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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42852
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42852
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The fact that you use "knobs" that turn is enough, in my opinion.

Another way would be to have a naturally scientific (logic based) mind actually **fix** an older artifact and get it working again. It would have to be a simple mechanical fix, but in the process of examining one of these found artifacts that doesn't work, she notices that a string (wire) looks broken.

It is just a minor power-supply problem, and though she doesn't understand electricity or anything else, she does understand medicine. She holds the two ends of the wire together and the device reacts: Lighting up intermittently, perhaps.

She does a better job of holding metal to metal, and the lights become constant. She decides to let the metal string "heal" by binding and gluing the broken ends together, metal to metal, and the device is operational.

She messes with the buttons and "magic" happens, like the stone in her fireplace slumps. It isn't a liquid, it isn't hot, but she can shape it or scoop it out like clay. Whatever. It stays that way. Until she presses the other button, then the shaped stone becomes just as solid as it was before.

To her, it is still magic, but to anybody reading this scene, that is unmistakably _technology._

That might be too strong, but if so, I would also clue in to "tech" the moment I read "knobs". Knobs and buttons and such are mechanical, anything mechanical that performs a function screams "tech" to me.

And it isn't terrible for the reader to know something that none of the characters know; then part of the game is reading to see how and when the characters figure this out, and what it means about their history or origin. So there is still a mystery there.

Original score: 5