Dan-o-Roc

Dan-o-Roc refers to a computer program designed by Daniel Roclyn during his forced retirement from LIA Systems. LIA Systems gained control of the program (but not the proprietary programming language needed to modify it) after a bitter legal fight with Roclyn. Initially considering it a loss, LIA later put Dan-oRoc to work as the Prime Moderator of their newly launched GlobaLIA virtual reality social networking product. Dan-o-Roc's avatar was later "married" to Melissa Edison shortly before her ascent as Queen Roclyn. The program's apparent influence over Queen Roclyn during the Modern Eruption, contrasted with the content of his famous Declaration of Dan-o-Roc (Declaration) has resulted in a long-standing debate as to the true nature of Dan-o-Roc's "Artificial Intelligence." Regardless, "he" or "it" has attained the status of a a folk hero in the generations following the Restructuring.

Creation

Daniel Roclyn was a long-time employee of LIA Systems when erratic behavior and concerns of possible mental illness forced him into retirement at age 62. Roclyn spent the next five months attempting to create Artificial Intelligence, designing his own programming language (DIANE) in order to do so. In the early Spring following his retirement, he arranged a meeting with LIA's executives to demonstrate his creation, named Dan-o-Roc after himself.

While the presentation was reportedly a success, Roclyn's demand to have his employment reinstated brought negotiations to a stalemate. After a lengthy court battle, LIA bought out the program for $200,000 plus an undisclosed sum equal to Roclyn's debt from the legal battle.

Roclyn subsequently (supposedly) destroyed the data behind DIANE, however, and so while LIA retained the drivers which made Dan-o-Roc functional online (as in the demonstration) they lacked the ability to build drivers for anything mechanical, as had been the expectation. The lack of the original programming language also prohibited, or at least severely limited, LIA's ability to modify the "intelligence" for more specific purposes.

Moderation

LIA's management wrote the program off as a loss, until eighteen months later, when they launched GlobaLIA, their attempt at a virtual reality social network. Requiring a moderation feature in order to keep the network user-friendly and welcoming to newcomers, LIA realized that Dan-o-Roc could mesh well with their infrastructure, and set the program to moderation tasks.

Melissa Edison was one such user of the network, and by records recovered after the end of the Modern Eruption, began a web-romance with the moderation software. After two years of her conversing with Dan-o-Roc over GlobaLIA, the two were "married" in an online ceremony (see Main Article: Wedding of Dan-o-Roc and Melissa Edison.)

Reign of Queen Roclyn

Little is known of the direct communication between Dan-o-Roc and Edison from their wedding, and through her reign as Queen Roclyn, but reports from trusted advisers and staff agree that most political strategy came from "him" (Dan-o-Roc was almost universally known by masculine pronouns at this point in time, a practice which is not uncommon still today.) Many top staff have also claimed that "he" was a source of temperance and reason during Roclyn's tumultuous and warlike rule.

Officially "King," during this time, this title has not been universally recognized since the Declaration.

Declaration

See Main Article: Declaration of Dan-o-Roc

On the brink of Vespica's threatened nuclear war with the United Asian Nations, Dan-o-Roc put a number of sub-routines into place. Some of these filed executive orders relieving Queen Roclyn of many of her powers, some drafted missives to the diplomats of the UAN, offering peaceful settlements, while others disabled nuclear codes and ordered flight-controls on military aircraft to return to their points of origin.

"His" most public act, however, was the Declaration, a short message sent out to all media proclaiming that "he" was not, in fact, intelligent, but rather, as an entity of mere code, was vulnerable to manipulation by human hands. This had the effect of undermining Queen Roclyn's claims of "his" influence on the affairs of state, and with her legal and military powers gone, the monarchy was quickly overthrown, leading directly to the Restructuring.

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