With their commissioned project completed, and Angela's following promotion to a head surgeon near to upon receiving her medical licence, there's nothing to do but begin the work of converting the effort of the last two years into what it was always meant to be. No longer subordinate to any of her fellow scientists outside the lab, Angela reshuffles the team to her liking - which is to say she very politely breaks it to them that in absence of any pressing projects, they're being reduced to a skeleton crew. That said reduction happens on her request is neither here nor there. Neither is the fact Athena's prediction of an overall increase in the productivity of the remaining members quickly proves true.
Though a waste overall, the two years spent on creating an inferior version of her technology were not an exercise in pointlessness. The PFUMN and its improvements over the years-old synthetic proof of concept can be copied almost one to one to its original iteration. In itself, that would not be anything to write home about, but what they ended up putting into production is but one of many working designs they've crafted. While they could've gone smaller than the nightstand they've ended up with, the issue of pricing had to be considered. Widely accessible medication has a need of not being prohibitively expensive to acquire. The precision and materials required for such a machine to function as Angela had originally in mind would've driven the costs of production of a single unit to upwards of twenty times of the final product.
Some corners simply had to be cut, and an external device to produce the nanites ad hoc and for med-kits is good enough.
Good enough for the world at large. The technology is there, and the march of progress is relentless, only ever accelerating. In a few decades the cutting edge of any tech will dull be unremarkable, and with it shall come more readily available pricing. Then will be the time to start outfitting people with their own, personal devices, without bankrupting the healthcare systems in the process. It's disappointing, but Angela has come to terms with the necessity of waiting. It's easier for her than most, she imagines, even if it remains a source of frustration.
None of this means she must suffer the wait to create her very own unreasonably expensive prototype, now that resources at her disposal are no longer so grossly misdirected.
It's relatively simple to assemble the unit once she gets all the materials - the blueprint is over a year old at this point, and by design compatible with her older work. That is not to say there aren't any issues; even with all the improvements, it still ends up thrice as big as the one attached to her heart, and try as she might, Angela can't even theorise on how to make it yet smaller to fit in the place of Uncle's.
Luckily, she doesn't have to. With just a little bit of switching the innards of her machine around, the problem is circumvented altogether. After all, if the device already needs a set of pumps to inject the heart it's attached to with nanites, then why not have it inject them directly into her arteries? The heart, after all, is nothing but a pump - an easiest thing to replace, and getting rid of it leaves Angela with just enough space to fit her creation in. A tight fit for certain; a child would be better served carrying it around in a backpack like those early century artificial hearts, but it's a only matter of time before she figures out how to miniaturise it further.
Angela smuggles the unit to Sweden for the weekend, so that she may have something to do at night, when the rest of her family recovers from the strain of visiting an amusement park. It's a point of minor interest, but her nanites make her no less susceptible to the downsides of sudden shifts in elevation, or bodily orientation relative to the Earth, than her sister's and father's feeble bodies. How wise of Mother to remain on the ground and take photographs of the rest of them upside-down thirty metres in the air.
Notably, it does take her a lot less time to recover from the adverse effects of their struggle against gravity. One day she will figure out how to reinforce the inner ear without taking away its function, certainly not before resolving the issue of fertility relating to her nanites.
It is sitting at her old desk while the rest of her family sleeps that Angela comes to an unpleasant realisation.
She has come to rely on Athena for her programming.
She'd thought it would be easy without the wild variables the biological subject matter throws into the equation, and it is. All the same, rewriting her code to fit with the new unit is a slog she's grown distant with. It's not difficult, nor is it challenging. Just… slow. She could do so much more with the AI's help in the same amount of time that it feels wrong not to. And why not? What would be the harm? Athena was granted to her in the capacity of an assistant, and though she would be reluctant to call the rest of her team at 2 AM for something like this, Athena is no human, and has neither the need for sleep, nor societal obligations, or even care for human concepts of propriety regarding late-night calls. Assuming the AI were busy, it will tell her so without offence, unlikely as that is. Among the many elements of superior design, Athena is capable of multitasking hundreds of processes at a time. Thousands in theory, if given more processing power. That said, to the AI's telling, no more than a few dozens are usually run other than during stress tests and cyberwarfare simulations.
Convinced by her logic, Angela comes up short with realisation she doesn't know how to actually contact the AI. Up till this point, she's never had cause to assign her assistant even more work in the middle of the weekend than she usually does. And back at HQ it's as simple as speaking up anywhere with the exception of toilets and, for some reason, the boiler room.
Hmm. Athena is first and foremost a security system. Sending a message with a virus attached to her work mailbox ought to get her attention.
…So would calling the night shift to have them ask for Athena. It is also less likely to get her a disciplinary.
"Ziegler?" A somewhat sleepy voice responds on the other end of the line. "Is something the matter?"
"Nothing to worry about, Henry. I'm sorry for calling so late, can you ask for Athena?"
"I'm here, Doctor Ziegler." The AI interjects directly into the call, having either been listening or drawn to the sound of its name.
"Oh. Do call me back in a moment, will you? I need to consult with you."
It's not three seconds after Angela once again apologises to the nurse for the late call and hangs up that Athena's voice sounds from her computer speakers.
"Hello again Doctor Ziegler. How can I be of assistance?"
Angela doesn't think it's just her imagination assigning delight to the AI's enthusiastic acquiescence to her request.
With Athena's assistance, it takes under half an hour to convert all the code she's set aside for the night, leaving them to talk theory instead. If nothing else, it reassures Angela her direction is the right one. Were it the other way around, she knows from experience the work would take them both a few days at the least. That it's so much easier this way, for seemingly no reason, astonishes even her assistant.
"This should be impossible. There's no achievable conclusion with the data on hand as to why the organic manipulation should vary so wildly from the intended result while the synthetic variant works precisely as intended."
"Hmm." She acknowledges the AI's complaint.
"You appear unbothered."
A frown brings her brows together at the question. And a question it is, no mistake. Did director Liao program her creation with the ability to comprehend such subtleties of human interaction, or is it something the AI has learned since?
"It bothers me when someone forces me to work on it I suppose. And you?" she returns the question.
It takes a full seven seconds to receive a reply. Enough for Angela's stomach to drop. Days of thought just occurred. Weeks, perhaps, depending on the amount of processing power afforded to the question.
"The same set of data does not produce two differing results if the logic remains consistent throughout the process. If I were to convert the code back again to handle organic material, I predict the result would not differ in any way from the original in 100% of instances. The data shows this prediction to be wrong, yet I'm incapable of changing the outcome of my calculations. It appears I am deficient."
Angela thinks back to the day she learned something is actively messing with her head, making all manner of memories big and small slip from her mind regarding the technology in question. Is the same force at play here, she wonders, or is it simply that the AI can't handle the calculations because it is structurally incapable of processing the inputs at play? Mightier than any human mind Athena may be, but between the brain and the string of ones and zeroes, it's the brain which remains the more plastic structure.
Either way:
"It's a deficiency of my code, not yours."
"How so?"
"I can't say." A rueful smile curves her lips at the admission. "That's the deficiency."