MCP

The Master Control Program (MCP) is the program running on the mainframe used by Nicolae Carpatescu to allow worldwide cashless transactions to take place in a way that remains under Global Community control. At first, participation is voluntary, but then becomes mandatory and requires a biochip to transact.

It is housed in the basement of the Burj Carpathia and, as a secondary function, controls its media system, litghting ,and security.

The MCP is not a true artificial intelligence, but has been continually improved and expanded with great skill and attention by programmers over 40 years, under the direction of Jonathan Stonagal. It has the ability to subsume the function of other programs into its framework. The last programmer in charge of the project was David Hassid.

During the MCP crisis, the hardware is left intact, but the software is prevented from performing any advanced function thanks to a direct access memory hack. The system is left in maintenance mode under the care of Lars Rahlmost.

It is a reference to ENCOM's primary operating system in the movie TRON, which is itself a reference to the Burroughs operating system of the same name.