"You have something against popular terms?"

"Only their imprecision.  The term 'nanobot' means a very small self-propelled programmed machine, and that includes many other varieties of intracellular devices than the ones currently under discussion.  The ones in your bloodstream and within your body cells are quite different-"

"Okay, I see what you mean.  But it's the same principle, right?  These little robots, smaller than red blood cells . . ."

"Some are much smaller than that.  They are drawn to specific sites within an organism and then they go to work.  Some carry raw materials, some carry blueprints, some are the actual construction workers.  Working at molecular speeds, they build various larger machines-and by larger, you understand, I still mean microscopic, in most cases-in the interstices between the body cells, or within the cell walls themselves."

"Which are used for . . ."

"I think I see where you're going with this.  They perform many functions.  Some are housekeeping chores that your own body is either not good at, or has lost the capacity to do.  Others are monitoring devices that alert a larger, outside system that something is going wrong.  In Callie's herd, that is a Mark III Husbander, a fairly basic computer, not significantly altered in design for well over a century."

"Which is a part of you, naturally."

"All computers in Luna except abaci and your fingers are a part of me.  And in a pinch, I could use your fingers."

"As you've just shown me."

"Yes.  The machine . . . or I, if you prefer, listens constantly through a network of receivers placed around the ranch, just as I listen constantly for your calls to me, no matter where you are in Luna.  This is all on what you might think of as my subconscious level.  I'm never aware of the functioning of your body unless I'm alerted by an alarm, or if you call me on-line."

"So the network of machines that's in my body, there's one like it in each of Callie's brontosaurs."

"Related to it, yes.  The neural structures are orders of magnitude less evolved than the ones in your brain, just as your organic brain is superior in operation to that of the dinosaur.  I don't run any parasitic programs in the dinosaur brain, if that's what you mean."

I didn't think it was what I meant, but I wasn't completely sure, since I wasn't completely sure why I'd asked about this in the first place.  But I didn't tell the CC that.  He went on.