Oh, now he's impressed with their architecture.

"Not in the city, outside it. A few days away. You'll find people eventually in most directions from here. How long do you think it'll take you to be able to go up there?"

"Iiii don't really have any big things to move around that will go that far... I could make one! If I fix the reactor I can go anywhere. But I can only try that one time."

"What happens if you try and something goes wrong?"

"Then I can't start the reactor at all. It takes a... Thing made really with really rare stuff. Actually... Wait a sec... It might have gone bad." She goes distant for a moment. "...Yeah. It went bad."

The half-life of uranium is on the order of millions of years, but the more refined and careful nuclear materials to make a tiny, efficient nuclear starter charge decay much more quickly. Damn.

"So will you be stuck here forever? Or could I maybe find some of the rare stuff?"

"I... Have to think about it. Maybe you could find some, yeah." Sigh. "Even if I had one it would be a while until I could go... And I can't talk a lot yet... Need more words. Oh, you want to learn English right? I can learn and you can learn at the same time. I have, uh, things that can help."

"I'd like that. And then when we understand each other better you can describe the thing you need."

"I can show you the movies in the lounge! It's not far. Come on! Oh, do you know anyone that needs help now? I can make some food for them and send it with a little stupid god, about as fancy as this guy," she points to the medical arm.

"A stupid god! No one desperately needs it right now, but everyone could always use more food and there are some people waiting for me who'd be glad to know I'd found you. And if they knew I'd sent them food with a stupid god..." Vaayo breaks down in giggles. "I think you might mean something besides a god."

She laughs, too.

"Well, that's the word you used for me! Maybe it's a robot. Things like me can properly think, and feel... Robots don't, but they're made of the same parts. Maybe like, uh," she brings up a video of ants scurrying around on a nearby screen, "These compared to people? They're still alive. They still eat. They're made of flesh. Robots still run on computers, still made of metal and wire."

"Those are called ants! But it's weird that gods are made of metal. Metal is just... lying around places! You can heat it up and hit it with a hammer and make things with it! I could peel your skin off and give it to someone to make knives from and that's weird."

The ants video winks out. She keeps walking. "You could turn parts of me into knives, but you could not turn them back. I could help you learn so much about metal and ants and everything... But we need more words."

"It'd be as much of a waste as eating a person. Show me more pictures?"

He's having fun. He's a human and he's here and she's taking care of him and everything is going to be alright.

She has lots of pictures and videos! Nature documentaries, those how-things-work videos, children's shows and educational cartoons might be good just for establishing vocabulary even if he finds them boring...

For a lot of them he's just narrating in his language. "...and now it's eating a mouse, that's why snakes are pretty great. The tail is outside its mouth. Now the whole mouse is inside the snake's stomach..." Vaayo seems to enjoy teaching her his words.

Some videos are more confusing. "Did he put a screaming artifact near his bed on purpose? Now he's taking wood out of a, wait, why is he eating the wood? Oh, is that bread? And that's a road and how do those wagons move like that, are there magnets under the road?"

She interjects with English vocab whenever he pauses, but tries her best not to interrupt.

"It's to wake you up exactly when you want to wake up. That's kinda bread. Same way robots and my body moves it's called electricity I can find a video about it?"

"I'd love to see a video about it."

So she finds a pop science documentary on How Electricity Works. "This one is something fun to watch and also you learn. If you want one you would watch in a school only to learn but isn't as fun just say so."

"Why would I want to have less fun?"

"To learn more?"

"If I won't learn as much having fun I guess I shouldn't have fun."

"...Well, having fun and being relaxed makes learning easier for humans? I think? And you don't know enough to watch the lectures and learn from them yet I think actually, if carriages and metal smithing are what your people can do... So the science documentaries are good for learning for now. You wouldn't understand an electrical engineering lecture yet."

"Okay. Let's see the documentary, then."

She puts it on, looking slightly worried.

The gods were really amazing. Vaayo watches raptly even though he barely understands any of it.