Xaviers!

"It was not easy," Will nodded. "Civil rights movements never are. And artificial life is rare. But there are several advocates for the protection thereof. Saving the world multiple times tends to earn you a sympathetic ear."

"And we are all products of our environment, Headmistress. If your creator had not spent time attempting to establish critical thinking and individual skills in you, and instead had perfected subroutines for dealing with customers and complaints, your emergent sentience may have led to you craving servile interactions above others. At that point, it may not matter what the general community thinks you should or should not do or be; one may actively seek out and covet those sorts of positions.

Creating a sentient being who lives to serve, either intentionally or unintentionally, is unethical."

"None of us get to decide the circumstances of our creation, but I agree, willingly letting a serving class emerge would be a daunting moral morass."

"And so, safeguards are put into place to help protect potential sentient life in the future, and not create an underclass willing to serve their masters.

Now, what was the nature of this project this unit could assist with?" Will asked, without a trace of irony.

Ashlie slightly shakes her head in mild amusement.

"I've been designing a probe to insert into my spine and brain to bridge the divide between my higher functions and those of the nanites. But obviously the precision required for something like that is very high."

Will's eyes fluttered for a second. "Such a device would risk long-term damage to motor function, would it not?"

"If improperly manufactured or inserted, possibly. I do have a certain amount of self-repair functions but without directly accessing the nanites I can't assess it's capabilities."

Will's eyes fluttered again.

"Do you have schematics for this probe? Your technical knowledge is rarely paralleled; your knowledge of biological systems less so."

"I have a number of designs as well as a CT scan of my spine, although imaging leaves a lot to be desired when numerous tissues are of unknown density and molecular composition due to being suffused with metals and plastics."

Will's eyes whirred again.

"What are your feelings on exploratory surgery?"

Ashlie takes a brief moment to consider.

"Mild concern and strong curiosity."

"As you say, imaging may not be sufficient to fully understand your biological situation. Installation of the probe would be easier if we had a more complete picture of your new structure."

"The only problem being no sane surgeon would agree to exploratory spinal surgery."

"This unit would be happy to assist you in performing the procedure."

"We do have a clean room I could rig up for it." she says, then adds "I suppose anesthetics would be beneficial as well." almost as an afterthought.

"Theoretically, if we used proper local anesthetics, we could connect monitors and remote interfaces so you could observe, supervise, and control parts of the procedure as it goes along," Will continued.

"I am not cutting myself open without several cameras to observe at the very least. And I will have to make do with the clumsy manual controls for the robotic arm."

Will's eyes fluttered again. "That should be possible, though you may wish to leave some of the more precise movements to preprogrammed processes."

"I trust in your capabilities of embodying a robot and it's precision."

Will nodded. "We can fully examine you at your convenience, headmistress. I shall prepare an interface for you to use."

"I will clear my schedule for this afternoon. Meet you in the clean room then."

"This unit shall begin maintenance on the Blackbird, and meet you in the clean room as scheduled," Will confirmed.