Dalmasian Cross

Born: 1016, Newton's World
Died: 955, "lab accident"

Dalmasian Cross was expelled from school at the age of 14, after a mistake in a basic programming class left the school's computers inserting obscenities into any document which referenced a certain teacher's name. His peers at the time said this dropout would never amount to anything beyond practical jokes - although it did take the council's best hackers the best part of a year to fix his little prank.

His detractors were proved dramatically wrong in 1001, when Cross borrowed money from Garry Norvegian, a friend he had met at a betting shop, to found a small electronics company. Within a year, he had made his first million, and the company (now known as Norvegian Cross Industrial Systems) was well on its way to market leader status.

As business boomed, however, Cross himself grew increasingly eccentric. In 988 he moved to Whence, and within a month married local farmer's daughter Phyllian Gestranger. Their daughter was born two years later, but the couple inexplicably chose not to pass on their family names, and gave their daughter the undignified name Dog One. Some neighbours at this time voiced concerns, saying that Cross was forcing his family to follow some unknown cult against their will, possibly some perverse digitalist variation. A second child was expected almost immediately, but Phyllian died in childbirth, and Cross then locked himself away in the top level of his house. Dog One was effectively adopted and brought up by sympathetic neighbours.

In 980, Cross moved to Calibre City, where he was able to gain a university professorship on the strength of some minor discoveries he had made during his period of self-imposed exile. He became quite popular, showing a distinctive genius for certain types of computer programming as well as android design, and transferred twice to more prestigious universities, before in 971 he finally joined the robotic surgery research team at the elite Shaft Medical Academy. While here, he is believed to have worked with Daymien Andriel on prototypes of what would later become the AndrOS system.

Cross descended further into insanity, experimenting with a system which, he believed, would allow humans to transcend death by transplanting a human brain into a robot body. When this secret project was discovered, university officials accompanied by theocratic agents forced entry to Cross's lab, intending to seize his equipment and destroy all notes on this heretical research. However, they were shocked to discover Cross in the process of attempting this extremely dangerous surgery on himself in order to validate his theories.

Needless to say, the experiment failed. Cross died for his research, and all traces of what he had been attempting were erased from the public record. For the sake of his daughter (now herself a student at the university under the assumed name Mykaella Greenwood) and his company's reputation, the news reported only that he had died in an unfortunate accident.

Few know now - and nobody knows why - that Cross's coffin contained his brain (dead, we are sure) within his ideal robot body.