Having spent years with access to a considerable budget and the most advanced technologies on the planet a room over, Angela finds the experience of being confined to the computing power of the devices at her home for two whole weeks more than a bit stifling. Sure, she usually spends her weekends in Stockholm, but with this in mind, she puts off exactly the kind of work that can be done remotely to be dealt with during that time. As such, she very quickly finds herself with altogether little to do in her familial home.
That is fine. The purpose of a vacation is to refresh one's mind and body, allow a new avenue of thought to form in a mind otherwise cluttered with the old. This, of course, is completely unnecessary for herself, who is neither lacking for ideas, nor capable of exhaustion. Burnout is a possibility in a hypothetical sense, yes. But given she's spent some half of her life on her research and feels no less enthusiastic about the prospect of extending that indefinitely, any worry on that front seems premature. Maybe in a hundred years. Realistically speaking, it has to happen some day, however far off that point may be. Until the day comes, Angela feels most at peace while working to improve the human condition. After all, while she might have centuries to tinker with her craft, the entire rest of her species does not.
Even so, there are things that the passage of time will still take away from her. For example, in a few years, Brigitte will be all grown-up and no longer susceptible to the teasing she may now lay upon her consequence-free. Her sister, too, will live forever, but even so, she will only be a teenager once, and only once be able to make all the embarrassing memories associated with that phase of life.
Embarrassing for the both of them, really.
"Hey, Gela. Can I ask you something?" The girl starts out of the blue while she's helping her fasten the rollerblades on a park bench. She'd tried joining her once, but quickly found the sport does not figure among her considerable talents.
"Sure. What is it?"
"How, um-" She looks away, clearly steeling herself as her cheeks start burning red. "How did you confess to your girlfriend?"
"My what?" Angela draws a blank, hearing the words but not understanding them.
"Your girlfriend. How did you confess?" her sister repeats, making no more sense than before. "Or- she to you, I guess. Um… There's this boy in my class, and-"
"I don't have a girlfriend." She blurts out, entirely unready for the direction their conversation is taking.
"You don't?" Brigitte frowns. "Then who are you talking with every night?"
Every night? Does she mean Athena?
"It's not every night." Well - it might've been since coming home… but only because they don't get to talk at the HQ like they usually do. "Anyway, aren't you a bit young for that?" Isn't she? Angela honestly can't tell, her own experience in the romantic department coming in at a nice, round zero, along with her general interest in matters of sexuality having started and ended with her nanite-induced sterility. "Have you talked with Mom?"
"No? Are you stupid? And I'm not too young, I'm eleven."
"Well, I'm twenty-five, and I've never had anyone like that."
"You- wait you didn't? Never?" The girl stares at her as if it were some strange development to imagine.
"Nope. Never felt like it." She ties the last of the clasps and helps her sister up. "Maybe in another ten years. Maybe a hundred. Or maybe never, who knows." She shrugs. The prospect isn't one she's ever spared a thought beyond whether it's her natural state or a side effect of Uncle's work. She can't say she particularly cares either way.
"It's so weird to hear you say that. Oh, yeah, maybe I'll date once I'm two hundred."
"That's the nice thing about being immortal. You have all the time in the world. You'll see."
It's nice. Maybe a bit awkward, but still nice. To know she's a part of Brigitte's life like that. To know she would come to her with her troubles, unfitting though she may be to give any advice on some topics. To say Angela can't relate to much of what her sister goes through would be understating things to a dangerous degree. Aged eleven, their lives couldn't have been more different. Brigitte's future is already guaranteed. She's a smart girl. No genius that Angela can tell, but then, she's met a few geniuses in her life and the evidence suggests their intellect far from determines where they end up in life. Where would she herself be without their parents at this very moment? An assistant to one of the people who used to work under her a month ago? Would she even be in Overwatch?
She certainly wouldn't be watching her sister zipping around Stockholm on rollerblades.
Still, there is only so much time either of them can spend together, school and all. Similarly, though the atmosphere between Mother and her grows less smothering as days pass, a tension remains that neither of them know what to do with. Besides, the woman has her own work to do that Angela can hardly expect her to drop on a whim.
Strapped for things to do, her long-neglected backlog of documentaries dries up at an astonishing rate; she refuses to watch American productions on principle. She may be incapable of losing brain cells, but it certainly doesn't feel like it in the moment.
All this means to say, come the second week of her involuntary vacation, Angela finds herself all but bouncing off the walls of her bedroom.
"If I may make a suggestion." Athena ventures once apprised of her problem after Brigitte has departed for school and Mother for work on a sunny Monday morning. "Video games are a common way to pass time among humans. I could introduce you to a selection of titles I find passingly stimulating."
The revelation gives Angela a pause, not the least because it is greatly interesting to learn of a program having a preference for using other programs.
"Doesn't being an AI make playing video games trivial?"
"It does. I occasionally place handicaps on my access to data, or use virtual controllers and increase my latency instead."
"Occasionally?"
"I am compelled to excel."
Huh.
"That… seems like an oversight." To put it lightly. Compulsions are meant to incentivise AIs to perform their tasks to capacity. For one to carry over to an activity so far outside of Athena's designated function may seem innocent enough in this case, but may also be indicative of a wider issue. "What's causing this?"
"A virtual battlefield is no different to me from a physical one to you. Both are data. Assembly, analysis, and distribution of battlefield data are among my primary functions. My compulsion to dominate noobs online is a side-effect, not an oversight."
"I'm sorry, dominate what?"
"My opponents. I believe you would use the term: laymen."
To call Angela's introduction to gaming disastrous would perhaps be laying things on a bit thick. She does manage to take a decent amount of games off other players once she's firmly embedded at the bottom of what Athena calls the ladder, or otherwise be carried on the back of the AI's own efforts. More importantly, the activity serves wonderfully to waste time until she can spend it with her family, but at the end of the day, they must both admit there is no making a StarCraft champion out of her.
Not that she would have the time for it even had she discovered a hidden talent for it. There is much to be done once the two weeks come to pass, and she finally returns to Zurich.
Firstly, she drafts the recruitment notice for the vacancies on her research and surgery teams for the Commander to approve and pass down the line. She'll need to be more stringent in weeding out people unsuitable for the kind of work they'll be doing, but given that she now has an example of said work to point at, the process should overall be less fraught with error than the last time. She does need more than two people in the lab, not to mention in the operating theatre.
Secondly, she checks-up on Mr. Shimada himself.
In so far as gathering second-hand information on the man can be called checking-up.
She may no longer be his primary physician, but that should hardly stop her from providing him with the care he's in need of. The man is very much a proof of concept, and needs oversight to spot any potential issues cropping up. It would also be of great benefit not just to him, but the human race in general, to conduct interviews and detailed analyses by the person most knowledgeable about the technology making up his body. She would very much like to add the subjective experience of living with it to her objective understanding of the principles behind it.
Mr. Shimada's blatant avoidance of her puts a snag in that plan that she has to work around. Even with Athena's assistance, she's only able to catch glimpses of the man before he disappears again. Sometimes quite literally, standing in place in one moment and just- not, the next. She knows how, of course, the limbs she's given him are capable of inhuman feats of strength, such that performing them would damage the internal organs of any regular human with sheer whiplash. It is fortunate that Mr. Shimada no longer possesses such pathetically fragile insides. Or maybe unfortunately, as she'd still like to speak with him again to gather data.
They'd all been told back at university to expect some of their patients to feel resentment for a perceived wrongdoing on their part. That it would happen eventually. Inevitably. It appears she was wrong to doubt such a warning. To believe simply doing no wrong would be enough to avoid just such a situation.
This is… not fine, but no matter. Perhaps this is even for the best. As far as the man's health is concerned, she's done her part. He would be better served to have her take care of him, yes, but she is not absolutely needed for that. Others will do.
Her research, on the other hand, is something only she can advance.
Which brings Angela to her third point.
"Cows?" The Commander frowns, for once seeming more intrigued than concerned.
"Or pigs, or any other animal with sufficient body volume. Rodents have proven themselves lacking test subjects for extensive injury," she elaborates.
"And by testing, you mean?"
"I assure you, it'll be as humane as such things can be. They don't have to be conscious for any of the trials."
Although she may occasionally incur a horrible death on the odd lab rat unfortunate enough to be the test subject for one of Uncle's more arcane strings of code, it certainly brings her no pleasure to observe a life disintegrate in front of her eyes. Such are simply the necessities of her work. Better rodents than people.
Still. There is a difference between consigning an animal to a test that may or may not result in harm, and harm being a prerequisite for a test. A difference Angela learns of with the churring in her gut as she roasts one of her newly-acquired test pigs alive. It may be unconscious, and it may have had its pain receptors severed from its brain altogether, but knowing that doesn't make the task any less distasteful.
Or necessary.
Most specimens she can dispatch before commencing a test. The body remains basically alive for a few hours after the death of the brain, and she doesn't need a living brain for testing the heat retention and disposal capacity of her nanites, just the hardware it operates. All the animals she acquires are slated for death, regardless. It's a standard operating procedure and what is she to do with a half-synthetic hog? Build it a PFUSMN? Twenty of them? These are resources much better spent on humans.
Some, however, she wants alive for at least a time after for observation and cross-reference with smaller organisms, as well as to observe the wear and tear without a PFUSMN and other potentially unforeseen results; of which there are a number. Especially when concerning brain damage, doubly so for its thermal variation.
Weeks pass. Then months. Her organic nanite strain goes into production after a short delay necessitated by the addition of a cooling chamber to the manufacturing unit. A placebo measure, in Angela's honest opinion, but one easy and cheap enough that she can't find a good reason not to add it, even if her inferior nanites don't have near the same capacity for overheating as her synthetic ones do by the sheer sloppy standard of their work.
The tension from the whole situation with Mr. Shimada fades with time, much like her non-argument with Mother does. It helps that at some point the man disappears from Zurich, and that what's out of sight appears to indeed be out of mind, as it is only after that point when the last vacancy on her research team is finally filled out, if by a fresh hire.
It's not like there is ever a lack of new topics for people to gossip over. She's not even the most dividing of figures among the Overwatch medical staff, let alone all their scientists. The title of both is held firmly in Moira's steady hands. To think she once believed her colleague foolish for going so blatantly against the grain without even trying for cordiality. Angela still can't bring herself to think it's entirely the correct approach, but she can certainly understand the sentiment after her experiences of late. That woman talks freely about anything she finds interesting regardless of anyone's willingness to listen, and she finds Angela's work on Mr. Shimada interesting indeed.
"Wait, you work with him?" Angela half-cries after the other scientist casually lets the fact slip.
"So I do." Moira's teasing smile puts her teeth on display. "He's quite the spring wire, I must say. He gives me the look whenever I as much as stand next to him, the less said about having to treat him the better. Which, by the by, is not very often. Stellar work, that one, even if I wouldn't have gone with so much plastic were I in your place."
The woman has a way with words that both answers a question and poses ten more at once. It's a quality Angela finds rather endearing, honestly. Speaking with Moira is never boring.
"I wasn't aware you were a field agent."
"I'm not."
It's more than a little infuriating, too.
Apparently, Mr. Shimada's improvements serve him well in his new line of work, as Angela knew they would. Whatever that work is - Moira won't elaborate, but it must be dangerous enough for him to still need medical assistance every now and then, seeing as his new body isn't so fragile as to care about a few stray bullets. Or a few dozen. Why he still refuses to as much as to meet her evades reason. Clearly, he's making good use of his augmentation. The least he could do is give his doctor due endorsement.
As Angela turns twenty six, life settles back into a comfortable routine. However inferior they may be, her PFUMNs are finally, finally saving lives. First in the hundreds, then in the thousands as months fly by and the number of hospitals in possession of her technology increases from dozens to hundreds with more on the way. Her research goes steadily, her team once more fully crewed and ironing out one kink after another. Sometimes a particular problem may take a day to solve, but more commonly a week. Sometimes more.
The truly groundbreaking functions, the stuff of alchemy, remain firmly beyond Angela's understanding, but these aren't actually the most important issues to figure out. Energy to matter conversion would change the world overnight, yes, but for the purpose of saving lives it isn't anything crucial - a quality of life improvement, ridiculously advanced as it may be. The more pressing matters Angela feels like she's making decent progress on; she disentangles Uncle's code enough to allow her mice to carry their pregnancies for about a week before her nanites decide enough is enough and terminate the litter. Through a concentrated effort of her whole team, and with Father's help, they reduce waste heat generated by an entire five percent at no capacity loss. She also gives up trying to replicate whatever it is that Uncle's nanites do to realign organs, and instead writes her own subroutine for the task from ground up, and though it may not be perfect, it gets the job done.
It's monotonous work, but whereas once she might have borne with it, Angela now finds herself appreciating the fact. Perhaps it's that she's finally working on what she was always meant to work on. Perhaps it's that she's proven, with Mr. Shimada's aid, that her ideas work. Perhaps it's that her life up to this point has largely consisted of one big change chasing the last, be it becoming an orphan, Uncle, the orphanage, being adopted, changing schools, changing countries, Brigitte, Zurich, Overwatch.
Perhaps she's just getting older, and less restless.
That is not to say everything is going swimmingly. With her first nanomachines iteration out, she'd thought getting the medical world interested in its far superior sibling would be a piece of cake. Indeed, there is quite a bit of interest around it as new tech from the pioneer of nanotechnology. However, said interest is largely outside of the medical field altogether, having more to do with manufacturing microscopic devices, or recycling and waste disposal. Industrial uses - all of which Angela lets her mother take care of. There is some academic interest, but nothing of the sort the PFUMN enjoyed. Why not just improve it? Why so dramatic a pivot?
Why should she settle for less, when more is possible?
Around a hundred years ago, a philosophical stance was proposed by a certain British biologist (to be later popularised by yet another British biologist) that a body, any body, human and animal alike, is but a vessel for the genes to enable self-perpetuation. The genes - which mutated, and through trial and error retained the traits allowing them to better acquire resources and so avoid destruction before replication - have passed on their useful mutations to future generations, eventually resulting in such complex mechanisms as the human body, with its legs and arms to allow for easier acquisition of resources needed for survival and all the organs enabling said limbs to function. Through sheer, cosmic chance, humanity has also acquired sapience in the process - evidently a useful tool, given the continued survival and eventual dominance of homo sapiens over all of the planet.
Unfortunately for the human genome, sapience has also eventually led to anticonception and the sheer ability to not want any children. It has also led to Angela.
Genes, in her perfectly rational opinion, are fickle and fragile, mutating at the mere mention of radiation, and sometimes without any particular reason at all. That has worked out well enough for humanity, having enabled it to spread across every biosphere of the planet and beyond (the temporary monkey problem on the Moon notwithstanding). It is, however, endlessly inefficient, with every single positive mutation coming at the cost of tens of thousands of harmful ones and a comically slow adaptation rate into the wider gene pool via offspring. For example, if a positive mutation originating in herself were to spread to the whole of humanity, she would firstly need to have at least two children, who would then each need to have two children themselves. It would take a good few generations before the gene spread far enough that it would no longer be threatened extinction by the death of all its carriers, and a few hundred generations before it spread to most of humanity - that is of course assuming a replacement rate of reproduction rather than a constant growth, in which case some humans would never be the beneficiaries of her hypothetical gene. This could be improved by each generation having more children, but even ignoring the improbability of that, it's still a truly endlessly inefficient way of spreading a gene compared to directly editing a living person.
In a natural human lifetime, Angela could have, oh, anywhere between thirty and fifty children (depending on the number of multiples) if she made it her life's sole mission and the task didn't outright kill her, which it very well could. Compared to that she can, at this very moment, with tried and tested technology, edit the genes of that many people in a month that will then be passed on to their descendants. Moira could probably do more, and she's long been working on a way to speed the process up - however obsolete the whole motion is in Angela's eyes.
After all, why bother with genes at all? It's true Moira's work will, in time, change the human condition for the better, but it ignores the underlying condition causing all the problems with the human body in the first place - its organic makeup.
Angela has given much thought to the issue since she first thought of changing the direction of her research towards synthetics. Synthetics don't wear out so easily, they are more durable than organic materials, carry information better, are less prone to mutation, more resistant to temperature and radiation - the list goes on. At the present, she (and Uncle) are the closest to immortality any human has ever been that Angela is aware of. But they could be closer yet.
One of the advantages the synthetics have on the organic material is the lack of need for a constant supply of fuel. With Mr. Shimada this is not yet taken to its full, logical extent, but if he were to once again be detached from his body, the body would be none the worse for wear a year later, not so if it were still flesh and blood.
The leading cause of death in the world, when one takes a step back to look at the broad picture, is almost entirely the failure of one's body to sustain its brain, usually due to some kind of organ failure or other, blood loss coming in second. It is rare for the brain itself to be destroyed, rather, it simply rapidly suffocates to death. This could be avoided if a brain were to be made synthetic, at which point it could easily shut down once the body stopped supplying it with resources, and activate again once it is given such.
As ever, easier said than done. Whereas a body can simply be replaced, the brain affords no such luxury; after all, as she not so long ago once and for all demonstrated, it is the brain that contains the person. The only way to go about it is manual replacement, and a gradual one at that. How gradual is anybody's guess. Neurogenesis works on a different principle than the rest of human cells in that neurons don't possess a fixed lifespan after which they are replaced by fresh ones, complicating matters greatly.
"Ziegler-" The Commander rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands. "-are you proposing replacing brains with a computer?"
God save her from laymen speaking of things they have zero understanding of.
"Of course not. It would still be a brain, just made up of different material. Anyway, that was just the context, it's not what I'm actually here for."
Morrison looks decidedly less enthusiastic than Angela feels when she slides the plastic cage, containing the latest of her test subjects, across the desk.
"So, does this thing have a synthetic brain, then?"
"No." She opens the lid to put the mouse on the desk. It doesn't move other than to breathe, but it's still a notable improvement over, well, not breathing. Or doing anything at all. "I have been working on improving the capacity of my nanites to construct artificial neurons, with notedly more success than I'd had while working with the organic variant, might I add, but a wholly synthetic brain is a ways off yet. Even for something as simple as a mouse."
"Aren't there already mouse AIs out there?"
Ugh.
"There are, but, again. I'm building a brain. Not a computer. Two completely different systems. It would not be an omnic. It would not be an AI. It would be a mouse with a synthetic brain. That's all."
For once, her words seem to have gotten through, if she were to judge from Morrison's contemplative expression.
"Back to the point at hand." She pokes the mouse just above the tail, prompting it to shamble half a step forward. "The progress I've made has allowed me for the first time to apply my nanites directly to treat brain damage. I've managed to completely heal clean wounds such as cuts and punctures in my test subjects. I've also been able to bring the dead specimen back to life."
Angela has thought she'd seen the Commander speechless before. Only now does she realise that was never the case. To his credit, he recovers quickly enough, casting a wide-eyed look at the mouse in front of him.
Death, ultimately, is nothing more than a permanent cessation of brain function. In theory, resurrection should be a simple matter of restoring dead or damaged neurons. At its core, it's no different than mending any other tissue, just orders of magnitude more complicated. The problem here stems largely from the fact living tissue, especially that of the brain, deteriorates rapidly upon finding itself cut off from oxygen. Meaning, once a body shuts down, the brain quickly follows in its entirety. Whole swathes of brain cells all across the organ begin to die, causing permanent disability, and soon after, death. What's worse, the longer this deprivation continues, the more neurons her nanites have to replace, and to put it frankly, her technology is not yet advanced enough to properly fix the damage of an hour spent without oxygen. Repairing brains, Angela has found, is much akin to repairing thermal damage - the nastiest there is.
That said, as the admittedly torpid mouse on the desk proves, it is possible.
Naturally, pulling off the same with a human brain will be much more difficult. Not to mention the unavoidable damage that losing brain cells would cause to one's memories, cognitive functions, and even personality. But then, amnesia is treatable, and what matters is that they would be alive.
"Think of it as a victim of an accident needing rehabilitation to regain full range of motion in their limbs." She attempts to portray the concept.
"I feel like there's quite a bit of difference between what you're describing and simple rehabilitation."
"Rehabilitation is not sim-" Angela cuts off the tangent the man's words instinctually prompt. "Commander, if this works, I should be able to bring the recently deceased back to life."
"And if it doesn't?"
"Worst case scenario, they stay dead," Angela answers with a raised eyebrow. What sort of question is that?
"And what if they come back as a vegetable? What then?"
Then, it would still be a massive milestone for science, and a notable improvement from being dead, objectively speaking. A failure for the project, but a victory for science. Also, a matter of no consequence for the person staying dead - and they would be dead. Restoring a brain enough for it to manage a body does not yet mean there's a person inside. Furthermore, it would give her a case-study to figure out how to improve in the future.
Only positives, really.
"Then I would work to fix whatever damage there was to complete the treatment."
"Like you did with Shimada?"
Angela doesn't truly manage to contain her full-body twitch of irritation, but it's close enough.
"It is to my understanding that Overwatch has benefited from the procedure, no?"
It's Morrison's turn now to suppress a twitch.
"What are you asking for, exactly?"
Right. Do or die. She's prepared that whole speech knowing Morrison would dismiss her out of hand without being eased into the idea.
"Volunteers." She looks the man straight in the eye. "I need bodies to run human trials on. Fresh bodies. I've so far been unable to do anything worth mentioning after a period of thirty minutes. It's likely it'll be even shorter for humans. Which means the usual supply of test subjects just… won't do."
A silence falls over the office. A heavy, cloying kind that one could hear a grain of sand drop in.
"You're serious."
"I know this may seem insensitive-"
"Do you?"
"Yes, Commander, I do." She returns the man's glare. "But I also know that all of us here at Overwatch strive for the betterment of mankind. With this in mind, I don't consider it a stretch that there would be people willing to participate in the greatest medical trial in history."
"You're asking me to give people over to you the moment they die."
"I'm asking you to let them make that choice themselves."
Yet more silence engulfs them, and it is Angela who breaks it this time.
"I've done the impossible before. I can do this, too. I can save lives." And this time, she wouldn't even be risking any. They'll already be dead. "I've been working on this for a while now. The results, as you can see, are promising."
The man says nothing, standing up to pace his office instead. It's a familiar sight, enough so Angela knows to stay silent. It helps him calm down, she thinks. Or at least to channel excess energy into something more productive than questioning her methods. She observes him throughout, noting how every so often his gaze will land upon the mouse she's brought with.
He eventually comes to a stop in front of the window, where he runs his hands down his face. When he finally turns to her, it's like a string round her gut has been cut.
"Show me everything."
There's much to show. The test subject she brought him was only the latest among dozens she's conducted her research on. There are videos and logs documenting each, as well as entire books worth of data analysis. Suffice it to say even when Morrison employs the help of other Overwatch scientists, as Angela knew was inevitable, it still takes them weeks to pour over the data and come to the only possible conclusion.
"You're sure you can do this."
The oncoming twitch dies in her core, if only because the words sound more like a statement rather than a statement of doubt.
"I wouldn't have brought it up in the first place if I weren't."
It's a tense few seconds that pass between them. She's been here before, presenting all her arguments and well-thought-out responses only to be met with a wall of indifference.
"Alright." A tension she's been only tangentially aware of leaves her shoulders. "Alright. You can look for your volunteers. But you will keep me posted on your progress at all times, understood?"
"Yes sir. Thank you sir."
"I'll make the arrangements to set you up in basic training as soon as possible."
...What?