"It's possible that with enough parts I could construct myself something that would be possible to back up to, and then if there is ever a future opportunity to find the rest of me the thread can be reintegrated posthumously."

"Enough parts of what?"

"Electronics and computer parts. I am not sure I can reconstruct the tech tree from earlier than that."

"Those exist at our tech level.  They're expensive, but almost everyone in our birthday-set will want you to be okay once they know about you, so there's a lot of money that could go towards buying them.  I don't know whether trying to get enough parts would be faster or more likely to help in the short term than medical interventions to try and keep this ancillary okay."

"In the short term this is young and healthy so if the food is safe I expect this to be fine for a while. However I am not sure there are prospects for finding the rest of me or the universe I am from, or vice versa, so probably I should gear the tech development toward creating a substrate I can live on in addition to this."

"The thing that concerns us most right now is what we can do if the food isn't safe.  If you're satisfied with the plan of taking you to the emergency room for crystal healing at the first sign of you feeling sick, then we can talk about broader plans.  But we were trying to find out if you'd thought of anything that might have a better chance of saving you in the immediate short term if something does go wrong."

"I can induce vomiting if it seems called for!"

"Okay.  And then we'll hopefully figure out another way to feed you."

"I might be able to synthesize some basic nutrients with a sufficient lab setup but I do not know if you have the things I expect labs to have."

"Do you expect it to make a crucial difference to the timing if we get you started on that now versus after you start displaying symptoms?"

"No."

"Okay.  What were you guys talking about before?"

"Clones!"

"Right!  I wonder what would happen if someone used your kind of architectures on people of different birthdays, here...  I suppose they might not work at all, if the way genetic codes function is already so different."

"I do not think the genetically encoded personality traits of my ancillaries matter at all."

"Were the architectures implanted before or after the ancillaries were decanted?"

"Before! Otherwise they might have woken up separately and that would be very upsetting."

"Then I guess those might also prevent that day's soul from attaching!"

"Not that we'd bet on it.  With current information."

"Of course."

"I guess I should not try to make any new ancillaries here. This will probably last long enough for me to build some hardware."

"We sure hope so.  What can we do to help you with that?"

"Can I go to an electronics store?"