They can! The room is very nicely equipped with a TV and various videos, large mirrors, various toys, various types of contraceptives, various drugs and other stimulants...

Well. They'll have to try a few of those out then.

Cool! Fun times are had.

And then there's time for cleanup and Theo thanks the person for the suggestion and if that's all…? He will look into things.

Yep, the person liked it a lot, here's their number, if Theo wants to have some more fun some other day.

Theo also enjoyed it, thanks. Here's what his number apparently is – and he will maybe see them some other day.

Off to find out about sex work.

There are places for this! Brothels of several kinds, and phone or their equivalent of email lists and their equivalent of websites where people can browse stuff and look for people who satisfy their interests, and more amateurish shows, and lots of places can inform him of the intricacies of each kind, and what contracts he has to sign, and stuff about consent, and all that.

Well, he'd like to gather information on everything first, that sounds like a useful first step especially seeing as he's in a foreign culture. If there's nothing supremely shocking in any of that he will look into… probably one of the sites, if it looks like he might get responses relatively quickly, or alternatively one of the brothels.

Zanarkand continues to be implausibly utopic for a city that has managed to spend who-knows-how-long without contacting the rest of the world. Brothels in general require him to sign a contract that defines "consent" pretty thoroughly and takes responsibility for any customers that might break these definitions, and receives a fixed percentage of everything the worker might earn. There are some more specialised brothels for specific kinks, and those have extra clauses where needed in the contract. Customers also have to sign a similar contract before engaging, and this is treated casually enough that one could infer it's already very deeply seeped into general culture. Similar arrangements exist for other forms of sex work and work-that-is-not-technically-sex-work-but-is-somewhat-related such as stripping.

Well he has wings, so he might need to go to one of the more specialized brothels, but he can confirm that with them instead of just making assumptions.

Most brothels would be delighted to have him on the theory that most people wouldn't find the wings actively off-putting and it might attract some more business.

Oh, that's nice. He looks for one of the, uh, nicer ones, seeing as there is apparently demand. He's interested in this idea, especially if it seems like it could net him some money.

Perhaps he'd make more by producing recreational drugs. Perhaps he will at some point. He's still not super sure about that idea.

It depends on his output, but given the exotic factor, at least for the short term doing sex work is actually more profitable.

His output is decent, and for the short term that sounds useful!

Then he will make a profit!

How much of this will he have to do to get the projectile AI thing?

Depends on how many customers he gets and how long he spends with each of them. He will be spoilt for choice, though.

He can do pretty well, then.

Depending on how much he charges (between supply vs. demand and the market prices) he will be able to get enough to purchase a very simple AI system that does the things he wants them to do in perhaps a couple of days.

He will take breaks, of course, but he doesn't have to sleep and he doesn't really need to eat and he's quite able to go for a while and will try to charge some amount that doesn't make people choose 'no' while still being probably quite a bit above market price, so he will in fact have the money in a couple of days, ish.

Could he get the very simple AI system, then? He's assuming it'd be quite a bit more to get a less-simple AI system and he's not sure if he could come back to get it upgraded nor how much he should be treating it with personhood (he's assuming not much or at all but he'd like to check?) so he would like to find out more if possible.

It is not an AGI, no, it is just a thing that is very good at the very specific task it does, like Deep Blue's successors were at chess.

Well that's nice. He'd like one for projectile tracking, then, and if there are standard add-ons or something he's curious if he can get an upgrade from that and how much it'd cost. If it's a custom order thing, that's fine, projectile tracking and/or combat prediction, whatever is in his price range, would be nice.

Well you don't need an AI to track projectiles, physics is deterministic and that's just a calculation. Something customised to do combat prediction would be a few orders of magnitude more expensive than that. Does he have anything more specific in mind that he wants?

He doesn't, actually? He wants something that might be of use in a low-tech battle against a huge sort-of-a-fiend that's terrorizing a nearby continent they have probably not heard of and 'projectile tracking' and 'combat prediction' came to his mind as the main ways he could do that, or alternatively by getting weapons, but he needs a permit for the weapons.

He hasn't watched all that many shows about battles or war or anything and he's never been in one, so he doesn't actually know what sorts of things are required. He's hoping he can come back later but he's not sure.

Hmm, giant monster... What can the giant monster do, exactly?