"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.

"Top level list of categories of features not available in your language. Direct upload of information is possible. Do you wish to proceed?"

"Do not proceed with direct upload. Do your best job describing the functions in my language then, or skip the untranslatable functions." Nooope, no direct acess to their brain allowed until they know more about this ring. Pidge has ever seen movies about technozombies before.

"Compliance."

The ring starts describing the various ways in which Blue Light can be used to manipulate matter and energy in roundabout ways using words Pidge knows, but physics they have no understanding of, and in many cases physics which no one on their Earth has any understanding of. Very little of it makes any sense. If uninterrupted, the ring will continue for hours.

"Ring, this is too much detail of specific functions! You are being too granular.Try for large overarching categories of things, please. Like I know probably you are doing hundreds of individual actions to land me back on earth but as a top level category this is just Flight. Attempt to describe your functions in categories that broad." Ughhhh dumb AI. Pidge has known VR game interfaces with better natural language skills for interpreting orders.

"Motion. Heat. Electromagnetism. Light. Sensing. Computation. Interface with user's mind. Constructs. Others your language has no words for."

"Thank you! That's a much better top level category list. Now we can start getting slightly more in depth." Constructs sure sounded promising, the other categories seemed a bit more self explanatory but was Constructs could be building stuff out of nanotech maybe? A mini fabricator? A replicator like star trek? Could possibly be something very cool.

"Soooo, using a simple description that abstracts out the fine technical details and can be said in 20 seconds or less, what is a construct?"

"Constructs are objects made of Blue Light."

Ohhhh, you can make stuff out of Blue light? Pidge still doesn't really know what the Ring means when it says Blue light but science fiction had plenty of 'hard light' tech in it, maybe it was something like that. 
"How much charge would making a 30cm by 30cm cube cost? Maintaning relative velocity with me so it doesnt immediatly float away."

"Charge requirement depends upon duration and characteristics of construct."

“Is a duration of 30 seconds and whatever characteristics are cheapest a specific enough instruction? I just want to see something made of Blue Light. I don’t know if constructs are expensive or what one would even look like, I’m just trying to set some baselines here so I can personally experience and understand your capabilities better.”

Pidge puts good odds on a construct looking like the science fiction trope of hardlight, like from their dads old retro Halo games.

"Affirmative."

Sigh. 

”And how much would a construct with those parameters cost in remaining percentage of charge?”

The cost is negligible.

“Please create a construct a half metre in front of me with those parameters that maintains relative velocity with me.” 

A thin line of blue light bursts forth from their ring, connected to a 30cm wide cube made of a faint blue light. It looks thin and insubstantial, hollow with translucent surfaces. After 30 seconds, it disappears.

Ohhhh neat, cube achieved. So the baseline of simple shapes has been set, now it is time for Pidge to figure out if they can do more with this feature.

“Is there no limit on the complexity of constructs? Can they replicate the physical properties of other materials? Can I make construct versions of electronics or things involving complex chemistry? Could I use lots of tiny constructs thrown in a certain direction to propel myself in zero G?” Depending on the answer to these questions there were some really cool implications for this tech.

"Charge use and Hope requirements are the only limitations. All listed applications are possible."

Niiiiiiice. Now Pidge just has to figure out how to charge this thing and then they could do some very cool stuff with construct versions of prohibitively expensive real life superconducting materials when they get back to school.

Let’s see if just thinking hopeful thoughts at the ring works to charge it.

Hopeful thoughts, hopeful thoughts. Real life space experience sure improves Pidge’s chances at getting on a deep space mission after graduation! And a deep space mission means they can maybe try and find clues as to what happened to their dad and brother during the Kerberos mission. This ring that is very obviously not normal earth tech will probably also get pidge a lot of goodwill from the government if they turn it in. Flying in space is nothing at all like using one of the simulators and thats neat.

Was that last thought hopeful or just happy? Hope is kind of a vague concept anyway. Pidge better stop getting distracted by being introspective and get back to hopeful thoughts.

Experimenting with the ring is going to lead to so much groundbreaking SCIENCE. Blue light and tech powered by an emotion are totally new things and their discovery might even win Pidge a nobel prize! An astronaut engineer with a nobel prize is literally everything pidge dreamed of becoming as a child.

Okay, thats enough hopeful thoughts, lets see how that did.
“Have you gotten an increase in charge? I Tried thinking hopeful thoughts to see if that would help charge you.” Pidge asks the ring.

When Pidge starts focusing on Hope, their rate of acceleration increases, a portion of which they can feel.

"Increase in charge due to ambient hope did not exceed charge consumption during same period."

Well at least it works as a method of charging. Pidge will have to figure out how long it takes to charge this thing once on the ground and not actively using up charge. The fact that the ring accelerated while thinking hopeful thoughts sure incentivises Pidge to keep doing that though! So they will try and think hopeful thoughts during the trip to make it speed up, but that doesn’t leave much focus for other questions.

Oh well, Pidge can always ask more questions when safely on the ground.

Pidge takes a long, elliptical path to reach the Earth, slowing down as they near the atmosphere. As they focus on feeling Hope, they may notice that the energy connected to them, which flows through them, is moving more easily than it was before. When they transit the upper atmosphere, a translucent blue bubble forms around them, shielding them from the fiery air. Finally, they reach the lower atmosphere, slowing to subsonic speeds. They are flying over the American east coast, headed for a large city in southern Delaware.

With the amount of Hope Pidge is feeling, they will touch down after 38 minutes, just as promised.