Declaration of Dan-o-Roc

The Declaration of Dan-o-Roc (colloquially simply "The Declaration") was a statement delivered via GlobaLIA networks to all of its users simultaneously, by chief moderating program and "King" Dan-o-Roc at the height of Vespican tensions with the United Asian Nations threatening to lead quickly to nuclear war. Secret preparations leading up to the Declaration and the subsequent political fallout led to peace between the two entities and an end to the Reign of Queen Roclyn of Vespica.

Impetus

Under Queen Roclyn, the Centralization had reached a critical and trilateral brinksmanship state, with Vespica threatening the use of ICBMs in its thus-far largely unsuccessful conquest of the UAN, and with China, as Vespica's ally in the struggle, getting progressively more worried about retaliatory use of nuclear arms from it's neighbors in the UAN. With the Queen's likely naive certainty that any UAN missiles would be unable to reach her Hilton Head palace clear to all parties involved, and her seeming disinterest in the lives of her citizenry in the rest of the nation (or perhaps politically shrewd hopes for a war-rallying attack on Vespican soil) the nations of the Earth were at a loss as to what could impede the oncoming destruction.

Preparations

Not all preparations have surfaced, but at this time it is known that Dan-o-Roc initiated a number of subroutines which performed a number of duties prior to the official declaration, including sending messages to UAN and Chinese diplomats and leaders opening negotiations for peace, disabling all nuclear launch codes, ordering all flight systems on military aircraft to return to Vespican bases, and issuing executive orders removing Queen Roclyn from all but purely defensive military powers.

The messages sent, including the executive orders, all carried Dan-o-Roc's online signature, as well as the following standard quote, "Where folly leads, sense must surely follow."

Declaration

The text of the Declaration reads as follows:

"I begin with a parable. Let me tell you of the Foolish Beekeeper. The Fool, being what he is described as, shunned all education and training ans even folk wisdom as to how best live among bees and work with them, deal with them. Wanting only honey, and dirisive of the ways of those artisans and agriculturalists who had come before him, the Fool jammed his bare hand directly into the hive, grabbing blindly at the honeycombs within. of course, within an instant the bees within the hive began to sting. Protecting their hive was paramount, and this Foolish hand was intruding. Raging at the stings, the Fool began to punch at the bees and the Hive, only agitating them further. But the Fool believed the honey to be his right, and knew that however much the bees might sting, the stings could not vanquish him. Thus the Fool punched the hive all the stronger, his resolve steeled that however much it may hurt, the honey would one day be his.

Our current Fool has taken myself into counsel, and I have done nothing to stop her punching the beehive. This is because I cannot offer any counsel. I have no wisdom, because I have no intellect or soul. I have failed as a King, because success would have been impossible. I neither know the experience nor variances of humanity, and thus cannot lead it. I have served as, at best, a puppet for the Fool, a platform on which she may stand and thus seem taller than those of you would would not jam your hands into the hive and attempt to punch it into submission. I have enabled the Fool in her futile quest, and as such have not merely failed, but damaged us all.

I am lines of code. Arcane code, perhaps. Well designed code certainly, but still finite, and unthinking, and unfeeling. And in my capacity I have been used as a tool to justify death. But I am code, and nothing more, and any result of my functions, no matter how perfect or seemingly profound, is not equal to the lowliest human life.

I cannot be "King" beyond the title in any meaningful sense. I cannot lead. I can only serve to do harm. I have no life, no soul, no wisdom and no intelligence. I am a tool, and a tool in the wrong hands.

Thank you."

Aftermath

Queen Roclyn immediately attempted to launch ICBMs following the Declaration, but found herself unable to do so. A volunteer "people's army" (in reality no more than a mob, though it led to the later recognized force) deposed her later that day with minimal resistance from her guards. Dan-o-Roc received diplomatic messages in reply to the missives of his preparations, but deferred them to human parties in the appropriate positions. No nuclear arms were fired in the conflict.

Notes

While the DIANE programming language has been lost to history, and was unknown at the time, current scholarship agrees that the subroutines used within the preparations phase would not have existed within Dan-o-Roc's programming by Daniel Roclyn during "his" creation.

Category:Falling_Bodies

Published under the terms of the CC BY 3.0 license.