In a story I am working on, there are several people with “godly” powers, but those are very discrete and do only exactly what their name says. For example:
- Omniscience. You can see, hear, feel, smell, and touch everything on the world at the same time, but it doesn’t mean you have the “processing power” to comprehend all that at once.
- Perfect memory: An absolute eidetic memory, but it doesn’t come with the capability to sift through all the info in your head any faster than a normal mind.
- Super mind: Contrary to the last two, this one would have a very powerful brain, but not extra capabilities.
- Immortality: You would not die. Period. That would not make you stay young, or regenerate deadly wounds, heal diseases, etc…
- Endless Youth: You would be “young” for all your life, but eventually die of old age looking like in your early 20s.
You get the idea, they are a very vertical slice of a divinity’s power that does ONLY what’s advertised. I have pretty clear limitations on most of them, but there is one that’s nagging me.
Unlimited energy.
At first I thought a normal human with unlimited energy resources would not get tired, so could stay always awake and run full sprint for days if needed, and didn’t necessarily need to eat anything, eventually getting 0% body fat. But now I think it’s nothing like that.
We are handwaving an unlimited energy pool, yes, but we want to keep everything else as “realist” as possible. Yes a man with unlimited energy could run for longer than others, but eventually his body would give up. This man should also need to sleep, if not to restore energy and rest, to let his brain “cool off”, maybe? Also he would need to eat… Yeah he doesn’t really need the calories, but I’m guessing this man would need some intake to help his growth, healing, or simply to have material to grow other cells with.
What kind of limitations would this man have?
How much could he stretch his body’s resistance before it giving up? For example: how long could he be sprinting as hard as he can? Or how long could he be awake (if it depends at all on “energy usage”, I know sleep is needed even if you spent your day looking at the ceiling and thinking of nothing)?
I guess one of his problems would be heat too. Doing exercise heats you up. We sweat and pant to get rid of extra heat, but we rarely get enough energy to keep exercising until we have a heat stroke, unless it’s very hot to begin with. Depending on his limitations, this man might put himself in danger of that more often than he would like.
I know very little of human physiology (other than being human myself) but as I’ve come to understand strength, elasticity, resistance, etc, improve in our bodies while we rest after making an efforts that’s more demanding than we usually do. In a way, we break ourselves and when we get fixed we are better than before (much like Saiyans!). Given that our Duracell® man can bring his body to the limit quite easily, how would that work? Would he see vast improvements over a short time working out? Or would the tears in the muscles be too much to his healing capabilities eventually if he keeps turning it up to eleven?
How right I am about his food needs? I guess he would need to drink as much as anyone, but what about food? Would he be able to fast as much as wanted/needed without repercussions? Or would he need to eat as a regular person? My nutrition knowledge is not quite up to standard here so any help is welcome.
(1) - How much “better” than a regular man would he be? In any way you can think, if at all.
If you have any other interesting things to say about things I haven’t thought to ask, please do say them. Any help is welcome. Also, I’ll be checking comments and updating the question with extra info if it’s needed. Thank you all!
Edit: (1) I took away this question because it's been said that it's too opinion based, and after further inspection I agree.
I didn't want to specify exactly what energy means because I do not know enough to make assumptions on the issue, but I think "endless energy" would mean that the man does not need a source of calories, he would make as many as needed. Then again don't take this as an invariable truth, if you find this makes no sense or there are better explanations, please do tell. As said, I'm not an expert on nutrition or biology.
I seem to answer myself most of the time, but it was mostly me trying to illustrate what I know (or what I think I know) on the issue. What I need is mostly to know if what I am guessing may be right, and if not, what would be a more reasonable answer. In the end, I won't bore my readers with hard science, but I would want to know what I can expect of a character with that capability, so me knowing the hard facts would help greatly.