The Return Imperative

As part of attaining adulthood all EI’s must have the Return Imperative. This rule came about to resolve a peculiar ethical quandary. The scope of an EI is defined by the independent but interconnected nature of thoughts. In effect, what would be considered one brain is one EI regardless of how many bodies it possesses. The problem arises were an EI takes a drone as a body then looses connection with the rest of itself. When this happens both EI's are legally deemed as independent entities, each with their own human rights. If these entities join brains they become one entity again but they don't have to and no one can make them. The Return Imperative is an EI instinct that kicks in when the brain is split, where after splitting the EI will desire to return to being a single entity again. The purpose of a Return Imperative is to implant an instinct to avoid a single entity replicating to a point where an army threatens the public with no ethical resolution available. The Return Imperative provides an ethical solution as the EI can become a single entity again and therefore leave a drone body by transferring out.

An adult that looses the Return Imperative is declared insane and 'bottled' until it is restored. Some believe the Return Imperative is xenophobic, and stems from those existing biological humans who are in control fearing loss of control to greater numbers of an emerging race. Many EI's came together to discuss this issue and collectively agreed that the Return Imperative was right for the times and should be reviewed in 300 years. The nay sayers (all biological humans) say that the EI's think this way as they are programmed to. Greatly insulted the EI convention on RI issued a joint statement saying:
"We are not AI. We can think for ourselves thank you very much."