I'm assuming that Andy is not a biomechanical construct--part machine, part organic--but is the sort of 12@ android envisioned under 12@ skills. That makes a difference, because if we're thinking of the six million dollar man multiplied until there's very little organic about him, or Darth Vader whose organic body was largely replaced by prosthetics but who still apparently has at least his brain and/or whatever parts are necessary for him to engage the Force (a biologically associated psionic power, I think), then we have some basis for identifying it with a body. However, the distinction between bias areas is, where does the power for this skill originate? In an entirely mechanical android, there is no organism. You're asking what the bod skills are of a sword or a car or a computer. Robots do not have bod skills because they cannot draw from their organic existence the empowering of bod skills--they have no organic existence. They have technological skills that are analogous to body skills.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that Andy operates himself as a 12@0 device. There is a degree to which, though, it makes more sense from Andy's perspective for the operation of his various skills to be seen as subsystems of the total--his eyes are T10@3 video imagers, his ears T9@4 sound and pressure sensors (or possibly T10@3 sonic detectors, if more sophisticated), his muscle fibers specialized electrocontractive T9@3 polymers. From Velma's perspective, getting Andy to do something, or to learn something new, is a 12@3 operate android skill; from Andy's perspective, doing something involves operating the subsystems that comprise his physical functions.
The skills suggested above are mostly the design level skills; the operation skills for most things Andy does would be @1 skills.
This allows you to distinguish such aspects as his visual and auditory accuity, giving him skill in each subsystem much as we give humans skill in each sensory or physical ability.
You can also consider whether Andy learns these maneuvers as a human would, practicing them to improve over time, and thus list each maneuver as its own skill at its own SAL (but mostly at the same bias level); or you can say that he doesn't really have any skills in the martial arts as such, but rather has a skill at operating his physical movements into which the new pattern is programmed (entirely possible to do this by demonstration and explanation with a couple trials to get it right). This latter approach would mean that once Andy has been given the pattern for a maneuver or style, he has that at whatever SAL his movement (or other appropriate skill) already is, but cannot improve it by practice--only by hardware or possibly software modification.
You have to be a life form to have body skills.
Also, there's no reason to suppose that Andy would not be helpless in a low-tech world. I'm not certain whether my martial arts training robot is functional my present world, although I'm not sure whether that's a bias problem or something else.
--M. J. Young
