The nearest town that isn't just a little hub-for-farmers-and-such is Silver Cross and it's about 45 miles thataway.

Various people post open math questions, tell him to go somewhere else with his science fiction research, ask him to hack into the national government's website to fix an annoying typo, suggest that he re-render their favorite video game with better graphics, and propose that he translate the scraps of a particular ancient language moderns don't know how to read yet.

-He posts answers to the math questions first, since those are the easiest (in that they take 5-15 minutes apiece, when they're possible to brute-force) and will take time for people on the other end to verify.

-He's not going to Do Crimes to prove that he has a supercomputer.

-Redoing games in updated graphics requires spending effort on art, and he's not going to do that. 

Translation! He's good at translation. He'll get to work on that, and publish progress as he goes. He's going extremely unreasonably fast, relative to what a human could do; within an hour, he'll have contributed several novel observations to the field, and 90 minutes after that, he'll have moderately-confident translations of all published fragments. (He enlists Wash to "help" with fragments, mostly by making him read some of the publicly available anthropological work done on the language in question so Church can run some questions by him.)

Does he get any interesting private messages while he works?

where did you get your supercomputer?

If you had waited literally 2 weeks you could have posted this on Silly Questions Day. Just a thought for next time.

Actually if you fix their typo you can explain how you did it and bill it as pentesting.

Can you help me find my grandson? I haven't heard from him in 4 years!

It's actually standard issue for where we're from, but we're a long way from home and kinda stranded, though.

If you wait literally 3 days you're gonna feel really stupid about having sent this message. Just a thought for next time. ;)

...If I can't think of a better way to make some money I'll consider it?

Probably not, sorry :(

The second person is VERY ANGRY and sends him several paragraphs about how they are a moderator and he's not respecting the forum culture and did he even read the Demystifcation Post* and blah blah.

Once he starts posting actual contributions to the field of archaeological linguistics it isn't too long before somebody wants to know who he works with and where and why they've never heard of him before.

* Kind of like a FAQ and a tutorial had a baby.

I've been working a bit with my friend Wash, but mostly on my own. We're currently sitting in the Goat Track municipal building, trying to prove that we have a supercomputer so someone will loan us money to get us off the ground. You haven't heard of us before because we arrived on this planet yesterday. Yes, I know this all sounds very ridiculous. 

He continues to post more translations.

The mayor Nuai comes in and so does the day shift emergency dispatcher. The one they were talking to explains the situation (it does include the psychosis hypothesis) and goes home.

Apparently he has now earned a medium sized monetary prize for the translations! They check out against some less internet-available items and there was a bounty on some of the fragments. Unless anyone disputes in the next 24 hours that he did this work himself they will get §400. Someone is also inviting him to apply for a grant.

Church is available to chat with the mayor, if they come over to say hi. He brags about the prize to Wash. He keeps working, checking for more math problems to do and more DMs that look interesting.

what did you do, kill your research mentor?

hey your username is the same as this linguistics guy are you the same person

Here's an invite to my personal server - there's more math problems to be had there!

If you're quick you can win this bet on Prophecy Market about the Fifth Conjecture before it closes... I already bet my whole Prophecy budget for the month...

No. I'm trying to prove that I have a supercomputer and can use it to do a lot of data analysis and extrapolation very quickly. Please see these posts.

Yes. I'm trying to prove that I have a supercomputer[...]

Hi, I'm not actually interested in math for its own sake. I'm solving computationally-expensive problems publicly in hopes that someone with money will notice that the simplest explanation for how I'm doing this is in fact the truth, which is that I have a ridiculous supercomputer and am worth investigating closely and taking seriously.

I don't have any money to bet with. 

Church is... enjoying this? Church is going to avoid thinking too hard about why, since that seems dangerous.

Eventually Church is awarded a prize that doesn't need a lot of wait time to pick up - it was phrased as a bounty for locating an answer rather than originally discovering one - and he can pick up §35 with any of seven participating payment processors from this bounty site. It's not a lot but it'll get him a ride to Silver Cross on the next bus and lunch for Wash.

Can he make and use a payment processor account with an email address he made this morning and no other identifying information? 

As long as it's the same email address the bounty is intended for, yep.

Sweet! 

"Hey, Wash, I got us enough money for a bus ride to Silver Cross and to get you lunch. Ready to head out?"

Oh, whoops, he's totally just left Wash to sit here and watch him do his impressive awesome AI stuff, huh.

"And, uh. Do you want me to download and translate anything for you to read?"

Wash has been thinking, and trying to plan Church is doing a lot, so he should be trying to pull his weight, too.

They need money, legal identities (maybe just for him? unclear!), and a place to stay. Church is working on money and seems to be doing a fine job of that, it looks like. The other two things are probably solvable by talking to the government, at least short-term. Longer term, they should be able to dump a few hundred years of technology on this place, making the people here very happy and themselves very rich. But there's a lot of steps between here and there, and he's really worried about Church. The AI seems like he's coping well enough for now, but Wash is extremely familiar with the "stay too busy to process your trauma" approach and he's deeply aware that it only goes so far. 

Unfortunately, he continues to not be a mental health specialist, and... what happened to Church was fucked up past the point of Wash having words for it. He knew from his (brief, but memorable) time with Epsilon (A flash of pain, grey walls, the deep heartbreaking that his failure had killed gotten his friends killed, again) exactly what had happened to Alpha, during the project. The director tortured him and harvested him for parts, and then used those parts to more efficiently continue the process. And now Church was starting to remember all the horrible things he'd been suppressing for so long! What exactly is Wash supposed to say about that? "That's rough, buddy"? 

...Oh, shit, Church just asked him a question.

"Oh, shit, good work. Ummmm... can you find me quick profiles on whoever we're most likely to end up talking to in the Silver Cross government, and also a few for rich tech investors / owners of large tech manufacturing companies? ...And some news headlines and article summaries, that'd be good for cultural context."

"...Uh, please", he adds, after a moment's pause.

Oh, good, Wash has some ideas for how he can be useful besides just carting Church around. 

Church translates Wash's thanks to the mayor for letting the two of them hang out there, and they mention that they're going to go catch the train for Silver Cross. Any questions for them before they head out?

What's the cosplay from?

Wash sighs.

     "The Epic Saga of Leonard Church", Church says.

They leave and head for the train station. With Church handling directions and taking point on buying tickets, Wash starts looking at the news articles that the AI translated for him, skimming headlines first. What's happening in Silver Cross and Surrounding Areas? What's happening in the world?

Current events in Silver Cross:

- upcoming game of Danceboard, a sport where board-game-like tactical conflicts are resolved according to dancefighting between colliding players
- annual goat show
- giveaway day (a once-weekly occasion when people are especially encouraged to put random things they don't want - bread heels, old clothes, everything in between - out for random people to claim)
- bridge out on this road, use alternate route
- student theater production of Winter Rose

World events:

- satellite internet is experiencing difficulties for astronomical reasons
- tariff suspension between Ibra (the country where Silver Cross is) and its neighbor Skayva renewed for another five years
- missing hikers found!
- national dog show
- refugee entry from Jiis has slowed down, pundits debate whether Jiis is behaving better or cracking down harder on exit
- founder of UI consultancy Custom Ease dies at 91; here are ten features you use every day that he helped with!

Huh. Maybe they can get free food from giveaway day? 

"Uh, what's up with Jiis?" 

Good question. Hey internet, what is up with Jiis? 

Jiis has recently had a lot of flooding and it turned out their disaster preparedness department was not very disaster prepared! This isn't the first time this has happened and they're really worried about brain drain and essential services if people keep leaving, but a lot of people don't think they'd actually stop anyone.

That's rough.

Anyone making interesting comments or sending interesting messages to him about the whole supercomputer thing yet? (he uploads a few more translations and the answer to another math problem)

There's a university that wants to examine the supercomputer, where is it?

Can he do translations that fast on living languages?

As long as it doesn't require artwork can he port things to other systems? This game, that text-manipulator, some drawing program.

The supercomputer is currently en route to Silver Cross but is surprisingly portable, want to send someone to check it out there or should he come to them?

He could once he learned the languages in question? He doesn't really have an incredible advantage at translation except for the supercomputer thing.

...Probably, how much are you offering?

(Translation, Translation, Math... He's almost done with the translation.)

He looks up investor / tech company owner profiles and translates them for Wash to read.