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?

Ranged attacks, but this one apparently specializes in gravity wells? It's quite thick, it seems to be able to do a relatively strong skin-tight forcefield or alternatively a larger one that just vaporizes things.

It's really big. It is, for some reason, bigger on the inside, and it targets places on the continent that have and use technology.

Right but how large is the monster, how ranged is ranged, how do these gravity wells work?

And honestly the rest of this description sounds terrifying how did this monster never come to Zanarkand?

… He's pretty sure it did in fact come to Zanarkand, at least once? Not as often as he would expect, seeing as how technological this place is, but, someone he knows remembers being from here and was in fact attacked by it here? The someone he knows being called Tidus, apparently quite a good Blitzball player, son of Jecht?

He can give details on how large it is, he's relatively good at eyeballing sizes, and he can give a low-bound estimate for the range based on what he saw, but he doesn't really have much information on the gravity wells.

Nope. They've never heard of a Tidus or a Jecht who play Blitzball, were they maybe from some small team?

Anyway it doesn't sound like an AI is gonna cut it, here, unless it's one of the military-grade ones meant to deal with fiends, juiced up. It'd need to be custom-built. It'd be very expensive. People would be very excited to work on this.

(Also Zanarkand's currency happens to be the same as Spiran currency, who'da thunk.)

(Ugh. That just makes it even worse that he lost his money in the stupid forcefield. He doesn't really want to counterfeit to get it back because he expects they have measures against that.)

Unfortunately he does not think he has enough money. He is pretty sure Tidus was not from a small Blitzball team, he seemed quite good and was quite proud of himself, but he supposes that is not exactly perfect evidence so if he's not been heard of, Theo supposes Tidus was not as well-known a player as he suggested.

Yeah maybe. Well no one remembers any giant monsters anyway, and from what he described it'd probably be a pretty memorable event?

It would! They haven't by any chance noticed any weird discrepancies with local maps or missing chunks of land where people expected there to be some land, have there? He's not quite sure how local magic works but is 'making a whole population forget about a chunk of land and people' doable, d'you think?

No, and prrrobably not? Mind magic doesn't really exist.

People who suddenly can't remember their parents? Find they have suspiciously few friends for how outgoing they tend to be, any sorts of weird discrepancies?

He's not sure you're the right person to ask but it's possible you've heard things.

Nah, not heard anything weird like that.

Well okay then.

Unfortunately he's probably just going to go get the basic projectile tracker thing, if he can get a computer that does that, and depending on how much it eats into his funds he might get a few of them.

It eats enough into it he cannot buy more than one.

He'll buy the one and look around for anything else that could be useful. Magic clothing or something he could hand out to someone, something defensive? If it can absorb damage of some kind or helps with movement speed or something, that'd be neat. It'd be cool if he could get some adapted for his wings, too, but he's not sure he is going to get any. He wants to find out if it's doable anyway.

There isn't much to do with combat around, Zanarkand is a pretty peaceful place.

Nothing to do with speed bonuses, either? He'd sort of expect something would be invented for, like, ice skating or something. Being more graceful, being able to do things faster, making people do better than they would unaided.

They don't have a lot of magic, really.

Well, if it'd take him a few weeks to get weapons, separately from all these other things, he probably will not wait here for very long, especially since he'd need to take the training courses on using the weapon, probably, not just pass some quick test.

He thinks he will go back. He thanks the person for their input and the purchase, anyway.