My best guess is, the Sleepers want constitutionals for the same reason the Transcend want constitutionals, and don’t synthesize them by the trillion with Monte-Carlo algorithms for the same reason the Transcend doesn’t.
And after they’re done upgrading you (and, yes, possibly copying any useful intel or patterns into their collective knowledge) they’re adding a soulshard and setting you free to run in some level of their sphere, awaiting.
The answer might be as simple as “awaiting something concerning”. Could just be their way of keeping tabs on the rising younger races, in case they get too uppity. How that plays out in practice, probably even they wouldn’t know
The Transcend don’t mind more people joining, provided they pass quality assurance, is my impression, and will answer requests to join with something other than an automatic NO. So in that sense, yes.
Which is not the same thing as wanting more raw numbers of constitutionals by any means, of course, and in that latter sense, no. No conquest, no coercive subsumption, no clone armies, no infinite forking of digisapiences, no.
I guess my quibble is that “wants constitutionals” is a bit more active than my conception of the Transcend’s stance, which is that they don’t actually care beyond not getting bad constitutionals and the occasional interesting person (there was a post about this but it’s not back up yet, as far as I can tell). But I guess I’m drawing that conclusion from the complete lack of evidence on this matter.
Insofar as it’s convenient and fulfils its imperatives for it to remain δ-coextensive with its host culture, the Transcend defers to the Empire in terms of expansion, and the Empire is as modestly philoprogenitive (and likewise pro-immigration) as one might expect of a healthy culture.
It does have very strict standards for being allowed to join (after all, wouldn’t you be very picky about who you allowed into your brain?), but not all that much stricter than those for “people we want around the Empire in the first place”.
