"I'll arrange for them to be stored the usual way. I'd feel bad about you not having your accustomed magical items, so-- magic users hate that, but I think it doesn't matter too much because you're not going to be hitting people with a mace anyway?"

"Well, being unarmed and unarmored does make me more vulnerable if anything should attack me but you'd know more than I would about how likely that is here. Commissioner - is that the right title? - Donahue said it would be fine to cast magic privately, so if I do get savaged by something perhaps I can just duck out of sight and heal myself once the fight is over."

"Getting attacked-- it's not that it never happens but I wouldn't expect it to happen if you don't join a gang or provoke people at bars or walk late at night in a bad neighborhood."

"I do not frequent bars nor do I wish to join a gang, but am not confident of my ability to, on a strange planet, avoid provoking people or identify bad neighborhoods."

"I'm... getting the sense your world is much more violent than ours in a way where clarifying where the bad neighborhoods are may not help."

"That's possible. If you were to walk from here to the next city and back on a regular basis how many times do you think you could make the trip before being attacked?"

"Uh. A couple of thousand? More?"

"...then it seems completely appropriate to have a norm of people not going around armed."

"Yeah, I'd be more worried about you getting confused and attacking someone in what you think is self-defense than I would about you actually getting attacked."

Nod nod. "I would expect to run into a monster or a highwayman or a band of orcs or something of that nature between any two cities in Cheliax at least half the time. Within the city I'd consider going without the armor, it slows me down, but I'd carry the mace and it would be understood in that context very differently than it sounds like it would be here."

"People would assume you were wearing a costume and if they discovered it was an actual mace, I-- don't actually know what they would think, no one carries maces. Open-carry of guns will freak people out though."

"Open-carry as opposed to - hiding it and not making it visible that you're armed? Is that common? I associate that mostly with the kind of person who has so many knives that it would be impractical to display them all; usually you want to make it clear at a glance, if you're not a soft target."

"I think we normally assume that the police will deal with things, so if you're carrying a weapon it says 'I want to start shit.'"

"And your response time is fairly good, I gather."

"Could be worse, but honestly people mostly just don't attack each other."

"That's good! - She also recommended that I get your badge and 'phone' numbers in case anything comes up in the next week before I get a 'green card'."

"Here you go." He scribbles them on a piece of paper. "We should see about getting you a phone, actually."

"What is... a phone."

"A very small computer you can hold in your hand."

"I assume this lets me do something more important than play chess with you."

"It lets you contact me and also access a library of nearly all information in the world. And a bunch of stuff that people made up."

"...is the stuff people made up easily distinguishable from your messages and all the information in the world?"

He takes out his phone and demonstrates calling, text messages, and upon reflection how to add numbers to your contacts. "You can go on the Internet-- that's the library-- here, and-- uh-- stuff on Wikipedia is basically accurate, the rest of the Internet maybe not. I wonder if I can get you a book on Internet safety." 

"...wow. How many times a day is is usable - or is it minutes per day? - how expensive is it - I suppose I have no sense of the local currency yet anyway -"

"You can theoretically use it 24 hours a day and some teenagers have. You need to plug it in to charge"-- he demonstrates-- "when this bar looks empty. A phone costs-- maybe a day's wages? And then maybe half a day's wages per month in order for it to continue to have all its functions. --But the Boston Police Department can pay for yours."