic combination of classical power transmission and artificial muscle fibers made them unbelievably nimble.

Xiang Shan tentatively swung them in a few circles. An explosive roar rolled over Doctor Schultz's auditory system.

Doctor Schultz trembled as he looked at Xiang Shan. Xiang Shan was a full foot shorter than when he had visited his Household half a month ago. His legs had been replaced with artificial muscle structures and reverse joints. In this state, Xiang Shan's legs remained constantly "charged," able to exert force at any time and instantly accelerate into supersonic territory. Furthermore, after this adjustment to his center of gravity, Xiang Shan could more easily pitch forward and fight while lying prone on the ground.

His external armor was still the one forged in the village. It was covered in scars and probably would not withstand another battle of the same intensity.

His head, torso, arms, and legs seemed to have come from different eras and entirely different price ranges.

Xiang Shan muttered to himself, "If I'd had these hands this morning, I wouldn't have needed to sacrifice a prosthetic arm for leverage..."

"Oh, right, hero, there is one more matter..." Schultz said carefully. "Enoch, who betrayed us, has escaped, but his cronies did not have time to flee and were all captured by us. There is another matter my uncle believes you need to know..."