The Commander, reticent though he may be, is a man of integrity. In line with Angela's expectations, there really isn't much for him to do but relent after the show she's put on, strings attached as it comes.
Nothing unreasonable, mind, nor objectionable or even unexpected. Only good can come of the remedial training meant to bring her up to speed with the way in which Strike Teams operate, that is to say as special forces. Being a field medic, she isn't expected to actively join the fighting, but should the fight ever come to her, she must be ready for it. Much as Angela would rather forget the feeling of a gun in her hand, she knows only too well the reality of battle, and won't ever be caught without there, again. Lives depend on it.
The wider response to her demonstration is more or less what she's expected, too. The videos of her flying clock in a few million views by the end of the week, and the count then keeps growing exponentially once the interviews for the variety of outlets (most not even scientific) break. A much improved reception to the usual lack of enthusiasm she's faced with regarding her newer nanotechnology. Small wonder. The slow and steady accumulation of improvements to her tech hardly captures the imagination the way her winged picture on the cover does. Naturally, she grabs the opportunity to advertise by the horns. The Valkyria does not, strictly speaking, need the nanites to function, but they sure make the upkeep easier. Not to mention their role in the implantation itself. Newsweek even runs a whole article on nanomachines in general, with her own work taking up a half of it.
Not all the attention is of the desired sort, though. Following the publications, it doesn't take a week for the pickets to start in front of the HQ. What particular issues they raise, Angela doesn't care to learn. There isn't a point. It's not like she's going to change the course because some luddite tells her to - politely or otherwise - nor is it likely she will change the mind of someone mullish enough to waste their time shouting purist slogans for anyone unfortunate enough to hear.
A non-issue for Angela, though she does feel for the security detail. She herself simply flies to work and back nowadays, providing no chance for the protestors ever to accost her, leaving them only the more stationary outlets for frustration.
Like her door, for example.
YOU ARE NOT GOD - the first of many passages to follow smeared across it reads.
Angela scoffs. Here, at last, is a sentiment they can all agree on. She's done more good than any god ever has.
She files a report. Then another a few days later. Then another. After which she exchanges her door for one with a surveillance camera installed, and when that proves insufficient due to perpetrators masking themselves, she sponsors an entire array of security cameras for her apartment complex. It doesn't quite solve the issue, only allowing to catch the offenders rather than stop them, but suffering a bit of paint and rotten eggs is a price well worth paying for the amount of community service the vandals are made to do after due fine and apology.
Of more pressing concern is a slew of offers flooding her mailbox, only a few of whom express interest in what she actually has on offer. The vast majority ask, instead, for less. Just another propulsion backpack, and packaged with motion controls rather than a brain chip.
It would be insulting if it weren't so pragmatic.
Much as what the various manufacturers ask for is inferior in every way to what Angela has created, there is no denying it comes with a significant reduction in price. It is a privilege most aren't afforded to never need concern themselves with monetary inconveniences. Even just swapping the nuclear battery out for a regular, rechargeable unit cuts the expense more than in half. The trade-off; only being able to fly for about an hour at full charge, isn't much of a trade-off at all when one can't afford the superior version in the first place. Nor is it a particular issue for most potential users, she herself doesn't fly much more than an hour or two at a time.
Though the battery is the worst offender, it isn't so by that far, with the surgery itself coming in at a close second. Replacing the spine, implanting the chip, the connections, the healing, the rehab, the time it all takes without her nanites to help speed things along… it all adds up to a demanding proposition, she knows. Entirely worth it in Angela's opinion, but it's a sad reality she was once all too familiar with that one can't always afford things that would've been worth it. Buying a house is by far the more fiscally responsible choice to buying the ability to fly, much as one may wish for the latter. Bearing this in mind, who is she to deny others the opportunity to fulfil their dream of flight, a facsimile though it may be? She's only had her wings for such a short time, and already she can't imagine returning to an earthbound existence.
What she does not expect (and on a moment's thought, really should have), are the inquiries made by the military enterprises interested in the technology. Not the wings, either - those are, admittedly, not very cost-effective when squared against notably cheaper systems that already do the job. What they're interested in, specifically, is the chip that would control them, and whether it can be used to integrate other equipment with the human mind.
Could she integrate weapons with the brain? Almost certainly. Could she do the same for machines they operate, tanks and planes and the like? Probably yes. She doesn't quite know how, what with the rather fundamental differences between the body of a vehicle and that of mammalian nature, but with a team of military engineers guiding her hand, she can't see why not.
But she isn't going to.
I don't design weapons. Is all the answer she gives before consigning the senders to her spam box. If they really want her tech, they can do the legwork themselves.
"Can you at least hear them out?" The Commander asks, nicely, when he one day arrives in her office to bring the matter up. Apparently, someone's had the bright idea to go over her head and appeal to her boss, instead. Only, Overwatch doesn't have the rights to her tech, which makes Angela wonder whether they expect the man to try and force the issue, or really are just that stupid.
"I don't do weapons," she replies simply.
"And I'm not asking you to. But our suppliers have been riding my ass about it for a month now, and I'm in no position to outright say no."
"I don't do weapons." She bristles, making a concentrated effort to keep her itching wings in. "I'm not connecting a brain with a tank, or a rifle, or a mech, or whatever else they ask. This isn't supposed to be weaponized! I made it to make people better, not- deadlier! If they want an additional set of arms to hold a rifle - fine. But the world doesn't need more weapons."
It's a long minute before the man replies, leaning his weight against the backrest of her office sofa.
"Sometimes, I'm afraid it might."
Everyone is wrong sometimes. Most people are wrong quite often. Father had once thought he was making the world safer with his inventions - his weapons. Then those very weapons started killing the people they were supposed to protect. The omnics aren't here to stay, and once they're gone? Against whom will those weapons be used?
She says none of this, waiting in silence as the Commander comes to a decision.
"I'm not going to make you, but I would appreciate it if you at least talked to them."
She doesn't. She's done without his appreciation so far.
Angela's first deployment in the capacity of a combat medic isn't anything to write home about, and neither is her second. She spends both on standby, both going off without a hitch, and so without a need of her.
The first her services are required is on her third mission, a botched hostage situation in France - notable for the perpetrators being human - and it isn't for her fellow agents.
She only enters the school when all is said and done, and though regrettable, Angela can't deny the impressive quality of the violence Overwatch has visited upon the terrorists. Their assault lasted all of half a minute during which the targets were for the most part dispatched, and the lesser part captured - broken and bloodied as they are, courtesy of Winston.
Angela passes them by with nary a glance. They'll live. Her PFUMN nanites can be administered by every person present in the building, and what inconveniences their application may cause, she has little sympathy to spare for.
Not with what she finds once she and the rest of medical staff burst through the gymnasium entrance, where the hostages have been held for the past two days.
A row of bodies lines the wall, all about Brigitte's age, on their knees and face down, a blotch of brown on the wall behind with the one omnic exception. She freezes for just a moment, taking the sight in, before making to check every each one; headshot wounds fail to kill with a surprising regularity. Granted, this is mostly when the person doing the shooting doesn't know what they're doing.
The ones here did.
"Angela?" Winston's voice rumbles to her side. Right. The dead are dead and will still remain so. Time to help the living.
The operation is lauded a great success on their part. The hostages that have been killed were the cause for their arrival, not its result. They've saved literally everyone they possibly could have. A cause for pride. Still, rather than sharing a drink with the others, Angela finds herself back in her office almost as soon as they touch down in Zurich, wings cocooned around her, their glow warm against her cold skin.
"Athena?"
"Yes?"
She works her mouth for a few seconds, wondering what it is she's meant to ask.
"Nothing." She wrings her hands when no words come. "Sorry."
"...Would you like to perform my maintenance?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"The air filters in my server room will soon be due for exchange. Would you like to do it?"
She would. It's a menial task, perhaps, but the hum of Athena's hardware and her guiding voice set her just that bit more at ease than either the dead silence of her office, or the music blasting in her earbuds. She doesn't immediately leave once the job is done, and AI doesn't urge her to.
"I don't get it." She admits at last, having spent a good half hour in companionable silence, back against one of the monolithic computers.
She's long known the threats Overwatch deals with are not just the omnics. It used to be that way, first during the war when the whole of humanity fought with a common purpose against the omnic menace, and then immediately after. But, with the war over, and Overwatch still there, available, it was only a matter of time before humanity's heroes were appropriated for other purposes. Only a matter of time before bereft of a common enemy, humanity fractured right back into what it's always been. Before people who would once have fought side by side for their world's future became rivals, or even enemies, again.
Even so, she somehow did not expect - did not allow herself, maybe - to see man unleash such violence upon fellow man. To use innocent lives as nothing more than currency to freely spend with no consideration or care that they would've gone on, otherwise, and a hundred times over any life that came before. A generation certain to reap the rewards of her work. With a thousand years ahead of them, they could've become anyone, achieve anything - or nothing at all, the way most people now don't, living perfectly good lives still.
Instead, they're dead. A footnote to somebody else's failed ambition.
"That's why we're here." Father reassures her upon bringing the matter up with him on Athena's prompting. "You can't beat yourself up over other people's actions. At the end of the day, you can only do so much, and then have to keep going."
"I know that. It's just-" She pauses, coming up short on answers and flaring her wings in frustration. "I just hate it."
"Good." Father smiles. It's a wan thing. "It means your head's in the right place. Hold onto that feeling. It's when it stops that you should be worried."
As far as advice goes, it's not very useful. But then, Father still refuses to get his arm replaced, so maybe she shouldn't expect him to offer any more immediate solutions than just toughing it out. He's right about one thing, though. There's no choice but to keep going.
For her own sake and others'.
The disappearance of one Lena Oxton on the virgin flight of a teleporting jet prototype comes as a blow to the organisation as a whole, and their resident gorilla in especial. Personally, Angela doesn't learn about the accident for the entire day following it. Not until she passes by the small memorial set up for the girl in the atrium on her way out, and matches the face with Winston's young friend from the aviation branch.
It's a whole ordeal, and with good reason. Losing a pilot to a piece of experimental tech is one thing, losing her to shoddy quality control is another. Generally speaking, no matter how much one prepares, there is always a measure of risk involved with experimental technology. Some issues, inevitably, invariably slip through all the way into the prototype phase, Angela knows this well. Only, it turns out there was little such preparation to speak of. The slipstream team has been severely behind schedule due to exactly the problem of losing teleported matter every now and then. Rather than work the kinks out, it transpires that they simply put together the plane to have something to show for the billions so far poured into the project, hoping and praying it wouldn't fail them at a critical moment. But fail it did. The plane came back from the jump without its pilot, and subsequently all but vaporised in the following crash.
Now, had the matter ended with shutting the project down and blacklisting the people involved from any further occupation within the scientific field, senseless and tragic as it is, it wouldn't involve Angela in any capacity.
Then, Lena Oxton's ghost shows up in the cafeteria.
Angela's not there when it happens, but the security feed Athena shows her corroborates the dozen-odd testimonies from the people on-site. The girl appears for exactly three point three (repeating) seconds, looking panicked, before flickering out of existence to appear in two more spots at the same time, looking at each other, and vanishing again.
Chronal disassociation, they call it. A fancy name obscuring the fact nobody quite understands what is happening beyond the dawning realisation the slipstream engine has somehow interfaced with spacetime in its entirety.
The disgraced scientists are brought back, this time under Winston's supervision, to reverse engineer their own work for a shot at their and Oxton's future. Angela doesn't understand the half of the gorilla's rambling on what it is they do, but three months later, and a documented forty seven accounts of their missing pilot appearing across Britain with a further five in the HQ and a score of unconfirmed sightings, they manage to confine Lena Oxton to a singular space and roughly the same time, if not quite physical reality. It is also then that her own expertise as a doctor, and the world's foremost expert in miniaturisation, is employed.
The girl's reaction is… peculiar, to put it mildly. The last (and only) time they spoke, the Brit was all smiles and so full of questions regarding her wings. Now?
Oxton startles something fierce when she enters her confinement chamber, and if ghosts could go pale, Angela is sure this one would. She squeaks, flickers, and reappears in three spots before settling into the one farthest from her.
Angela exchanges a look with Winston, and keeps by the door while the ape makes for his hyperventilating friend.
"Lena?" He worriedly, futilely, reaches out, his hand hovering around the shoulder he can't touch.
A familiar face seems to help. The girl wrenches the last breath in to hold (does she even need air, Angela wonders), before nodding.
"I'm okay," she exclaims, sounding not very okay. Which she must notice, given her much more steady attempt a second later. "I'm okay. Just-" Her eyes link with Angela's. "I took you for someone else. Sorry."
To call the girl's condition fascinating doesn't do it justice. To her telling, years have passed since her disappearance, though how many, she struggles to say. Years she has spent trying to find her way back in what she interchangeably calls the torrent, storm, and ocean of time, which she has only finally managed with the construction of the holding chamber. No recollection whatsoever of her various documented appearances in spite of her insistence on having kept the memories of her brief dips into the physical world. Likewise, they find no evidence of her presence in any of the places Oxton claims to have appeared in. Whether this is due to the fragile state of her mind, or having not yet made her appearance there, remains unanswered. From what she manages to glimpse from Winston's animated, long-winded, highly technical explanations, the girl exists potentially everywhere at every time. Potentially being the key word, as she obviously does not (but could, hence her multiple instances in a single point in time).
It's all very potentially interesting, but not what Angela's been brought in for.
Where the Brit's health is concerned, Angela finds herself stumped. In practical terms, Oxton's body doesn't exist. Not an atom of her. And yet, in spite of there being nothing for light to reflect while also not being the source of it, they can see her just fine. Same with the sounds she makes, be it her voice, the snapping of fingers, or her steps (which, despite making sound, do not disturb the dust they pour out on the floor). Angela would very much like to see the girl be put in a vacuum chamber to check whether they could still see andhear her there; she certainly doesn't seem to need air. Hunger comes and goes of its own accord, sometimes even replaced by fullness. Curiously enough, though she's not affected by it, Oxton can tell the temperature.
All in all, a mystery beyond her skillset, and not one she particularly cares to unravel with some sixteen tons worth of electronics she's supposed to be cramming into a portable device.
Ordinarily, Angela would propose fixing the girl with a new body, said device already installed into it. However, it's not obvious how much help, if any, that would be. In the first place, Oxton's original body needs to physically exist for any possibility of surgery. Secondly, it is of possibly lethal concern how the discarded flesh would behave. It's entirely possible it would seek to reconnect with the brain in its new chassis, of which messy results Angela would rather not think of. An external is the safer option.
For the most part, she simply elects to follow Winston's instruction - insofar as it can be followed, anyway. Miniaturisation is not about simply making everything smaller. There exist hard limits to how far, say, the humble transistor can be scaled down and still work. At a certain point, the heat generated by electrical current will inevitably melt it (same as it will every other device and material), at which point one must either consider an alternative route for said current, a way to cool the transistor down, or an output reduction - all three of which necessitate further modification of the interconnected systems, and so it is with every single part. In other words, a lot of work.
Angela doesn't mind. In the absence of suitable test subjects she might as well focus on bringing at least this one girl back to life. Besides, she's done worse. Her first ever iteration of nanites were a building to what is now an apple. What is a single room compared to that?
Plus, it's not like she's even doing the bulk of the work. That would be Winston and the team under his command. It's so strange seeing the gorilla type away, his huge hands and hulking frame dwarfing everyone and everything and still so obviously in his element; focused and measured. Nothing at all like what she knows him capable of in the field. That aside from the fact seeing a gorilla working a lab in the capacity of a researcher is already something of a spectacle. But then, Angela supposes her threshold for the strange is somewhere north of the regular.
The Chronal Accelerator (or, in Angela's heart of hearts, Persönlicher Chronischer Verschiebungsereignis-Anker/Leuchtfeuer) ends up more than what they had initially set out to achieve, and not really by design. The way Oxton describes it, the confinement chamber feels akin to a bog in the middle of the ocean in that when she was thrown there by the current of time, thrashing, lost, and strungout, the dense soup of it sucked her in and refused to let go back out into open water. The PCVA/L, in contrast, is a beacon, and one the girl can spot a facility over, in a different building. Angela would be sceptical if not for the way Oxton perks up on the recorded feed at the exact moment they first activate it.
The main difference, it turns out, is that with the PCVA/L, Oxton can let go.
It gives them all quite the fright when just a few celebratory minutes after freeing the girl from her confinement, she vanishes in a flash of blue, causing Angela's heart to painfully needle with its drop all the way to her heels. Thankfully, the crisis only lasts the whole of a few seconds it takes Athena to inform them of their patient's whereabouts, a fifty three seconds' distance back - other than being a little scared, none the worse for wear.
What fear there is soon gives way to elation on the Brit's part. Angela supposes being able to control one's own flow of time (or whatever else the phenomena may actually be) is as good a reason as they come with the girl's employment prospects following her accident being what they were. Her condition, managed as it's become with the PCVA/L, effectively precludes her from returning to the air force - the job which she'd spent a quarter of her life pursuing. With her newfound ability, however, she's once again become an asset.
For one fearless enough to not just volunteer for an experimental flight programme, but also go right back into service the moment she's able, the freshly minted agent Oxton appears mighty skittish indeed on her first assignment en-route to London, where an armed omnic insurrection has broken out following a period of unrest. This, Angela knows, creates an opportunity.
For both of them, really.
"Nervous?" She makes the non-question. With just a little more determination, the girl's foot would tap a hole through the VTOL floor.
"That obvious, am I?" Oxton chuckles, or possibly chokes. It's not easily discernible which.
"Just about." Angela smiles her best encouraging smile. "Are you feeling alright? The first deployment can be nerve wracking."
"Yeah! Yeah. Just- never been boots on the ground before, in the thick of things, y'know."
"Ah." She offers in understanding. She's not yet forgotten what it felt like; wondering whether the next bomb would fall too close.
"I mean-" The rookie continues. "Sure I was air force, basic, officer course, all the rest of it. But we're not actually supposed to see close combat. Just fly in, drop the payload on the poor sods on the ground and get out. Uh, no offence."
"Hah!" Mr. Reinhardt barks a laugh. "None taken. Us poor sods on the ground would be dead men walking without our angels in the sky. You have that in common with Angela here."
"Preventing injury is the best medicine." Angela concedes the point.
"In that case, I'll be doing my best to stop any harm coming your way!" Cute. The girl even snaps a salute.
"I'll take your word for it." Angela intercedes before Mr. Reinhardt can say something else inspiring. "But do please focus on yourself. Statistically speaking, if you're going to die, it's most likely to happen on your first deployment."
"O-oh?" the girl stutters, blood draining from her face.
"Oh, yes. I was torn to bits on my first. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for my tech."
Something shuffles in the periphery of her vision - a quick glance confirms said something to be Father, giving her an intense look.
"That's a relief-" Oxton lets out a laugh sounding anything but relieved. "Uh- that you can put us back together. Not that you got blown up. Obviously."
"Well, not quite. It's experimental technology. Still in trials. I would need your written application as a volunteer to be allowed to bring you back from death's own door."
"Angela." Father speaks up, a warning in his tone which Angela studiously ignores. Now is not the time for squeamishness.
"Luckily-" she continues. "-we've still got an hour before we arrive in London. If you're up to it, we could wrap up formalities in maybe half that time."
They don't wrap up the formalities in either half, or full hour. Oxton appears more than a little ill at the suggestion alone, and the girl really does need to be at her best for this mission. The Null Sector is not to be taken lightly. A shame, but of all the people present on the plane sans Angela herself, she already has the best chances of survival awarded by technology. If wounded, she can simply let go, and return herself to a moment in time she was yet unharmed. It's not foolproof; a well-placed bullet could still pulverise her brain before she got the chance to rewind, at which point nobody quite knows what would happen. It is not impossible that the girl is well and truly immortal, beyond what even Angela and her uncle are.
Still. It certainly wouldn't hurt her to sign up for a backup plan.
Wouldn't hurt the rest of the team, either.
Unfortunately, Mr. Reinhardt is quite open with his desire to go out in a blaze of glory. Not very surprising, she supposes, given the religious underpinning of the bona fide crusading order he is part of. Father, however, subscribes to none of this nonsense, and it is only his very own obstinance which holds him from accepting the solution his daughter offers. Angela's positive she can get him to come around eventually, once she masters the tech and dispels all doubts around it, and should the worst come to pass in the meantime… She's sure he and Mother will forgive her for keeping him in stasis until then.
Angela doesn't miss the looks he gives her on the plane, ones promising they'll be speaking about the matter once the mission's over. Indeed, with all of them safely back in Zurich the following day, a very familiar knocking pulls her out of her work.
"That was out of the line, what you did yesterday."
"What did I do yesterday? Other than my job, I mean."
"Angela, I love you, but don't think I'm blind. You tried pushing your application on the rookie at her most vulnerable. That's not right."
Were it anyone else she was speaking with, Angela wouldn't bother holding in the scoff. Not right.
"As opposed to what? Just letting her die?"
"Letting her die? That's not what we're talking about and you know it. You saw an opportunity to push someone into your programme and took it."
"And what other time was I supposed to offer? I didn't want to push her before, there was no need to, but I wasn't lying about those statistics."
"Yes, I read those figures too after you joined up."
"And I've lived through them." The man grimaces at the reminder. Good. He and Mother of all people should understand the value of her work. "Yours, too. You know what Mom was like when you got hurt in Turkey? I'm only trying to help. It isn't hurting anyone to sign up. If they never need it, all the better, but if they do? Sure it might not work, but even a percent chance to live is better than none. I'm giving people that chance, how is that wrong?"
It's a harsh truth, but Angela knows better than anyone else that the people right now signed up for her resurrection programme are unlikely to be the beneficiaries of it. She needs to test. To iterate. See her theories applied to practise that she can glimpse the exact ways they're lacking. She has hope, of course, that her tech will actually work, and every intention of making it so. All the same, the body of evidence gathered over the course of her life is stacked against her. Or rather, against her volunteers. It's why she wouldn't dare do more than keep Father's body stable. Not until she knows for sure she won't scramble his brain in the process.
With all that said, the chances aren't zero. Miniscule though it is, the possibility remains she will succeed in bringing her subjects back from the dead now, rather than on her hundredth or later try. Whether the chances are one in a hundred or a thousand or even worse than that is hardly of any importance, either. A one in a million chance is an infinite improvement over nothing at all. Were it her choice to make, Angela would sign up in a heartbeat, content in knowing she risks nothing but stands to gain everything, and failing that, she would be helping someone else, millions, billions of someone else's, down the line.
Short of convincing Father to partake as her arguments are, the man also can't find one of his own to refute them. And how could he? She's right. Why accept death when it can be prevented? Just because every single human in history has been forced to up till this point? Because they can't conceive of the world without it? They've already disposed of so much pointless suffering. Simple sanitation has saved billions. Their understanding of the human body and how to treat it, a similar number. Smallpox, measles, polio, plague - once simply faucets of life, eradicated. Cancer, diabetes, AIDS - all treatable. Childbirth, completely safe save for extraneous factors. Stillbirths, almost gone. The war and its depravations have put much of this progress on hold, reversed some, even - with cholera and dysentery coming back a vengeance, but so long as help is there to be given, life need not suddenly end.
Even so, all the advances they've made have ever been but stopgaps to slow down the inevitable. That is not for the lack of will. All medical pursuits and the giants behind them have always had the same goal in mind since the first time a human dressed a wound - stop death.
She is merely the culmination of this millenia-long effort. The end point of it that sooner or later has had to have come. If not by her hand, then somebody else's. If not this century, then the next, or the one after.
But she is here. Now. And with her, at last, death can finally, properly, be stopped.
It's a sentiment Angela has come to expect will rustle more than a few feathers. She's no God. The nerve on those people to pretend they have something of value to say knocking about their empty skulls by using written language - yet another human invention their shrivelled-up little brains are so ill-suited to handle that among the myriad of great uses words have they would choose to vandalise her door, instead.
Well, theirs is a self-solving issue. By clinging to their flesh, they ensure she will eventually win. While she and hers shall remain able and hale, they will wither and waste away - a fate they would consign all who will ever live to, and for what? An existence in accordance with nature? The very same nature whom generation after generation spat in the cruel face of so these idiots could even be born in the first place and live free of cold, strife, and hunger? There's long been nothing natural about their species, not since the first primate picked up a stick and understood its value. Nature would have them live in the trees, perpetually afraid and with every reason to be. If the purists are so enamoured with it, they're welcome to run off to Africa where they can shed their clothes and become witless animals again, as is the logical conclusion of their activities.
More likely, they'll come crawling for help once their bodies start to decay and fail them.
Either way, inevitably, she's the one who will come out on the top. With this in mind, all that her opposition amounts to is a waste of time. A waste of lives. Pointless, and worse still, preventable. And so, she will prevent it.
Humanity's relationship with death is a deeply twisted thing. It defines nearly everything. Sculpts the shape of what life even is - at its core, a struggle to avoid death for as long as possible. Every day so much time and effort are spent on ensuring there will be another. Finding food. Finding and maintaining shelter. Finding rest to keep up with the demands this puts on one's body. How little time is left to actually live, rather than just survive? Always the clock is ticking, always looming large. They set out into life with a few short decades to achieve everything they ever can and only a fraction of that at their most able. After a certain point, the human body only ever grows more and more limited with each passing year. More and more a prison to one's ambitions and wants. More difficult to use. More damaged.
Why suffer the choices imposed upon them by death, and its lackey, time? Why not devote the first hundred years of one's life to securing the next thousand? Why not pursue one's interest, instead, secure in knowing they will never be too old and infirm to pursue a career at a later point? Why not have children at five hundred, or whenever one feels ready rather than forced by the clock ticking at the back of their head?
Why let there be yet another lost generation?
Let them dispose of it all. Redefine life. Its purpose, its cause, and its nature. Let there never be too late for anything! She herself will be thirty soon enough, and in spite of focusing so entirely on her work, nothing of life has slipped her by, nor will it ever should she one day actually feel so inclined to experience it.
Which, at the moment, she is not. Thank you very much, Mother.
"...Is this your way of saying I'll have to wait a thousand years for grandchildren?"
An ugly chortle finds its way past Angela's lips, right along the tea now staining her shirt.
"I don't think Brigitte will make you wait that long." She tries sidestepping the question, eyes focused on inspecting the damage.
"So… longer?"
Angela rolls her eyes. It's not that she's opposed to settling down per se, just that she can't even imagine herself doing so; her inclinations, or rather lack thereof, being only one reason. No human has ever lived on a timescale they're talking about, and she's not the person she was ten years ago. Who will she be in another hundred, let alone thousand years?
"That's the beauty of it, isn't it? I can take forever to figure it out."
"It does sound nice," Mother concedes to Angela's soaring heart. "But forever? Forever is an awfully long time. Two hundred years I can imagine, maybe even a few more, but forever? Don't you think you'll get bored?"
She gives the question all due consideration of the second it takes her to come up with an answer.
"Nah. But assuming I did, I could always end my life myself."
Mother's smile slips into something less pleasant.
"Please don't joke about things like that."
"I'm not joking." Angela protests, hands raised in surrender. "All I mean is- death would be a choice. Not something forced upon you. Other than- you know." A small lull falls between them "Besides, I don't actually mean forever. I don't expect to outlast the heat death of the universe! Even the Sun would be pushing, but who knows? Maybe I will."
Her answer gives the woman a pause.
"It's… so weird to hear you say things like that. A billion years?"
Angela shrugs. "Like I said, who knows? Anyway, I don't expect to get bored of living any time soon, not while there are more mysteries to unravel in the universe than we even know of. I want to walk on the Moon. See Mars turn green. Visit another star system. And I can reasonably expect to see all these things happen. And you could, too! Everyone could!" She beams.
Mother's smile doesn't quite reach her eyes when she returns it.
It's a work in progress.