She is entirely unapologetic that she will probably forget it.

"...Hey wait maybe we should get a paired call crystal! They're not that expensive."

—he pauses on his way up.

"That sounds like an interesting gadget, how much are they?"

"About eighty, for a cheap water-capable direct link. No service contract that way. One that cheap will probably call five minutes at a time with an hour recharge. Range of a thousand tiles or so."

"And on the higher end of the scale?"

"Really fancy ones that can call continuously and hook into networks and filter and send pictures cost a couple thousand."

"We think a middling one's better, then, where can we find one?"

"Look in one of the malls, they love showing all sorts of fancy magic items to tourists. We'll be at that same concert well at sunset."

"Alright!"

Off he goes to one of the malls.

...Changing out of the swimsuit first, right?

Well, changing into the swimsuit since he went buck naked for the tail, then out of it and back into his clothes, yes.

A sign helpfully reminds him that the mall is one of the places where he is expected to walk.

It's a pretty elaborate place! Air conditioned and everything. Though the stores tend to more, smaller shops compared to places like Sears or Walmart.

Hmm he doesn't want to get distracted before finding crystals. Crystals first! Then if he has time he'll look around at other stores.

There's lots of crystal shops. The Self Defense Crystals Guild. Flight Stones Group. A Gem For All Occasions. Charlescomm Communication Company.

Yes that last one's probably what he's looking for.

It seems to be more of a service provider, but they can sell him standalone crystals too.

They do try several times to convince him that signing up to a network is in his best interests. He'll be able to call anyone, not just the other side of a single pair!

Maybe after he has a better grasp on this place's economics and has become a tycoon or something. For now, just the pair will do, thank you.

Far be it from him to turn down any sale, though he does move on to trying to sign up other customers quickly.

Sadde wishes him luck.

How much longer 'til sunset?

About two hours.

Eh, he has some time to look around some stores. Anything very interesting?

Golems are, perhaps, interesting. 

They're like really shitty handmade computers. They even have a computer science equivalent but apparently nobody's figured out transistors can do most of the same stuff and be mass produced.

Oh look an avenue for becoming a tycoon. He files that away for later, he'll probably need to nudge their physicists in the right direction before he can reconstruct the materials science behind this all.

(The mathematics though he can totally help with.)

He can easily kill two hours talking sorting algorithms and process time optimization with the golemcrafters in one of the shops. They flat refuse to talk about certain things, though, citing trade secrets.

Trade secrets. Well, that's alright, he'll probably just publish everything he discovers because that's how science's done, thank you very much.

Time to go meet his mer friend!

She's singing on the sidelines of that same concert well. "Was the mall interesting?"