Being suddenly awake in space, in the dark void with nothing to anchor them, and feeling the familiar lurch in their stomach of freefall, was quite understandably a very distressing situation for Pidge Gunderson, the Galaxy Garrison cadet. 

It takes barely a second for Pidge to wonder why the vacuum of space was not simultaneously freezing and boiling the liquid in their eyeballs since that is usually what happens when one is floating unprotected in the vacuum of space. The dangers of vacuum had been drilled into every cadet many times. They got constantly told what would happen to them if they fucked up on a mission and caused their craft to decompress, it was VERY PAINFUL DEATH! Galaxy Garrison cadet uniforms were vacuum resistant but were not designed to protect the face without a separate helmet attachment. Pidge is quite certain they are not wearing a helmet, so why the unexploded eyeballs? Not that Pidge was complaining about having unexploded eyeballs and not undergoing a VERY PAINFUL DEATH.

Maybe this was a good time to panic? Yup, it seems like a good time to start screaming.

"Aaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!"

The question of how are they even screaming in a vacuum also occurs to Pidge, But Pidge can scream and wonder things at the same time.

On Pidge's right hand, there is a glowing blue ring, which they did not fall asleep with. Also unexplained: they are surrounded by a faint blue aura, can breathe comfortably in space, and feel no heat or cold.

Pidge screams some more until the panicked thoughts of possibly dying a VERY PAINFUL DEATH have run their course. No eyeballs explode, and no blood vessels boil. No danger seems imminent at all, in fact. So maybe it is time to not panic and figure out whats going on instead.

They make some observations about what's going on. Blue ring, blue stuff around them, and not dying. The blue stuff around them is not normal, and dying is normally what should happen, so these two things are probably related. Pidge's tentative conclusion is the blue field is why they aren't dead, and the blue ring is related to the blue field because of blue.

Pidge surely is a titan of deductive reasoning for coming to this very obvious conclusion.

Pidge takes a closer look at that ring, WITHOUT touching it, in case that deactivates the blue field somehow and causes VERY PAINFUL DEATH. (The teachers at Galaxy Garrison really do drill the dangers of the vacuum of space into every cadet very thoroughly.)

It's hard to tell what exactly the ring is made of, although whatever it is, it's uniformly blue, opaque, and smooth. It most closely resembles rock. The ring is shaped into a smooth round band that widens on one side to form a flat face with an inscribed sigil, a circle with four shapes attached to the outside. It looks a little like a lantern.

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?"

They... hear? Experience? A voice in their head.

"Unable to comply; instructions unclear."

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.

"No data."

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.

"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.

Burning your way through the atmosphere as you hurdle to earth, protected only by a blue forcefield bubble thingy, is pretty scary! Pidge was trained to re-enter the earth in a nice safe reinforced landing capsule, if you are bodily falling through the air during a mission then something usually has gone catastrophically wrong.

The next time Pidge goes to space they intend it to be in a vehicle, the way man was meant to travel.

As Pidge gets closer to landing they direct the ring to take them to a less dense part of the city, maybe the suburbs, no need to frighten crowds of people by landing in the city center or something. 

Upon directing the ring, they suddenly shift direction, before coming to a landing in a suburban park north of the city. It is nighttime. In the distance, the skyscrapers of the city glow with soft yellow light.

The park looks... kind of old fashioned? And the cars parked on the street nearby all look old.

The cars look really old, most still look gas powered! Pidge can see only a single electric vehicle in sight, and on closer inspection barely any of the roofs have solar panels. There was also a lack of security cameras and a lack of the ubiquitous delivery bots that were usually scooting around any sizeable city.

Was that a payphone Pidge sees?!? Not even just a gutted and broken down outer shell cover of one, but one that looked like it was in working order. Pidge had only ever seen intact payphones in old movies.

Pidge was very certain they landed in Delaware and not somehow in one of those weird tiny fascist island states that still used gas cars.

Something weird was definitely going on. Well, a different kind of weird from emotionally powered rings with AI and supertech.

Pidge will look around for a gas station or corner store or something. Somewhere that they can buy a phone, so they can get a map to the shuttle station and let Galaxy Garrison know where they are.

By wandering around, following roads to larger roads, Pidge is able to find their way out of this neighborhood and onto one of the main streets. A block away, there is a BP gas station with a 7-Eleven.

When Pidge thought of a 'gas' station they meant a quick charging or battery swap station, but those were actual gas pumps! They also don't recognize the BP logo at all. At least the 7/11 sign was a familiar sight.

When Pidge enters the 7/11 they notice a lot of unfamiliar snack brands, and jeez the machines looked old, they looked well maintained but with a really old aesthetic. Did 7/11 do retro stores in special locations or something?

They dont see any phones for sale up at the front counter where they would usually be, but maybe they are just under the counter for safety reasons.

Pidge walks up to the counter. "Uhhh you got any prepaid phones?" Pidge asks the cashier.

"Sure, I've got some." He pulls a plastic package down from a shelf. Inside is a pretty cheap-looking flip phone. "Sixty bucks, and I think it's got a hundred minutes prepaid."

“I get this store has a retro theme going, but isn’t this going a little far? It doesn’t even have a camera? How are you supposed to vid call people. Whatever, I just need something I can use the maps app on, but I doubt you could even navigate maps on that things tiny physical numpad.” The only phones Pidge had ever seen with physical keypads like that had been huge sturdy military models meant to survive a bomb, who the heck put them on civilian models?

Pidge is very confused and their tone is maybe getting a little rude. But come the fuck on, those screens were so small you'd barely be able to see anything on them! and, they looked way too cheap to be stealthily carrying expensive holo screens. What would you even be able to use them for?

Pidge guesses that's why they were so cheap for only $60, who would pay more than $60 for something that shoddy.

"I don't know what you're talking about. This is a perfectly normal phone. And it doesn't have maps or anything, you'd need something much more expensive for that. We do have maps of the area for sale if that's what you're looking for."

“Like… physical maps? On paper?” This retro theme was being taken waaayyyyy too far. “Guess I’ll take one”

Pidge is little irrationally worried a store this committed to retro won’t have a embedded chip scanner, and will demand paper money instead, but that would be ridiculous.

The cashier gives them a quizzical look.

"Yeah dude, paper maps." He pulls out a thick, folded map. "Map of Metropolis. It's twenty bucks."