The good news is that Shepard is talking to someone who understands the strange and often tragic history of her world--why this technology is so far beyond anything its tribal peoples were able to understand, let alone replicate. So she is, at least, uniquely qualified to address this discrepancy, even if it's something of a long, complicated story.

"This is ancient technology," she says, figuring that's probably the easiest way to begin. If Shepard knows what an AI is, then that's already half the explanation. "My version of Earth had to...start over."