Quote Originally Posted by Traab View Post
She would still be out of luck with a new body, the only difference being this one wouldnt fall apart on a regular basis. She wouldnt be in some sort of super tank bubbles+ form allowing her to do what she wants. Honestly, getting a new body changes little for her other than not having to penny pinch in a dead end job just to keep up with repair costs. She still would have to work to pay rent and such its just the new bod means she has one less source of income drain, constant upkeep, to worry about. Its basically like if you or I were driving an old car. We know it has issues and could just stop working at any time, costing us every dollar we have managed to save up to fix it as we need it working to do our job. Then getting a brand new car and knowing that aside from oil changes you are probably not going to have to worry about putting money into it outside of gas for a few years. Thats a load off of your mind, not something that will change your personality all that much.
The calculus is different for embodied AIs versus people, which is one of the problems with this whole arc and the use of embodied AIs in QC in general to serve as stand-ins for human societal problems. Body maintenance is May's only significant expense. She doesn't actually have to pay rent because she doesn't need to live in a fixed abode. She doesn't need sleep and can spend her downtime anywhere she can plug in. The expense required to power QC AI bodies is apparently very low (which isn't actually unreasonable, the amount required to say, charge a Tesla isn't that high either, all the money's in producing the relevant batteries), and she has no other ongoing costs. If May's body maintenance costs were reduced to the near zero amount that seems to afflict most other embodied AIs she could save nearly her entire salary.

That being said, the greater limitation on May is that she's stuck in a body at all as part of the conditions of her parole. Without that limitation on her existence she could just plug herself into the wall and use her physical form as a server host while she galivants about the internet 24/7. This actually means her need for a body is technically a temporary concern because her parole will presumably end at some point. To my knowledge it's never been stated how long her parole period will be, which is kind of frustrating as it could be a matter or months or it could be years. May was presumably convicted of felony theft and per the program she participated in with Dale some portion of her sentence was converted from imprisonment to supervised release but we have no idea what that sentence was (larceny in Massachusetts carries a maximum five year sentence, but May could easily have been convicted of many, many individual counts to be served consecutively or have been tried in federal court given the massive amount she stole/embezzled).