Do Alchemical Simulacra Dream of Celestial Sheep? OR: Alchemical Simulacra Clarifications

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I was looking over the formaldehyde-scented section of UM, and pondering the use of the Alchemical Simulacrum discovery, the first one. It acts as Lesser Simulcrum, which has several differences from the main spell: Less powerful (max hit dice is your level), time limit (hour/level), and, biggest in my mind, is the fact that while they recognize you as their creator, they are not under your command.

Now, Alchemical Simulacrum makes some changes of its own, namely that it takes 24 hours to brew one up, that the simulacrum is made of flesh, and is considered a creature, not an effect, which is the big one for me. If the simulacrum is a creature, not an effect...

Its established that your vat-baby has free will, kinda. Since he is a creature, he can't be dispelled like EITHER of the spell versions (insert Clone Master questions here). So... Is he permanent if he is a creature? It isn't summoned, so its not like there is a precedent. Logic states that since it apes the spell, the poor thing melts when its time is up, or since its a creature, and not an effect, it stays.

My thinking was the latter ruling, and thus my thoughts went off that (though they apply to the other one... temporarily). Since its a creature, can it be healed using normal magical healing, or does the spell take precedence? I read the post clarifying the spell, but most of the facts cited there, while perfectly accurate for the spell (insert MORE Clone Master questions here), with the Alchemical version being a creature, don't really apply.

And then, if they are permanent (which I like to think, given how a Clone Master has almost no reason to take the Alchemical Simulacrum discovery except as a prerequisite to take the much more awesome Doppelganger Simulacrum and Greater Alchemical Simulacrum), how do we handle the icky matter of their free-ish will? This applies even if they are not permanent, since unless its of you or a volunteer, this creature might not want to be your meat-slave for its limited life, depending on its (and therefore the original target) views. If its permanent, I can see it as 'If you try to go live on your own, you won't survive, since you can only be healed by (insert whatever form of healing here), so besides, I can take care of you." Really, I can see this going either way.

... Its mostly because a player of mine want to play an Android Alchemist/Master Chymist, and I want to encourage him to make android baby simulacra.

[Joesi]

It's a reasonable question if it has a duration or not, but considering it's a 4th level wizard spell to which an alchemist would normally need to be level 10 to cast (had it been available to them) and which doesn't need a spell slot, I'd say it would have a duration.
Aside from that, it's as simple as following RAW which means "take lesser simulacrum and only make changes which are mentioned" (nothing about duration change mentioned)

If it only had an hour creation time like the wizard's, it would be spammable to have multiple simulacrums at a time without having used any extra spell slots.

Regarding it's free will, unless one was to tell it about it's lifespan, it wouldn't necessarily know, and hence not have a good reason to do whatever it feels like.

I'd generally GM them as allied NPCs, which obviously are compliant in largely varying amounts, but certainly not runaways or liabilities or useless.