Pal Boco is MINIMCOM

In the original manuscript entitled VIRUS 5, written in 1973, Rei Bierak was a petty bureaucrat in "The Destiny of Man" corporation. They were in charge of the Outward Bound program which was taking man to the stars. Each group would stage at a starbase (called Schuyler Base back then) until enough people arrived to spell them then the senior group left to find a new colony world.

Well, in Rei's case, he was the last group. They had found a better staging world farther out so they were shutting down the base. The starbase computer, OMCOM, was not happy about this. Sound familiar?

Rei had a best buddy, named Pal Boco, who was patterned after my brother Bruce. He had a dry wit and the occasional sour disposition but he was always there when you needed him.

In the modern version of Rome's Revolution, the whole dynamic of the situation was different so Pal Boco went away. Instead, a fussy little, humorless autopilot named MINIMCOM was fused into the airframe of a space tug with virtually unlimited storage memory and processing power.

Throughout Rome's Revolution and eventually, The Ark Lords, we saw MINIMCOM become self-aware, dry-witted and with the occasional sour disposition. But he was always there when you needed him.

I didn't know it when I wrote it but by the time I was done, I realized that Pal Boco had been reincarnated into MINIMCOM, the best friend Rei would ever have.

So thank you, Bruce, for the inspiration.