A doctor? Why does she think a doctor could hel- Oh, right.

<<Uh, Wash, I think she thinks we're crazy?>>

      <<Now that's very uncharitable, I think the technical term is traumatized>>

<<No, I mean. I think she thinks we made up the thing where we travelled here using an unknown device.>>

      <<...Oh. Well. That's... not exactly an unreasonable conclusion, but it's kind of inconvenient for us!>>

<<Going to tell her we don't need a hospital and also point out that we have advanced technology.>>

 "I don't think we need a hospital? Wash isn't sick. If the problem is 'these people seem like they are crazy', I think we could pretty easily prove that we have access to technology your world does not have?"

"...okay. I don't know for sure there's not hologram projectors somewhere, but they're at least not everywhere, is that all -?"

"Uh, the big one is that the computer I'm running on is at least a few orders of magnitude more powerful than all the computers you've ever built, combined, and several orders of magnitude more energy-efficient. I haven't done much research on your energy storage technology yet, but" (a slight pause) "yeah the gap there isn't as big but it's still pretty big. I guess we could demo that by plugging the suit into your wall, if you have metered outlets?"  

Also, Wash's gun and armor are both extremely fancy compared to the local state of the art, but Church really doesn't expect pointing that out to be productive, so he doesn't.

(Wash nods as he reads the translation Church is providing)

"...uh, in general you're allowed to charge off the outlets in this building but that policy is for... phones*, and stuff, if you need a lot you might want to try the charging place across the street. What... do you expect me to do, if you convince me you're really time travelers."

*This word probably means something more like "handheld computer" or "electronic book" but I would forget to use those, so "phone" it is.

"...Oh, we don't need the power right now, we'll be good for a few days? It's just easier to verifiably demo than the computation thing, I think. And... put us in touch with either your government or investors who want to give us money in exchange for technology? We have a lot of useful information."

"Do you want me to just, like, tell you where to go find more of a government than Goat Track?"

"Yeah. ...And some money to pay for a ride there, if possible? We'll pay you back as soon as we can."

"I don't have transferable money on my person when I'm on the clock."

Amazing. Uh. What now?

"Do you think we could find a government person from somewhere with more of a government willing to get us a ride?" 

"If you want to go to the hospital, I can do that. Anybody else is going to want to know why, and they won't... believe... this. I mean, I'd call in a favor for you but my folks don't have a truck."

     "That makes sense. Let me confer with my sentient legs, here."

<<This is fucking ridiculous, actually.>>

     <<No, it's great, fuck you, I love these people.>>

<<Uh-huh.>>

     <<So are we taking an ambulance to the big city, or do you want me to fuck around online to try and see if I can convince someone to invest in us?>>

<<Ask her if it's ok for you to fuck around online, I guess>>

     "Can we stay here for a while and use your wifi to try and convince someone to front us the money for transit?"

"Uh... you can stay till the place opens, wifi's free, and then you need to talk to Nuai."

"That's fine, thanks. Can I get the name of the closest place with substantially more government?"

Once he gets a response to this, Church goes back to the internet, this time looking for websites where people can post about emerging technologies and where users can message him directly.

On as many of these as he can find, he posts:

"I have access to a supercomputer substantially more powerful than anything available on the planet. Post problems you know to be too computationally difficult and I'll post the solutions."

Then he monitors them for responses and makes fun of Wash about The Dog Incident to pass the time.

Wash engages in banter about The Dogs Incident as though he is annoyed and embarrassed, and not at all like this is a transparent attempt for Church to distract himself from whatever horrible flashback he had earlier. He'll bring it up once they've figured out their next move.

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.