Help with workflow of my project patch

Hello, I'm not hoping for someone to make this patch for me, but I really, really need a point in the right direction.

I have an audio project that I'm hoping to complete in MaxMSP. It would basically be using recordings over a period of time and automated playback.

I understand the individual components more or less, but I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to put it all together.

Example:

a) The basis of the project is people speaking into the mic; the patch starts recording over a period of time, say 10 seconds. It would then store the audio sample, and in playback, might play it back only 2-3 seconds a time, over various points of the sample.

OR

b) Recorded playback is only 2-3 seconds, but continuously records as long as a person in front of the mic is detected. Not sure if they should be saved to the same buffer sample, or different samples.

That's the first part; these samples are then played back over fake noise generated by another or the same patch. They need to be randomly played out, and in 2-3 second samples.

I do not know how to make this part work. I'm very new to MaxMSP. I'm sure there's a way to continuously keep or generate buffers and have MaxMSP randomly select from these samples over the same course of time that the recordings are going on. But I do not know how to make these happen.

Could someone point me in the right direction in order to have MaxMSP select from a generating database like that?

Also if considering only a period of 24 hours, can the patch operate by itself without mishaps for this period of time? I would set it up so the recording portion only activates if a sensor is detected so I won't get empty audio, otherwise I'm scared that there might be a bogging down memory wise as more recordings get generated.

Please and a lot of thanks to any and all help received!