… Do they have any of the instruction manuals? 'Cause they might have useful things like composition of the battery or something, but he's sort of hoping they already checked for that?

The computers do have instruction manuals! Maybe he could figure it out, those diagrams are gibberish to even the best engineers amongst them (if they weren't the Al Bhed would be able to just build the thing themselves).

He'll have a look at them! He has a decent high-school-plus-a-bit level of education in chemistry and physics and a passing acquaintance with how lots of this stuff works from general summons where they didn't require the angel to be perfectly knowledgeable about such things.

Is it more comprehensible to him?

Mmmore or less! If he knows any quantum physics it'll be easier to follow the diagrams and then understand that the basic principle behind this battery is very similar to how transistors work, back in his world. If he doesn't then it's gibberish.

He knows some about transistors because he has looked into computers a bit before, and he knows bits and pieces about quantum physics, so he can probably pick up bits of it… but unfortunately he does not understand it all.

He tells the engineers what he can, anyway, and hopes they will be sensible with the knowledge.

They have never heard of quantum physics and would definitely like to learn sometime, but if his knowledge is not sufficient to help with energising the machina they will enlist his help for other things.

Other things he will do.

And eventually they're done.

"Thank you very much for your help. The Al Bhed—and, if this works, the people of Spira—are in your debt."

"No problem," he responds, then he goes to find Kaede.

He really really doubts it'll work and he really really hopes he hasn't made anything worse.

The party's in HQ, sort of standing around, not doing much.

"They are apparently done!" he reports. "I have no idea about some of the stuff they were using, though."

"What about it?"

"I don't know how it works, though it seems similar to some stuff I have seen at home, and they are just sort of blindly using the operator manual. Ish."

"Yeah. That's kinda all we can do, a lot of knowledge has been lost."

"For a reason!"

"The reason being 'using it to build technological things causes Sin to be attacked', right? Or does it attack places that merely hold such knowledge and do nothing about it?"

"I don't think it attacks places that hold knowledge for any other reason than the fact that they also usually hold machina."

"Well maybe we'll get lucky some day and manage to summon a nice Maker and get some of that back."

"They can do that? Wow that'd be cool."

"No! It'll only make things worse!"

"… If we do it very carefully away from mainland Spira then it'd probably mean Sin would attack us and not you?" suggests Theo.

He doesn't seem to have an answer to that.

"I'm gonna need to make out with you later for that," she tells him.

He smirks. "Hopefully we'll get a chance to actually put my idea into practice."

A Crusader approaches them. "The Operation is about to commence. You should make sure you're ready. We won't be able to keep fields from attacking HQ while we're occupied with Sin, you should be able to defend yourselves."