If somebody were to ask Angela for the things she appreciates about her nanites listed in order from most to least useful, she has to admit, it would probably not even occur to her to mention the quality of her sleep.
The time she saves by needing so little of it, yes. It would not be near the top, but certainly in the higher echelons. The entirety of mankind must spend roughly a third of their life sleeping, and there's no cheating it. Cutting sleep at night will only force one to take naps throughout the day, and persisting without will cut one's days from life like links off a chain. It's not like she's forced to sleep so little, she could have six or eight hours a day instead of two. But she could also have even less. A nap after dinner when she's feeling less energetic with her stomach full would in all probability entirely suffice for her needs. She appreciates the choice almost as much as the ability to make it in the first place.
The quality of her rest, in contrast, falls somewhere below Angela's notice, for the very simple reason that however much she sleeps, in whatever position, on whatever surface, in whatever hours, she always wakes up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the day. It has been that way long enough she's taken to thinking of it as a given. A fact of life not worth reminiscing on.
Waking up feeling ready to at most spit in somebody's drink is an entirely foreign experience to her, and one that she would vastly rather remain such.
She groans, propping herself on her elbows off the- floor, it seems. Why is she on the floor, she was just- she was… what was she doing again?
Whatever hazy memories she feels on the cusp of grasping, so similar and at once not, disperse once the surroundings finally register in her mind. Those being of armed security detail pinning her onerous patient down to the floor, all of them staring at her in slack-jawed awe. Ah. Right. She remembers now. She can easily enough deduce the chain of events that led to the change of personnel present from her own to that now before her.
"I suppose that's one way to test upper body strength." Angela grouses as she pulls herself up fully.
Her attempt at levity, as is so often the case, goes unappreciated.
It's a good thing she doesn't need to sleep, otherwise the rest of the day would be trying indeed.
It starts with three separate rounds of questioning after she and her patient are separated (one by the agents who take her away, one by the Commander, then one by Father) and Shimada is put in protective custody. Protective of whom, Angela can't say, but certainly not of her patient. Morrison won't let her continue her examination no matter how much she argues he's blowing things out of proportion.
"He cracked your skull, I saw the stain on the wall."
"Dented it at most. My nanites can't effectively heal that sort of damage yet." Angela also saw the stain. It's a good thing her blood is actively resistant to the notion of existing outside her body, else it would be far more difficult to lie with what would be a good chunk of her brain left outside her head. She also elects not to mention having her chest caved-in. It would only serve to shore-up the Commander's case against hers.
"Be that as it may, we can't have him wandering about like that. It's too dangerous."
On that point they actually agree. Her patient has demonstrated a lack of control over his emotions and body which puts people surrounding him at risk if left unsupervised. Were it anybody else but her who tried stopping the man from hurting himself, they'd be dead now.
"I'm not saying we should let him," she mollifies the man. "I'm saying we shouldn't hold it against him. He is like a little child in an adult's body now. He needs time and help to adapt. Help, which I am the person best suited to provide. I made him. And demonstrably, I'm much harder to harm than your average doctor."
For a moment, the man appears to be actually considering this, before he shakes his head.
"My decision is final. We're doing this by the books from now on."
By the books, in this case, means removing Genji Shimada from her care with the excuse given being his assault on her person - which is plainly ridiculous to anyone who would bother to see the video of the altercation (which she assumes the Commander has seen). The man is not the one who closes the distance between them, nor does he make any threatening moves once Angela's body lands crumpled and glowing red on the floor. In fact, he freezes completely, staring at the result of his tantrum in what she assumes to be shock while her two assistants respectively flee the room and attempt to blend into the scenery (of which he's done a spectacular job of, Angela doesn't remember seeing him there at all!). It's not a minute before the security arrives, and even less than that when she stirs into consciousness, during which time the man allows himself to be restrained without putting up any resistance whatsoever, despite rough handling. Angela would know. If he was determined to escape, the men in the room would've been powerless to stop him with only the small arms available to them.
Furthermore, she is also in no uncertain terms sent on a two week convalescent to recover from the incident. Which is, again, ridiculous. She's been given a clean bill of health the very same hour she received her head injury and is ready to continue her work as usual, if absent of her assistants who are likewise sent on vacations of their own.
"I'm perfectly fine." She complains to Father as they pack her suitcase. "In fact, I was never in any real danger. He would have had to burn my body, and I don't think regular fire would do the trick, so good luck doing that if I kept getting up every other minute. I mean, he would have to dismember me, first, which I suppose he could do with his bare hands, what with how strong I made him. But how would he know to do that? And also, he would have to carry my pieces to-"
"Angela." She stops. "Are you sure you're okay? I don't mean physically."
Well, obviously, seeing as physically she's all but incapable of being anything but in perfect condition.
"You know I've had worse."
"That's not what I'm asking and you know it."
She does. It's annoying. Everyone acting like something of note happened.
"I'm immortal." She stresses the point by holding his gaze for a spell. "For me it really is nothing serious. It hurt, sure, but so does scraping a knee. And guess what? A scraped knee has more consequences for the regular person than having my head cracked does for me. So, I'm fine. Really."
The moment stretches as he looks at her, weighing her words. She rolls her eyes.
"Okay." He sighs, defeated. "Okay. Just- don't tell your mother all that stuff about being dismembered and burned, would you?"
She wasn't planning to, but she promises anyway. It's a prudent request regardless, given the welcome Mother gives her at the airport come morning. It's only there, trapped in the woman's teary embrace that it hits her that the short call they've had the day prior was all the time she's found this month to talk with her family back in Stockholm.
"Mom, I'm fine." She protests, but doesn't try wiggling out of the hug.
They don't talk at first. Not really. Not about what Angela knows for a fact is weighing on Mother's mind, for which she is grateful. Her parents' opinions tend to align, and she's in no mood to defend her choices this last month the first thing upon arrival. They talk, instead, of safer things. Brigitte. Mother's own work. Whether she knew how Father's arm is bothering him. Her latest discovery of Uncle's nanites cooling capacity. How the house is due for a new coat of paint. Even the latest crackdown going on in the UK when news of it come up on the car's radio.
"The Brits ought to make up their mind. Fifteen years and they're still not past these half-measures." Mother sighs.
"I don't think omnics would just line up for disassembly nowadays." Angela looks out the window. She's never been to Britain. Nor does she feel a particular need ever to visit.
"I'm not talking another disassembly, isn't Nigeria still taking them in?"
So it does, Angela knows from Athena, although she doubts this would hold should Britain announce a plan to double the nation's omnic population in the space of a year.
"Or, they could just continue to wait another decade or two until the problem resolves itself." Angela points out. With the world-wide ban on omnic production, spare parts are already an expense at the edge of affordability for most of the species. In time, it will simply be beyond the reach of the vast majority of omnics to continue their own maintenance. There is only so much an artificer can do for a malfunctioning motherboard even with all the parts in the world available. Omnics were designed as easily discardable tools, and much like those, with replacement in mind rather than repairs. Not unlike any other form of life in the world, really - born into the world for a few scant years it takes them to grow old, and doomed to the same fate as any human.
Well. Not for much longer if she has anything to say about it.
It's a relief to set foot in their home after a month of absence - the longest in twelve years she's been away at a time. Nine years in Zurich, yet still she feels more at home here than in her own apartment. She supposes there's truth to that old adage about home being where the heart resides.
Angela is helping Mother with the dinner when Brigitte returns from school. It is among the great excitement and much squealing from the eleven-year-old that Angela takes note of a development she's long seen coming, but never could be prepared for.
"I'm the big sister now," Brigitte proudly proclaims, having indeed cleared the last centimetre Angela has had on her.
"Guess I'll be leaving groceries to you, then."
"...What?" She can see the moment light fades from her sister's eyes, turning cold with the cynicism of adulthood.
"You wouldn't send your little sister out shopping, would you? We still need cream for the soup. Chop, chop!"
Ultimately, they both end up having to go on account of Mother getting involved in the argument, and so long as it results in stymying the oncoming barrage of teasing from her little sister, Angela will mark it as a strategic victory.
It's not until Brigitte is asleep, and Angela moves to the workshop where she usually spends her nights in the house, that the inevitable occurs, and Mother brings a chair to her side.
She wouldn't call the following conversation an argument. Mother is considerate enough to at least give the points she makes the appearance of a chance, but Angela can tell it sits ill at ease with the woman all the same.
"I'm not just saying all this, you know." She cuts through the thick silence which falls between them following her recount of her latest exploits. "Once my nanotechnology is on par with what I have inside me, I will augment my body, too."
"Angela, that's-" Mother startles, eyes wide. "Don't you think it's taking things a bit too far?"
"Why? It's not just a matter of integrity, I would be better in every way."
Mother reaches for her hands, stroking them with her thumbs.
"Sweety, you're already perfect. You don't need to go that far."
"No." She agrees. "But I want to."
She is as close to perfection as any human (with the likely exception of Uncle) has ever been. A goddess in ages past, that much is true. And yet it means nothing. Similar to herself, a few centuries ago Genji Shimada would have been considered divine. And if the man were equipped with technology as potent as that hidden within her own chest and filling every crevice of her body? If Angela is already perfect, what would that make him? What would it make an immortal goddess, had she had a body like his? What would it make humanity if in its entirety it possessed both. What, then, would any further improvements make of the human race?
Mr. Shimada's body is a recreation of the base human form, stripped bare of parts without use and improved upon, but with little variation from nature's own design to the functions it performs. She'd had neither the time nor the right for anything more. Her job was to restore what was lost, not add functionality not ordinarily present in the human body, like, say, neural computing interface, or actual gills, or eyes to see the whole of light spectrum. A pity, but further improvements can always be made to a body as pliable as his, and given the man's hang-ups it is perhaps for the best that they wait with such augmentations.
Attaching such en-masse, of course, would be impossibly expensive, but so far as getting everyone to the point at which Mr. Shimada finds himself right now? The path forward seems straightforward enough. It would only take a little effort to reprogram her nanites with the task of replacing one's cells with a synthetic counterpart. Not yet feasible at the present, especially where the brain is concerned, but something to look forward to once she gets her tech to work at such fine a scale. Everyone could be like she and Mr. Shimada already are. Godly. To the point the word would mean nothing else than to be human. What new definition of gods would they find, she wonders.
"We could be unbound. Be anything. Why stick with- this-" she gestures at herself "-when there's something better out there? Why fix the symptoms when I can remove the cause entirely?"
"You mean being human?"
Angela's face falls. This again. This stockholm-like attachment to inferiority.
"Mom. Do you think I'm human?"
"What? Yes, of course you are! Why would you-" She cuts off, realising where she's going with this. "It's not the same."
"How is it not? Because my body is flesh? It's made the exact same way, just with different materials, that's all the difference to it. So, if, piece by piece, a person was made entirely synthetic through exactly the same process, would they not be human too?"
"Sweetheart… this isn't the thirties anymore. People don't take as kindly to machines as they used to."
"I've gathered." She notes sourly. "That's not the point, and doesn't change a thing besides. If a prosthetic arm makes a person no less human, then how does a heart? Or lungs, or stomach. Or anything else for that matter? We've been replacing body parts with machines for decades and nobody cares, but swap everything all at once and suddenly it's a problem. Like it's a matter of quantity."
"I know." Mother's expression is pained. "I know, and even so, it's just… it feels different."
"It doesn't to me."
A tension settles over the house following their exchange. Tangible in the way conversations sputter and die. In the awkward silence clogging the air where easy banter once flowed. The worst part is Angela can't identify a way to fix it. There's nothing to apologise for, or even be apologetic for. Pretending nothing's happened doesn't work because nothing has happened. They're not even upset with each other, or at least Angela isn't, and fails to recognise Mother's troubled thoughts.
"I believe an honest conversation is the usual recommendation in regards to solving interpersonal conflicts." Athena provides her with an unpolished nugget of textbook wisdom when appraised of the situation.
"Honest conversation is what caused this in the first place." Angela refutes, staring at the stain on the ceiling above her bed where she once squashed a fly. "There's no misunderstanding here. She's uncomfortable with the idea itself. As if being made of something fragile is the essence of humanity."
"In that case, have you tried explaining your own feelings about the subject matter?"
Angela's eyes narrow, a buried mote of recognition flaring up in the deep places of her mind.
"Are you reading these out of psychology manuals?"
"I've compiled a database of the relevant contemporary literature, yes."
It's laughable that a person should be considered anything less than wholly human based on the composition of their body. Have they not fought a world war a century ago to establish that? A case can be made for the brain being the bare minimum, but even then there is such a variety to how one brain differs from another, even in twins, that she suspects such claims won't last half a century more. And regardless, a brain made from a different material who nonetheless copies the functions of the original exactly is still nothing else but a brain. Even should the definition of human be so stretched, are omnics, with all their faults and looming extinction, not just a different sort of a people? Isn't Athena?
It's not even sensible objections that she has to deal with, those she would be happy to hear that she may work towards their resolution. Concerns over the security of a synthetic body are entirely justified, especially given it is the failure on that front which had sparked the Omnic Crisis. Same for concerns in regards to the harm electromagnetic fields could inflict. Or for energy consumption. Or even the matters of bodily security of unaugmented people who could potentially be harmed by an enhanced individual. Those are all tangible, real concerns.
Unfortunately, what she has to contend with instead, are emotions. What a wholly ridiculous quantity to base judgement upon, and how prone to erroneous conclusions. Case in point, emotions clouding Mother's judgement to the simple, hard fact, that synthetic materials are stronger than biological ones, and therefore make for a better body.
A human with a well-constructed artificial body would simply be superior across the board to the person they were in flesh and blood. There is no refuting that point. As such, counter-arguments disregard it completely and reach to a place of sentiment to even stand a chance. Humans have an extraordinary ability to form attachments. Were a person to pick a rock off the ground and keep it in their house for ten years, they would feel reluctant to get rid of it when moving, even though they could procure another such rock with no hassle at all. Likewise, they attach value to objects based on their history, even though a sword wielded by a famous general is in fact the exact same sword wielded by a simple soldier. It's the entire basis for antiques trade, and it's all completely untethered from reality.
It is sentiment which retroactively makes people believe being weaker, more vulnerable, mortal, is somehow a prerequisite for being human. That it is more noble to be less. More natural. As if humanity has had any dealings with nature beyond warring against it for the entirety of their history. The position of homo sapiens as the apex species of Earth is entirely against the natural order, and has been since the first great pioneer among all the human species sharpened the stick they picked off the ground. There is no inherent difference between using a forklift to pick up a package too heavy for human muscles, and using synthetic muscles to do the job of a forklift, which in turn once required cranes, and other creative and communal solutions before then.
It is the most human thing in the world to replace their bodies with machines. To want more from life. Else they would still be roaming the planet, scavenging and terrified of what the next day shall bring. All the handful of them that would be alive, anyway.
Now if only she knew how to show it to the rest of the world.
"Are you and Mom fighting?" Brigitte asks out of the blue in the middle of unloading her Crusader figurines onto her lego lunar base set to end the ongoing monkey infestation.
"No? I mean, I don't think so," Angela corrects herself. She's not entirely sure what to call it.
"Cause you're both being weird. Did something happen?"
She bites her lip to suppress a wince. They are being weird, but she did not think to the point her sister would notice, what with being only eleven. Then again, her own experiences from that age differ rather substantially from the life her sister has had.
"There's this man I operated on a month ago." She muses while browsing her mind for a sufficiently simplified explanation.
"Yeah, Dad told us. It's why you didn't come for a month, right?"
Angela nods. "There were- complications. I had to build him a new body from the neck down."
"Build it?" The girl pauses in moving her strike force through the airlock to look at Angela with wide eyes. "Wait, like, build it build it? Like Dad's arm?"
"It was… a little bit more complicated, but basically, yes."
"All of it?"
She sighs, feeling another figurative headache coming.
"All of it."
"That's so cool!"
She blinks, momentarily at a loss, before a smile, honest and unbidden, blossoms on her lips in tandem with the warmth in her chest.
"I know, right? So cool."