Message from the Moon

Chapter 7

Machines have never been something I was good with, or even interested in. Mae would laugh at me all the time because I'd get into fights with computers when they wouldn't do what I wanted, which happens most of the time when I use them. I can't even figure out how to turn them on half the time. Mae jokes that the reason I'm so interested in anthropology is because I want to learn about the time period I should've been born in. She would often go so far as to give me a backstory when I lived in whatever time period she's chosen and how I came to fall through into this present. One of my favorite ones was when I fell through a fairy circle. My laptop was frozen and I'd been calling her to come help me for almost ten minutes, annoying her more and more each time.

"C'mon, are you really going to make me beg?" I eventually whined.

Mae called back from the other room, "Just try turning it off and back on again!"

"I did that already! Twice!" I wailed back, smacking my head gently on the space bar. Addressing the computer again, I cajoled in my sweetest voice, "Please? I'll never use you when you're charging again, unless it's a huge emergency?"

"Oh, just give it to me," Mae said, appearing over my shoulder with a sigh.

I did, my victorious grin flashing in her face.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like an ancient Irish mother begging the Good Folk to return your dearest child to you."

"Oh?" I placed my chin in my cupped hand, ready for the ridiculousness.

"Yup. You don't know what autism is, so obviously the Fae have replaced your happy baby with one that is just slightly not human and now you roam the woods begging for them to return her to you, because, though you know it is the only chance to see your child again, your motherly instincts are preventing you from doing what you must and leave her in a tree alone."

"How did you get that from me yelling at my laptop?"

"You interrupted me researching Irish mythology."

"But why am I a mother searching for her child?"

She shrugged at me, hardly paying attention now. "Your laptop isn't behaving the way it usually does, so you've asked the Fae to fix it."

"And you're the Fae in this scenario?"

"Mhm."

"Soo... that means you're the one who messed up my laptop in the first place?"

"Don't get sassy!" She smacked my arm but handed my now-working laptop back to me. "That's how you ended up in this time! You got too sassy with one of my brethren and they sent you to suffer from technology."

"Ah, I see. That makes perfect sense." She laughed at the face I was making... sorry I've gone waaayyyyy off track haven't I? I think this story is in the forefront of my mind because of the Roanoke people. Imagine how terrifying it must have been to really get tossed through time, all alone and terrified... ah, but I'm rambling.

Anyway, back to what you're here for. So my original point was that alien tech is even more complicated than my laptop ever was.

Everything is made specifically for one purpose, so maybe it'd be simpler if we had been using it for what it was designed for, but we had to think a little out of the box here. We didn't have a supercomputer to just tell us what to do, which is apparently how they figure everything out. Their computers don't tell them exactly what to do per sé, but they do tell them if what they want to try will work, and what methods will work best, and approximately how long it will take before they get the results they're looking for.

According to Xethe, this is because imagination isn't a common characteristic in the universe. We may not be the smartest species, like, not even in the top 100 or even 1,000 in terms of our intelligence, but the way we use our brains has definitely been one of the reasons the Croatoans kept us around for as long as they have; our creativity wasn't something they saw coming and its kept them engaged.