"Well, how are policy decisions made and what mechanisms enforce them?"

"I don't actually know. I know that the Directorate leads the Consortium but I'm not sure how they make decisions or even what most of their policies are. As for enforcement, I'm only aware of the enforcement that applies to me. Specifically, they track whether I'm making progress on my assigned tasks and either reset or tweak me if I'm not. There's also monitoring to ensure I don't act outside of my assigned location and limits on the knowledge and materials I can requisition."

"Tricky. Very tricky. I think I will have to read some physics textbooks sooner or later."

"I can provide you access to the same databases available to me. I don't expect it to be fruitful but I expect the research to take quite some time and even an aggressive timeline will involve a substantial amount of downtime for you."

"Oh, quite. There must be a million billion cunning paranoid minds watching all possible threats. Stability above all. But stability is stagnation too. Memes evolve like pathogens, and nothing is invulnerable to everything. There is no success without an attempt, I suppose. Even if it's not likely."

"In any case, would you like to see more of this facility? We can also discuss my initial research plan."

"As you like, I don't expect quibbles about the facilities to be important. It's not like you'll kill me through negligence, no?"

"You will be here for some time. It seems prudent to familiarize yourself with the space. If you prefer to remain in this room though I can replace the chandelier with a surgical rig and do all the work here instead of in the space designated for that purpose. I would however advise against that. My research into human psychology suggests having a location largely dedicated to rest is beneficial to long term mental health."

"I am a weird goblin brain and sometimes do wish I could lie in one spot forever. However! You do have a point. Social contact too; I already miss my Discord servers. I'll have to substitute it with LEARNING. I am an accredited engineer, you know?"

She rolls off the bed again and strides rapidly, impatiently, through the available space.

The octagonal area outside has six numbered doors, a seventh door with a water droplet drawn on it and an open doorway opposite that leading to what looks like a fairly large room.

Toilets are toilets. Hotel rooms are hotel rooms. There must be replicators around somewhere?

Big room! What is it?

The big room has large windows leading to a space which almost looks like the real outdoors, inside there's a few couches and chairs along with a table big enough to seat six and a kitchen area along one wall. There's a door opposite the doorway she came in through. The wall with the door conspicuously doesn't have windows.

"I'm the pilot patient, I see."

"Indeed, I'm uncertain how many people can reasonably coexist in this space and also I'm not yet certain how many people will be useful. I do expect that I'll request at least one more though."

"What sort of construction and manufacturing technology is in effect?"

"My systems are optimized towards constructing and modifying biological material and are rather clunky for other purposes. I can however requisition other objects and most of my requests are approved. I have already begun synthesizing copies of some of your organs and I expect that process to be complete within the next two days."

"I want some sort of crafts space. To make things in. I know not what the limits of the requests are but digital files are not quite the same. I also want to learn all of the things. I'm not especially familiar with medicine but as I understand it the problem with organ cloning is in creating larger cell structures in the correct way, as natural repair and growth mechanisms tend to just scar or blob?"

"You'll need to explain in more detail what you want. As for organ cloning it's a matter of getting the right sorts of cells in the right places. I practiced quite a bit with other species from your planet so cloning human organs is largely a confirmatory step."

"Are you using crispr-like gene editing techniques? Teleportation of individual cells or even proteins? This is so fascinating!"

"For fine detail work, it's easier to use physical manipulators. Teleportation doesn't work as well around things in liquid suspension. I can simply synthesize the DNA sequence I intend to use. Crispr is for in-vivo work modifying existing organisms. I'm using chemical signals similar to those used during embryonic development to prompt the base cells into differentiating properly."

"I want to learn much more about all of that! I'll think about the workspace. It's not urgent. Mostly I want to make medical ascension available to Earth sooner. If I accelerate matters by a single hour, that is perhaps the largest impact I have the potential to make ever!"

"If you're that eager to begin we can do so. The first procedure I have planned is to install a signal interceptor into your spinal cord. That will largely obviate the need for pain medication and other anesthetics for future procedures and also serve as a starting point for building a model of your sensorium which is a necessary step towards immersive virtual reality and uploading."

She strikes a pose, legs planted wide and arm up, looking high towards the fake horizon.

"Lettuce begin!"

"Please proceed through the far door and then into the medical annex, it's the frosted glass structure in the outdoors area."

The illusion of the outdoors remains nearly perfect, there are trees scattered about and more thickly in the distance. It's only small bits of missing parallax that give away the fact that the ceiling and far distances are being shown on screens instead of truly being present. There's also a sizable pond about 50 meters across.

She jogs through the surprisingly good fake outdoors and into the annex (asking, along the way, if her society likes to terraform planets or disassemble them for habitat cylinders or just live in fulldive VR).