MINIMCOM's Expedient Port

When I first started writing Rome's Revolution, I was very hesitant to try anything outlandish. While I write science fiction, I tried to make everything completely and utterly believable, sometimes to the detriment of the plot. When I got to The Ark Lords, I decided I would be a little bit bolder and stretch the truth farther to make the story move along more quickly.

One such example was the induction of Rome's information sources into her newly acquired Library OMCOM. She had Trabunel's journal which OMCOM scanned and ingested using optical character recognition. That didn't seem like something hard for you, the reader, to swallow. But then I came to the Deucadon's memory stick. I decided to just allow MINIMCOM to have a universal reader which could adapt to any electronic source. Here it is in context:

     “Let’s try to download the Deucadon data next,” Rome continued. She watched as MINIMCOM adapted his normal Vuduri device reader to the form factor of the Deucadon memory stick. According to Bukky, the Deucadon’s information was mainly in the form of digitally compressed documents. It only took MINIMCOM a few minutes to determine the proper contact heads for connecting to the data device and perform a test download.
     “Interface complete,” MINIMCOM announced through the grille. “OMCOM, are you ready for download?”
     “Yes,” replied the computer from 700 meters below the surface. “I have prepared a segregated ‘holding tank’ to store the raw data. I will organize and cross-reference after download is complete. Proceed.”
     “Engaging,” MINIMCOM replied. Rome watched, enthralled, as screen after screen of data flashed by and was transmitted to OMCOM’s data storage facility, over half a kilometer under the surface.
     “I am impressed,” OMCOM said. “The Deucadons storage density is at least an order of magnitude greater than the Vuduri standard. That is how they are able to maintain such a small form factor. Also, they were very thorough in their organization. They have built in a categorization and cross-referencing system into the data structure itself.”
     Rome sat back and watched as the tremendous quantity of data contained in the stick flowed down to OMCOM. Eventually, the items flashing by on the screen stopped.
     “That is all,” OMCOM said. “I have received the entire contents of the data device.”
     “I think your idea to adapt MINIMCOM’s data reader was an excellent one,” Rome remarked. “It saved me a lot of time not having to build one which would have only been used once.”
     “Yes, this is far more efficient,” OMCOM replied through the grille. “MINIMCOM’s mutable structures allow for adaptation. If I had to build you the reader, it would have to be built out of physical materials using trial and error.”

You didn't have any trouble buying that, did you? You can see how now we can move along with the plot rather than get bogged down in schematics and circuit boards and algorithms and encoding. We'll save that for later, when it becomes plot-worthy.