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Pidge dreams of a city. It is strikingly beautiful, unnaturally perfect, even. The grime and disrepair and ugly utilitarian architecture that are ubiquitous in all the cities they've known before are notably absent here. On the horizon, they can see some buildings disassembling or reshaping or erecting themselves, as if it were no more difficult than raising a tent. In the space between and above the buildings fly craft which could be loosely described as flying cars, if flying cars did not much resemble actual cars and had—apparently—few to no constraints on their shape, size, ornamentation, or general practicality.
Walking down the street, they see the people of the city, some of whom look like ordinary humans. Others have fantastical features—purple skin, cat ears, cute curly horns, and robotic prosthetics, to name a few. There is at least one centaur. Very few of them look old, and none look unhealthy.
Pidge comes to an intersection and sees a park nearby, at its center, a fountain. It launches water into the air which, on its way down, shapes itself into animals that playfully chase each other across the water's surface. A crowd of people watch the show, many of them eating ice creams, snow cones, or more exotic snacks. These seem to originate from a small kiosk beside the path which, on command, forms food out of thin air.
In any other city, one would expect to see people who are downtrodden, struggling under the weight of their burdens—it's visible in their faces, their posture. There don’t appear to be any here. The prevailing mood in the city is one of peace, joy, and hope.
Pidge awakens to a star-studded dark sky. The sun and the earth are visible in the distance.
Pidge vaugely remembers that icon on the ring as a logo they saw on advertising for one of the innumerable DC comics movie reboots, but that logo was for the green lantern and not a blue one. The reviews for that movie had not been positive, so they never bothered to watch it, and they were a bigger fan of Marvel movies anyway. So what was up with the cosplay ring that was probably causing this protective blue bubble?
Pidge is almost glad they are alone out here because they would feel very silly if anyone saw what they were about to do, and that was yell random power-up phrases at the ring, just in case. Pidge couldn't think of anything else to try, and the ring was their only real clue.
"Green lantern powers activate! Shazam! Excelsior! Flame on? Hulk... smash? Alexa on? Go Go gadget send me back to earth? please?"
The fucking fuckity fuck was that? Okay, what? They did NOT expect any of that to actually work! And how in the stars was the voice in their head blue? because it definitely felt blue.
"Uhhh hello? can you explain what the hell is going on?? Who is this?"
"This is your ring's computer. Unable to comply with first instruction; 'what the hell is going on' insufficiently specified."
Okayyyyy, Pidge was getting some serious AI vibes here, and not the smart and humanlike kind of AI.
"Why, am I, in SPACE!?" Pidge gestures frantically at the empty void around them as if to emphasize the spaciness of the situation they found themselvs in.
Of course the spooky AI inside a cosplay ring wouldn't just tell Pidge why the hell they were in orbit instead of say... in their dorm where they should be, that would be too easy. Well, if the ring AI doesn't know how they got there, maybe it knows how it got here.
"Do you have data as to why you are in space? Or why you are on my finger? And I would like a more detailed description as to who you are than just 'my rings computer'. Please."
"No data for either query. This is a power ring. Exhaustive description of its capabilities is not recommended, but in summary, it stores and helps its user channel Blue Light."
Okay, blue light probably didn't just mean blue light, regular light no matter the frequency can't keep someone safe from vacuum.
"Define Blue Light please. What does channeling it do? And can I get a most used list of features? Or a top level list of the categories of features?"
"The Blue Light of Hope is a force/energy/essence* fundamental to the universe. Channeling Blue Light is a means of using it to affect the universe. Based on available data, the most used features are environmental shield and ring computer. Top level list of categories of features not available in your language. Direct upload of information is possible. Do you wish to proceed?"
*Up until this point, the computer's communication has felt like it used the English language, but here it conveys a meaning directly without using any identifiable word. That meaning could loosely be translated as any one of these three words, or a combination, although that would clearly be incomplete.
Okay definitely no 'direct uploads' right now, that sounds like a terrible idea to let an unknown AI have upload access to their brain like that.
"No direct upload! No messing around with my head without confirming with me twice that I am sure I want that, understood?"
Pidge has clicked on enough sudden 'do you agree to our data tracking?' popups by accident to know you have to make double sure you can't agree to something important by accident.
"Is there a way for me to propel myself? Can an enviromental shield protect someone during atmospheric reentry?" Pidge needs to know if they are just stuck here, in which case they will slowly thrist to death, or if they can land back on earth, or if they have to try and find the ISS2 in orbit somewhere and somehow ask the astronauts to let them inside.
"Compliance." The ring answers to their first command.
"Several transit options are available. Environmental shield will protect user during atmospheric entry, given sufficient Hope."
"Uhhhh... how much hope do I need to land? Wait, you said you helped store hope earlier, how much hope do you have?" If this thing ran on batteries of some kind (batteries powered by hope somehow??), and those batteries ran out... Then bye bye environmental shield and hello exploded eyeballs and VERY PAINFUL DEATH.
"Unable to quantify required amount of Hope in terms comprehensible to user. Requirement varies by atmospheric composition, but based on available data it is unlikely to fall outside of user's capacity. This ring does not store Hope, it stores Blue Light. Hope is supplied by the user."
"And Blue Light is generated by Hope?" What a weird system this was. Pidge wasn't going to second guess the AI right now while still in space, but things being powered by the 'Blue Light of Hope' was pretty out there. But there were bigger things to worry about right now.
When the AI said re-entry was unlikely to fall outside the user's capacity, that didn't sound very precise to Pidge, and their survival relied on precision. De-orbiting was quite literally rocket science, and without enough delta-V, you were fucked.
"Could you refine your estimate of how much Blue Light it would take and if I have enough of it if we did a test of moving 'upwards' in relation to the Earth at an acceleration of one metre per second for ten seconds? And if that would help, please enact that test."
"Partially correct."
"Executing given instructions estimated to deplete"—the ring gives a very small fraction—"of Blue Light reservoir. Performing test unlikely to significantly improve estimates of Blue Light usage."
"Okay calculate a path for landing at a major city, whichever I can get to using the least amount of energy. Is there a way for you to show your work so I can double-check it?" Pidge didn't want to be rude to the AI and make it think they didn't believe it was capable. But who knows if it was even programmed for orbital mechanics, or if it would just try to straight line it to whatever city was 'closest' even if that was horribly energy inefficient.
"Flight plan optimized for minimum Blue Light expenditure partially calculated. Finalization dependent upon scans to be completed in transit. Flight plan can be displayed to user's visual cortex."
It has direct access to their visual cortex, greaaat... Not at all spooky and ominous. Maybe they were just grumpy due to being in space though and would normally be much more charitable to the intentions of mysterious ring AI's, or maybe that shit was just spooky.
"Show flight path and estimate time to arrival at destination."
Pidge can now see what looks like a blue hologram floating in front of them displaying a flight plan. When they pay attention to specific parts, they can kind of zoom in on them and receive additional information. A simplified version of the flight plan is:
1. Accelerate to reduce velocity enough to enter low earth orbit.
2. Wait for the orbit to decay due to atmospheric drag.
3. Make minor adjustments while entering the atmosphere to avoid particularly a violent impact with the atmosphere and aim for a major city. Annotations on the flight plan indicate that it's unknown exactly which city will be closest at the time; there is a list of possibilities, clustered in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.
4. A few thousand feet before hitting the ground, accelerate to reduce velocity and come to a stop right above the ground.
Estimated time to arrival is 35-41 earth days. Projected Blue Light Expenditure is 1.7% of reservoir. Further annotations suggest that Blue Light expenditure can be reduced further if the user does not need to survive.
"Always include my survival and general safety as the first requirement of every plan you make, from now on. How fast can you get me to a major city if I'm prepared to spend a quarter of my remaining reservoir of Blue Light? How much of the remaining energy reservoir would I need to spend to get to a city in under 2 hours?" Time to see roughly how much stuff costs.
Pidge also wanted to see if they could get travel time down to within a day and still have plenty of energy left as a safety margin. Pidge did not have over a month of water and food, so that first flight plan was worthless. Though only spending 1.7% to de-orbit and land in a city seemed pretty efficient from what the flight plan showed to be Pidge's orbit.
"Default parameters prioritize user safety alongside other considerations. Transit to any major city on Earth can be achieved in approximately 40 minutes with 2.2% charge*, based on projected Hope range, or 2 hours with 2.1% charge. Insufficient Hope for faster methods of transit. There are small differences in charge required to reach different cities."
*In this context, 'charge' is clearly meant to be shorthand for the Blue Light reservoir.
Okay... What? Only a .1% charge different between a month of travel time and 2 hours of travel time. Pidge guesses all the costs are upfront for initial thrust or used at the point of landing, or maybe its the re-entry shielding that is the majority of the cost, something along those lines to explain why it all seems to cost roughly the same amount of charge.
"Uhhh... begin the 40 minute transit to a major population center on the North American continent, whichever is cheapest in terms of charge." Doesn't really matter to PIdge where they land as long as it's on the right continent. They can just catch a high speed shuttle or hypertrain back to the school when they land.
"Compliance. Proceeding with flight plan. 40 minute travel time dependent on sufficient Hope output."
Pidge starts moving, and they feel a slight acceleration, but it doesn't seem like they're going very fast. If they're paying attention, they may notice a shift in the Blue Light they are connected to.
Well, without anything nearby to see moving past you, how could you even tell what your relative velocity in space is anyway without any tools to do it. But Pidge has no reason to think the ring isn't de-orbiting them at the pace it said it would.
Now that the shock of being suddenly in orbit instead of in their room has worn off, being able to see outer space without it being through the "window" in a simulated cockpit was pretty cool! The stars have never seemed so bright and distinct without the atmosphere there to dull them. It is very pretty and Pidge is excited to see the stars like this. Pidge didn't expect to be able to go into space untill well after they graduated from Galaxy Garrison so here was the silver lining to this weird situation.
"Ring, maybe now you could list out the major categories of functions you have." A 40 minute trip seems like a good time to try and get some more answers from the ring.