"Just seems - mean? And pointless. But it's not like people here never do mean pointless things." Shrug.

"Yeah it's rather frustrating - I mostly listen to musicians who continued recording after they became famous, which is considered unsophisticated of me by people who are serious about music."

"Is this, like, the musical equivalent of people liking rarer jewels more even if you have to look pretty hard to tell them apart from cut glass?"

"-oh I suppose you can't synthesize jewels. Yes I imagine it is. In the Federation people also make a similar distinction between natural and artificial gems even though the two are indistinguishable without laboratory equipment."

"I don't think we can synthesize jewels, no. Probably the medical stuff is higher priority unless there's something very important indeed you can do with abundant jewels."

"Thin panes of diamond are useful for cooling some electrical devices and rubies are useful for lasers - thin beams of light - but neither of those things are hugely important. Though the standard way to make them in the Federation is to use a replicator, which can make most things and is why my society doesn't really have material scarcity."

"I know what a laser is. Do you know how to make replicators?"

"Not entirely from scratch but I know how they work in theory and what the early prototypes were like."

"Might be more important than the medical stuff but possibly less rapidly communicable to parties who can use it..."

Eeeeeee...

"I could sell the lower tech medical information and then maybe that could be used to fund replicators? Or to establish credibility with scientists maybe."

"The bounty money won't cover it?"

"Oh, good point it might - I'm not sure just because I don't have a very good sense for how much things cost, especially at this tech level."

"Probably you should go shopping for stuff. Especially once you have a place to, like, furnish."

"I suppose I should, yeah....I don't actually know how to find places to shop at. For furniture or for industrial lab equipment."

"...I can't help you with the industrial lab equipment. If you want new furniture I hear nice things about Oakleg but we always get stuff from secondhand places like Reincarnate Thrift."

Nod.

"Um, how would I figure out where those are located? ...I can probably figure this all out on my own if you'd rather not explain it."

"They're in the Business Directory, you can get a free copy from - well, we get them delivered to our house, but I think they also have them at, like, the library."

"Oh, so the business directory gives the addresses of businesses given names, and then maps tell you where those addresses are, and then buses get you there - that's sort of neat."

"How do you do it where you're from?"

"If I wanted to visit the business in person, I'd ask my house computer to arrange transport there, and then it would inform me a few minutes later a hovercar would arrive to bring me there."

"What if it was in walking distance? Or if you had a power outage?"

"If it were within walking distance, my house computer would tell me that. There aren't really power outages on my world except in really exceptional circumstances."

"Huh. What... is... a house computer. Like, it can talk, apparently?"

"Do you have computers here at all, or should I explain those first?"

"I've heard of them, they do math?"