Lina wants to be a part of something

It took a while before Lina even made a movement, as she stared at you. You stared back, wondering if the nanites understood. Of everything contained within Project Inside Out, Lina was the only truly inorganic being, which meant an electronic intelligence. You weren't sure how exactly she would respond, since her development was still in progress as well as simply having a different way with logic than an organic being.

Still, eventually she seemed to process what you told her.

What do I need to do

The words flashed on the window in holographic text. That was all you needed. "Lina, some of the scientists are creating a protocol for your nanites. Those will allow you to interface with me, when I enter your chamber. Use that protocol on a small amount of nanites first to integrate with me, and then we will speak further afterward."

Lina seemed to only somewhat understand what the plan was. She didn't realize you were going to be the training set for a very new method of machine learning, via your own brain. You were essentially going to allow her to pull data from your head in order to rapidly improve her own mind, hopefully enhancing her ability to communicate.

"Got it!" One of the scientists yelled, as you stood up to see the results on their console. The image on their screen represented a nanite, immersed in a small droplet of slime, with its own small mechanical appendages still present outside the droplet. After a quick double-check on the validity of the design, results were uploaded to Lina, who shivered at the new information.

Dr. Avery eventually came over to escort you to a room, dark and isolated. "We would record this interaction between you and her, but Lina just 'eats' the cameras when she is on one of her little tantrum days. So try to keep a good mental record of what happens so we can add it to our notes."

You nodded, and were sealed in the room, mostly for the sake of the other scientists. Lina indeed was a very dangerous being, if she didn't understand much of the physics of what she was capable of versus what a human could withstand. You presumed it wasn't malicious on her part, but when a being can dismantle itself down to microscopic components and then reassemble, there might be an expectation for that to be true of any entity. Fortunately, you had countermeasures if needed.

A light flashed red overhead, and you saw a different door open, before a curious silvery creature stepped through, shimmering even in the low light. Lina stepped closer, stumbling a little with quick steps, as she had not practiced walking much. She did not speak, it was not something she'd apparently known how to do yet. But, she did lift her hands up, holding a mass of glowing blue nanites in her silvery palms.

You assumed these were the nanites meant for the integration into you. You reached out, and Lina deposited them into your hand. Immediately, they started to 'dig', as you felt a slight pain like insect bites. However, you were quick to respond, as your hand opened up, using Zoe's talents, while green slime poured out like a kind of blood, to absorb the nanites. The slime seemed to turn light blue as the nanites were distributed in the biopolymer, before you pulled the nanites into your palm.

And then you waited, staring at the silvery nanites before you, whose expression looked blank, robotic. Nothing about her movements had yet looked 'real', likely because it was something she had yet to master. Chloe had the same trouble, as the reality of slime is that it's nothing like a human, and tying emotion and expression into the physical appearance took time before it became natural, even for an organic being. In the meantime, your slime pulled in the nanite cluster, quickly connecting Lina to this shared network of minds. Zoe and Chloe and Emily all fed their knowledge into Lina, in what was essentially neural network training algorithms, on a broad scale. You felt like you were involuntarily answering thousands of questions every second to this mechanical mind, which was quite draining.

However, after a little patience, everything stopped, or at least the barrage of information did. It was almost like Lina had just downloaded an archive of your mind, so she might refer to it. The question was therefore whether or not she could understand the deeper contexts, or if it was just more data for her to search through.