They are:

on a farm.

There are fields of wheat, still green and not ripe yet, swaying in the wind. A very small goat, mostly black with white ears, is munching on a weed shoot it has nibbled from between the plants. It maaaaas at them. It's late evening, sun making itself known only as a splash of color in the west, the first stars starting to be visible. In the distance there's a barn, painted blue on the bottom and fading to white on the top.

Church is... having a pretty bad day, honestly, but he's not dead (or not... more dead...), so that's neat. He's trying not to think about the things he's learned in the last half hour.
Luckily, there's a lot of distraction available! He studies the camera feed data.

"Fuck if I know, dude. Looks like... some kind of farm?"

"Thanks, genius! I hadn't noticed. Are we in comms range of anyone?"

Wash stares at the goat for a while, then starts walking towards the barn, keeping an eye on the stars.

Church sighs and accesses the comm unit in Wash's suit. 

"Uh... No? Nobody we know is anywhere near in range. There's... Substantial traffic on several frequencies, but... it's all unrecognizable. It's not noise, but... These protocols are completely unfamiliar."

...

"Wash, why the fuck am I familiar with data protocols?"

Wash sighs too. "I think you know the answer to that."

He stares warily at the goat, like he expects it to attack him, and then starts trudging toward the barn, his eyes on the stars. Do they look like anything he's ever seen?

Nope!

"Well. Fuck. We're not on any planet I've ever been to." 

"How could you possibly know that?"

Wash sighs, again. "...I was really into astronomy. Before... all this. And I have a pretty good visual memory."

He shakes his head. "Doesn't fucking matter, anymore. Start decrypting those comms protocols, we need intel."

"Ugh. Do I have to?"

"Well, we're stranded on an unfamiliar planet with completely foreign comms protocols, light-years away from anyone we've ever known or cared about. And I'm tired as shit, so I'm going to take a fucking nap once we get to that barn. So unless you have something else you'd rather be doing..."

Wash continues to trudge towards the barn, looking around cautiously, gun at the ready.

There are more mini-goats, weeding and maa-ing. There's a black barn cat sleeping on their little tiny-goat-house.

The barn turns out to have a house beyond it but while there's lights on inside nobody notices them right off.

The barn door is closed but not locked, and it has animal flaps inside. There's a dog in there, a brown one with fluffy fur and a feathered tail; the dog does notice them, as soon as the door opens, and starts barking, yip-YAP-yip-YAP.

"Fuck!" Wash hisses. He freezes, then crouches slowly, staring at the dog. 

"Dude, the fuck are you doing?" Church whispers at him.

"Trying to get the dog to shut up before it wakes someone. ...Stop projecting, it's probably freaking him out."

Wash stays close to the ground and very still, attempting to look as nonthreatening as possible, for an unfamiliar person in power armor. 

"Shit, right."

The holographic miniature blue power armor disappears. 

Yip-YAP-yip-YAP-yip-YAP!!!

...Wash stands up and exits the barn the way he came in, looking around worriedly. 

The barking has attracted another dog, who appears to have been busy herding the tiny goats into their home for the night. "BORK BORK! BORK BORK!" goes the second dog.

Wash startles, pointing his gun at the second (unexpected) (hostile-seeming) (LOUD) dog in what is definitely a controlled and composed state of mind, his finger reflexively-

...Probably it's time to do something before things get too far out of hand. 

"Wash, calm the fuck down, it's just a dog!!" 

"...right." 

He stashes his weapon, then starts jogging back the way he came, away from the stupid barn and (hopefully) away from the (loud) (startling) stupid dogs, too. Will they leave him alone?

"BORK BORK!" goes the second dog (black, curly, larger than the brown one in the barn), and it runs toward the farmhouse. "BORK BORK!"

Well, Wash will continue to run away from the farmhouse, and hopefully not end up starting a war on a potentially unknown planet! 

"This is not how I expected today to be going", he pants. 

"Yeah, tell me about it."

...Oh, there's something useful he could be doing, actually. 

"I'm turning your suit lights off, so we'll be harder to see at a distance."

Being slotted into someone else's suit like this instead of possessing hijacking them completely is going to take some getting used to.

The dogs don't chase them. It's getting dark, and the mini goats are mostly rounded up at this point.

After a little running they make it to a narrow road, just about one and a half pedestrians wide with occasional bulbouts to enable passing.

Church doesn't feel like talking to Washington at the moment, so he goes back to trying to figure out the data protocols, which has been surprisingly... easy? Like he's done this before, like his mind can manipulate data like putty in his hands. He keeps a thread of attention on Wash, which is also surprisingly easy: when he focuses on purely virtual tasks like this, it feels like time slows down.

...which is weird, and even though it's objectively very useful, he kind of hates it, because- 

ok let's think about something else now. Data! data data data. Unravel the patterns, find the information... 

Wash doesn't really feel like talking, either. He looks around for somewhere secluded to take a nap. 

It's a very farmy area but there's an orchard with a bunch of beehives, and a shed full of beekeeping equipment with enough room for someone to nap in it if they curl up.

Wash very cautiously inspects the shed, on high alert for DOGS.

The shed does not contain any dogs. There's a cat, which opens one eye when the door opens, but then decides this is not its problem and goes back to sleep.

Wash twitches a bit at the movement, then sighs. 

"Just a cat."

He curls up in a corner with a good view of the door. As the adrenaline starts to leave his body, his brain catches back up.

"...Wait. This place has cats, and dogs, and goats, and farm equipment and tools that are clearly human-sized, but they're using data protocols you aren't familiar with, and..."

He looks around. Spots labels on the shelves, in an alphabet he's never seen in his life, along with a book. Frowns.

"Where the fuck are we?"

"Huh?" 

Church spools more his attention away from the data analysis (why can he feel that happening now, this is so unsettling (He knows why he can feel it, obviously, the real question is why he couldn't feel it befor- (he knows that too, actually, he rememb- !aaa!!stopstopsto!!)))

...He quickly reviews the last several seconds of sensor logs from Wash's camera and microphone. Cross-checks it with all the data they have with them. 

"That... isn't any writing system known to the UNSC. Human or alien."

Wash sighs. "I was afraid you'd say that. ...Maybe this is some kind of... splinter colony planet? Or maybe something weirder is going on. Fuck if I know."

He yawns, involuntarily. 

"Okay. I need to get some sleep. Keep watch, wake me up if you hear or see anything, and keep working on that data."

"Hey asshole, would it kill you to say 'please' once in a while?"

"...also, before you pass out, grab that book and flip through the pages." 

"Please", he adds, only moderately sarcastically.

Wash wordlessly grabs the book and flips through the pages swiftly, leaving each one open for just long enough for the camera to capture the text. 

He reshelves the book, settles himself back into the corner, and sighs.

The problem is that it's hard to stay mad at Church, no matter how obnoxious the AI is. Wash knows he would hardly be doing better, in his shoes. Circuits. Whatever.

"...yeah, alright. Please keep watch. Wake me if anything important happens."

Huh. Church wasn't actually expecting that, especially not after the grumpy silence. Well, it's not like he's actually known Wash all that long. (a sudden flash of a blond man on an operating table, screaming-(NOPENOPENOPE))

"You got it, boss."

Church gets to work on the book. From context, it seems like it's about... beekeeping? He doesn't really give a shit about bees, but it's a better place to start with the language than signal analysis, so... bees. 

A little while later, he's gotten as much out of the book (and all the labels visible in the shed, and on the path here) as he thinks he will get. He's also learned as many as several facts about bees. Apparently worker bees (worker is a gender of bee???) only live 6-8 weeks; during that short time, they might fly enough to travel around this entire planet 1.5 times. Their tiny lil wings beat over ten thousand times every minute.

...Bees are kinda neat, he GUESSES.

Also, these people seem weirdly into training animals to do things. The cat here is probably trained to help with beekeeping, and the book has instructions for how you'd train a dog to help, too. That's... also kind of neat. And it tracks with the dog-goat thing earlier, too. 

And also he's weirdly good at language deciphering? (Blarg blarg honk (Wait, was he only good at that because of his experience wi- (NOPENOPE))

It's been... about 45 minutes. Shit. He starts trawling through signals. What kind of data is being transmitted wirelessly around here?

Music and movies and text and images! The beekeeper's farmhouse is sending location data from their phones and receiving a TV show.

He'll start with the text! The first thing to do is to figure out the protocol, which doesn't take too long; there's only so many ways that make sense to encode text. Then he'll dump all the text data he's seen and incorporate that into his language models. While that's happening, he starts using his protocol knowledge to decode their other media content. Does the video stream have subtitle data broadcasted alongside it? He can start learning how the language is pronounced, that way...

The video stream absolutely has subtitle data broadcasted alongside it. This is a civilized place.

Okay, cool. Church can start learning a lot about the language and how it is spoken, with all this data. It does really fascinating things with negation! It's... a kind of irregular conjugation? 

He's going to keep working until he thinks he could probably interpret a basic spoken conversation in real time and generate holographic text responses, if he had to. That will probably take him 6 hours or so! Does anything interesting happen while he's doing that?

Well, the person in the farmhouse stops watching TV and goes to bed. Depending on how good his sensitivity is he can still pick up radio bands, though, which have various phone conversations and broadcasts all through the night.

His sensitivity is really good! The radio units on Project Freelancer armor kits are several kinds of absurd, really. (He should know. He helped design them. (He should know. He knew, at one point, and he will know again, in the future. But right now, he has almost no memories from that part of his life.)) 

Church hums away at the language all evening, picking up on phone calls, broadcasts, and what are presumably web page loads happening all around him, drinking in the information available to him. 

What can he pick up about the people he's snooping on? What are they talking about, or reading about? (What was the television show about, for that manner?)

Things he can pick up:

Most people here sleep at night; the traffic goes way down, though not to zero, dropping off gradually from sunset to midnight and then just a few people till the sun's about to come up and folks start waking up again.

The television show was a medical drama roughly 80% banter and shipping by volume, though there is a coherent medical plotline carrying on around that and in the remaining 20%. The episode watched tonight featured the appendix-surgeon confessing her love to the anesthetist and a B-plot about a therapy cat in the pediatric ward having some kind of rivalry with one of the orderlies in a way that may or may not be the orderly's imagination.

The people who stay up all night in this area appear to include:

- an emergency dispatcher who is mostly playing an online game about breeding cows to have fantastical colors and traits in between reading their social media feeds, connected to GOAT TRACK MUNICIPAL WIFI. They have successfully bred a cocoa cow and also one that has six legs and produces different cuts of meat in this fashion, by the time their shift is over.
- a parent who (judging by their messages to an advice-medic in another town) is up late with a sick baby, and after the medic assures them they don't need to call the emergency dispatcher about it instead spends the night reading smutty fanfiction about characters from a book series who have various combinations of magical powers and also antlers.
- an extreme night owl who is up like this every night just 'cause and is spending tonight gardening with a headlamp on, streaming this activity to the internet and chatting about caterpillars and scallion cultivars and the headlamp itself which he apparently got free to review (he likes it, overall, but thinks it should be available in more colors of light in addition to the 15 colors of band and lamp housing).

Some piece of Church finds these people oddly compelling and charming? (He tries not to think about which piece. He isn't supposed to have his pieces? what's going on? questions for never later!!!).

By the time the sun starts to rise, he's confident in his understanding of the language enough to translate a conversation.
(He's also judging this cow breeding game. He thinks it's kind of dumb!)

When he sees the light, he sets off Wash's currently configured wake-up alarm. He also tries to check the local internet to find something like a government building nearby, or some other place it'd make sense to start talking to people. Can he find anything like that nearby?

The emergency responder works from a municipal government building! It's about a mile away from this bee shed. (The cat woke up and has left through the catflap.)

Wash was in fact too tired to have much in the way of dreams, which is good for his quality of sleep. He wakes to the sound of his alarm and looks around blearily. 

"Okay, I'm awake. Looks like there were no problems during the night? You learn anything interesting?"

 "Good morning, sunshine!" Wow, Church sounds obnoxiously cheerful, even to himself. Maybe he should dial it back a bit? Eh, it's not like Caboose is here to see it. 

"Tons, actually. I've got their audio, text and video codecs down pretty well, and I can translate the language well enough for a conversation. Also, there's an emergency responder about a mile from here. I'll brief you on the rest of what I learned while we walk."

Huh. That's... a lot more progress than he was expecting. "Good work", he says to fill the pause while he thinks. Delta could have done that much over an evening, he's pretty sure? Church being able to do all that is not at all in-line with how the AI was functioning over the last few days, but he supposes it's been less than 18 hours since he first told the AI he was Alpha, and less than that since he saw the proof firsthand. 

Ah, hell, it's not like Wash is an AI troubleshooting (mental health?) specialist. If Church wants to talk about it, he can.

"While 'we' walk, huh? Alright, smart guy, lead the way." 

Church has his hologram salute, and then start marching in an extremely exaggerated gait. He populates Wash's HUD with a map to the emergency responder. As Wash walks, Church chatters at him.

"Alright, so they have an internet, but their computers are ancient compared to UNSC standard issue, let alone this Freelancer hardware. I haven't poked around their history too much, yet, but I haven't seen anything so far that suggests they're radical separatists, or anything? As far as I can tell, this planet is populated by humans who've just... mysteriously had no contact with the rest of the galaxy, which is weird, of course, but..."

They proceed along the path towards where the emergency responder should be. Now that it's daytime, they're a lot more visible! They make a pretty odd pair, visually; a man in futuristic full-body power armor, grey with yellow highlights, chatting to a much smaller holographic suit of blue power armor. 

The track hits a perpendicular road, better-paved, and they need to turn left, which will dump them in the downtown (such as it is) of Goat Track.

The Goat Track downtown has the following buildings:

- a municipal government tower with emergency dispatch, the mayor's office and a couple of others, the snowplow garage, and the disaster shelter basement underneath it all
- a grocery store ("Basket")
- a vehicle charging station which also has horse accommodations, including a horse treat vending machine
- a school/community center building
- a bed-and-breakfast
- a general-non-food-store
- eight houses
- a small apartment building
- a playground
- a vet's office
- a tiny clinic, attached to one of the houses but with its own signage and entrance

It's still quite early; nobody is out on the street (...there's just the one) of Goat Track yet.

Church is rattling off facts about this place to him and labeling the signs in VR, clearly very pleased with himself and equally clearly keeping himself very distracted. Once or twice he zones out in a way that makes it seem like he might be having some kind of Problem? 

Wash is... not really sure how he feels about that, but it's FINE, because feelings are not important! What's important is that they're making first contact with an unknown civilization! Wash is ready to do his best to make sure they make a good first impression, because they might be stranded here FOREVER.

...Which would also be FINE. It's not like there's anyone back home who'll miss him, and he got his revenge on the program.

He walks up to the municipal government tower, and looks around for an entrance. Is this place open?

There is a PULL FOR IN PERSON EMERGENCY TRIAGE - §*500 FINE FOR ABUSE, DISPATCHER'S SOLE DISCRETION - DETAILS SITE^GOATTRACK^MUNI^EMERGENCY** sign on a cord he could pull! The door is not open yet. The posted hours are 9:00-3:00***.

*§ is here being used to represent this region's currency, the wheel. (Etymologically, more like a wheel of cheese than like a vehicular wheel, but some of the currency design is also inspired by vehicular wheels, gears, spinning wheels, etc.)
**This is a translation convention for the actual local method of conveying uniform resource locators, obviously, but the features "site", "goat track", "municipal", and "emergency" are indeed provided in that order.
***This is obviously not just a coincidence in how they keep time, they do something else, but unfortunately if I attempt to write a non-Earthly time system all my fingers will fall off, forever depriving you of the glowfic you love. Please assume translation convention.

Wash reaches for it, and then pauses.

"Do... we qualify as an emergency, locally?" 

Church snorts. "No, Wash, they get visitors from other worlds in power armor here all the time, it's like their prime import. I just didn't think to mention it!"

Wash smirks. It's more comforting when he's being at least a bit of an asshole, somehow? More familiar, at least.

He pulls the rope.

A window up the stairs opens and a woman with a bag over her shoulder marked DISPATCH KIT slides down a pole that's conveniently located for this purpose and looks at them. She kind of double-takes at the projection, then focuses on Wash. "What's the trouble?" she says, businesslike. She's wearing all white except a lavender scarf in her hair and a lavender wide fabric belt thing and lavender shoes.

The projection says, in a very weirdly accented and slightly stilted accent, "Hello! We are-"

He's interrupted by the man in the power armor, who says something in a language the woman has never heard before. The hologram responds in what must be the same language, tersely, and the two of them have a back-and-forth that... seems like some kind of argument?

...it sure is taking them a while...

<<Look, I don't care if you outrank me! Nobody here has ever heard of the UNSC and I technically have more experience with first contact scenarios than you!>>

       <<Bullshit! When would you have gotten first contact experience?>>

<<Oh, back when we were simulation troopers, we met an alien once.>>

       <<What?>>

<<Yeah, it had some bullshit quest we got roped into trying to help it with because Tucker bonded with one of their swords. It was->>

       <<Okay, stop, stop. (a) I don't care, and (b) this is making us look stupid in front of the dispatcher! Just tell her I said "we come in peace" or something>>

<<Dude, I'm not saying that, it's ridiculous.>>

       <<It's important that we establish our intentions! Our power armor might be really scary-looking!>>

<<Okay, but I'm not saying it like that. What I'll say is>>

"Hello! We are from a different planet, very far away. We used a strange technology in an emergency and it sent us here. We did not know 'here' existed until recently. We mean no harm."

(Author's note: from here on out, text in <<double angle brackets>> will be used to indicate conversations in Church and Wash's native language, at least when they're around Greens)

In retrospect, Wash probably should have seen this coming! He's still annoyed, though.

<<I'm Agent Washington; the overgrown calculator handling translation calls himself Church>>

      <<Oh, right, introductions! Good idea.>> "My name is Church, and I'm an artificial intelligence! The idiot who's main function in life is carrying me around and complaining is called Agent Washington. It's good to meet you!"

<<...That was way too many syllables for what I told you to say.>>

The emergency dispatcher does not really look like she gets this all the time. "...is it safe for you to take your helmet off?" she tries.

"It would be safe, but he doesn't speak the language and it would disconnect the hologram projector and speaker I'm using to talk to you, and he doesn't speak the language. He could open his visor?"

      <<...not sure I want to open my visor right now?>>

<<Why not?>>

      <<I haven't shaved or had a chance to freshen up in a while and my face probably looks kinda fucked up? also->>

"...He says he's reluctant to open his visor because his face is ugly."

      <<Also I could be allergic to something local! I get bad seasonal allergies on some planets!!!>>

<<You couldn't have led with that???>> "...He's also worried about allergies."

      <<Maybe let me finish before you decide what to translate, asshole!>>

<<Holy shit, can you chill a bit?>>

Wash takes a deep breath, opens his mouth to say something, and then decides to save it for later.

"It's not going to bother me if your face is ugly and I just want to check to see if you look like a human or if you look like you're from another planet," she says patiently.

"...So the thing is, he totally does look like a human. Humans, where we're from, have faster than light travel and are one of many known species. You could even say that  I used to be huma-" 

The hologram projection flickers out. 

Oh, fuck. <<Church? Church, it's not real, it's just a memory! You're not there anymore, buddy, snap out of it!>>

The man in the armor gives an apologetic shrug and reaches a hand up to flip up his visor, revealing his freckled face and his concerned and stressed expression.

Since he comes from a rather different genetic environment, he probably looks extremely foreign! 

...He sneezes, sighs, and puts his visor back up.

-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

There was another incident; security failed.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

Yup that's a foreign dude! "Okay. Apart from being - time traveled? - are you having an emergency right now?"

      <<Church, it's not real, it's just a memory!>>

-AAA oh. Right. That was a long time ago. 

<<Fuck, sorry, I>>

      <<Yeah. I know. Sorry.>>

He replays the audio logs and translates back to Wash.

<<Uh. You're having an emergency?>>

      <<No, I'm not.>>

<<Are you for real right now?>>

      <<I was having an emergency. I'm not anymore, so it's fine.>>

<<Church...>>

      <<You can bitch all you want but I'm not going to tell her I have mental health problems!>> 

<<...Fine. Tell her I need food and water.>>

The hologram pops back into existence. He's much less animated than he was 10 seconds ago, and his voice much less expressive.

"Agent Washington hasn't had anything to eat or drink in a while. We don't have other immediate problems."

"Allergies*?" she asks, opening her kit. "I have peanut butter, sealed omelet, granola bar, and electrolyte drink."

* A broad term covering both medical and strong nonmedical reasons to avoid a substance

Church has Wash's medical records in the data they stole from the Project. He consults those (carefully, avoiding the surrounding data like it is full of bombs (which it kinda is, when you think about it, which he's not doing))

"No allergies to any of those. I'd recommend the omelet, granola, and electrolyte drink."

      <<Can you ask her if I can eat inside? Don't want to start sneezing from pollen again.>>

"He does seem to have an allergy to some local plant, and would prefer to eat inside, if that's ok" 

"Uh - yeah, sure," she says, and she opens the front door with a tap of her badge. There's benches inside. She hands over an omelet and a granola bar and a bottle of clear liquid.

Wash sits down, flips up his helmet's visor, and scarfs down the food. Neither he nor Church seem immediately interested in talking.

He's trying to think about what to say, and also trying to review the things he already knows about AI stability, but he keeps getting stuck thinking about Epsilon. Which isn't very helpful, and is also pretty ironic, all things considered. 

...He hopes Caboose and the others made it out okay.

The emergency responder watches him for a while, then says, "I'm not really equipped to deal with the time travel thing and I don't think the doctor* is either. Is it okay with you if I call the city hospital and have them pick you up?"

*The doctor of Goat Track is mostly equipped to perform first aid and triage anything of ambiguous concerningness. For things more complicated than "how long should I wait for this to go away on its own before I worry" and "help me get this splinter out", residents of Goat Track and its environs travel to a larger town.

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.

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.

It would be ideal if he could bring it to Six Rivers! (Six Rivers is pretty far east of here.)

How long would it take him to teach the supercomputer more languages?

The drawing program has 4,133 purchase pledges for a port to a particular new operating system at price points ranging from §1-250.

The highest profile tech company is called Droplet and they make the most popular web browser and one of the most popular document management systems. Its founder is retired but the successor is his niece.

...Will they pay for transit on the way to Six Rivers?

He learned this one in like an hour but he's multitasking more than he was last night. (How much money is in modern translation work?)

...how much of that money would go to him for making the port vs the original authors of the software?

(What are the owners of tech hardware (CPU, RAM, drives) manufacturers like? Any of them seem like the kind of people who'd be willing to hear them out?)

Wash wants to know how far away Six Rivers is and if it's a train ride or something else.

Wash also wants to know if the train has food, he's starting to get hungry again.

(He's currently trying to get himself up to speed on the language, so he isn't so reliant on Church for translations. Unfortunately for him, he has to trust Church for language-learning material, which means he may or may not be learning curse words in place of politeness markers.)

Six Rivers is a train ride, longer than the one from Goat Track to Silver Cross, which will be over with in an hour. The train to Silver Cross has a little vending machine in his car with three kinds of juice, various snacks, and candy, in addition to bandaids, ibuprofen, little pocket-size packets of tissues, and water.

Translation work varies a lot, of course. With enough volume he can make a lot of money by translating fiction and obscure science papers and so on in exchange for bounties, and there is some reason to think that more bounties will pop up if he undercuts the existing market clearing rate, but it's not, for a human, terribly lucrative per hour, and is normally done by dedicated fans and scientists and suchlike.

The original authors of the software wouldn't get anything, they've declined to serve these customers.

It's sort of hard to get personal information on the CEOs of companies; the norm seems to be having a professional profile that is just about business things and not about their likelihood of believing in time travelers in power armor. The brand account for Arc Technologies, which makes phones and laptops and things of that ilk, at least is sort of trying to project an attitude of being bold and friendly, but who knows if that extends to their executives.

The university can comp their train ticket to Six Rivers for the chance to study the computer!

Church will start rewriting the drawing software for the new OS. He posts progress updates as he does it. (They come in absurdly fast, for a human doing this, but the posts at the beginning sure look like someone who's done basically no coding with these operating systems at all, as well as someone with... rather surprising gaps in their explicit knowledge about how to code in general??? It's confusing, if you know what you're looking at.)  

...Is the university okay with some level of indirection in studying? He's reluctant to provide unrestricted access to the hardware itself for reasons that will be more apparent when they show up, though he'll happily let them use it to crunch numbers to demonstrate (and also if they can supply electricity that would be very nice.)

      Meanwhile, Wash buys some juice, a protein-heavy snack, and a candy bar.

"Juice and candy, Wash? That's a lot of sugar."

      "Oh, fuck off."

Church smirks. "So do you think we should go to the university right away, or try our luck with the government in Silver Cross first?"

      Wash stops to think about this for a bit. "An 8 hour train ride? We'd be getting to Six Rivers pretty late... Can we book a room somewhere without ID?"

"Gooood question." Church checks online to see if this is possible.

Hotels do not seem to require ID, just money.

The university is not trying to hire the computer, they want to study it.

"Okay, so I've been thinking-"

     "Oh Shit! Don't strain yourself, dude, I know that's not your strong suit-"

"Shut the fuck up. Anyways, I think we should stay in Silver Cross for at least a day. If you can find a hotel near the train station and book us a room, we can buy something cheap that plugs into the wall on the way there, and when we get in I'll take it apart and we can charge the suit up a bit. Then I want to get out of this thing, take a shower, eat an actual meal, and have a bit of a nap in an actual bed. Then we can go talk to a Real Government Person. You'll be done with that software port by then, which should give us a fair bit of spending money. Any objections?"

     "Well, I object to the framing of the money as ours. I'm doing all the work, dude! I'm just buying you stuff out of the goodness of my cold mechanical heart."

Wash bows, extremely sarcastically. "Your generosity is un-fuckin-paralleled." 

     Church snickers. "Yeah, that's fine. I'm actually almost finished with the port, I think? Probably? Hard to tell. But I should be able to get us a nice place to stay and a good meal for you on the way there. Because I'm so generous." His hologram salutes sarcastically and disappears, and Wash assumes the conversation is over.

...but after a few seconds, he pops back out. "...Wash, did you know programming is actually kinda fun? It's sorta like being in command, but the only person you have to boss around is the computer, and it does exactly what you tell it to! Also it's so fast. There's no waiting around for shit to happen! Which is great, because I've done un-fucking-believable amounts of waiting for shit to happen."

      ...Awww. Wash smiles inside his helmet. "Whatever, nerd."

"Oh, fuck you. You're just jealous of my leet skillz."

      Wash snorts, then goes back to studying the translation guides.

Church responds to the university, telling them that intensive study of the supercomputer is not something they can grant unconditionally, but he's happy to head over to Six Rivers (on his own dime) and discuss the issue with them further in a few days, if that's acceptable?

He does a quick sweep of his incoming messages and comments on his threads. Anything interesting? If not, he'll go back to working on the port, and posting occasional blog updates about it.

The interested CS professor at Six Rivers University is up for setting up a meeting in a few days, sure.

Nothing very interesting, no.

Cool, they look forward to meeting him.

Church finishes up the port of the drawing program as the train is approaching Silver Cross. He finds a site where he can sell his new program at a price that matches what the median user pledged they'd buy it for. The site has a system for setting a lower price that is more inconvenient to select, which seems kinda silly, but whatever, he tries it out. §50 by default, minimum §35. 

He posts the link in his threads and messages the people who asked him for the port directly! He basks in the glory of a task completed with no major fuck-ups, and then starts looking for a hotel near the train station, as well as a place where they can buy a charging cable and a meal to go. Hopefully this shouldn't be too hard?

A handful of people download it, and then by the time they're in Silver Cross more of them have started doing so in response to confirmations that it seems to open and run fine.

There are a couple of hotels by the train station in Silver Cross; he probably wants the cheaper one. The train station has a convenience store where they can get a sandwich and a cable.

...Well, what's the difference between the cheap and the nice ones? He might want to splurge.

(He guides Wash to the convenience store while checking out hotels.)

The cheap one doesn't do housekeeping during your stay, just between, and doesn't allow animals unless they're particularly well-certified for conduct, and has slightly worse wifi and food. The nicer one has a decent café as its first floor and you can get housekeeping during your stay if you flip the doorknob sign and they have a lower standard of animal training and the reviews prefer the vibe in general.

Hmmm, most of that doesn't matter and Church cares a lot about better Wifi, actually. Can they easily afford a night at the fancy one?

     Wash looks around the convenience store for a cheap wall charger with a decent length of wire, loose-fitting clothes, a fresh meal, some carb-heavy snack foods, and a bag to carry it all in.

With the money from the port coming in, yes, they can afford a night at the fancy one.

The convenience store has long loose unisex shirt-dress-things the adult size of which will go down to Wash's ankles unless he buttons it higher, apparently for throwing on if you have spilled something all over your outfit or something; they come in black and white. The longest available wall charger is about three feet long. The convenience store doesn't have anything hot but there's a stand over that way with dumplings that does; at the convenience store it's sandwiches and snacks. The convenience store will sell him a shoulder bag or a backpack, again in black or white (the backpack is also available in green with black piping, and sky-blue with white).

Wash will buy: the 3 foot charger, a shirt-dress in black, a sandwich and some carb-y snacks, and a shoulder bag, also in black. He'll also grab some dumplings from the stand, pointing at the things he wants to buy rather than having Chuch translate when possible to avoid drawing even more attention than his armor is already drawing.

      Church gets them a room at the fancy hotel and guides Wash there, providing translation via HUD along the way. 

Wash looks around along the walk. What's this part of Silver Cross like?

The train station opens onto a bunch of residential levels on top of commercial. One of the buildings has a big slide from the top of it into the park behind it, which wraps around the building once and has a child whooping on his way down; the same building has an exterior elevator leading up to where the slide starts. In addition to the hotel they'll be staying at, the immediate environs include a buffet, a massage parlor, a pet food store, a supermarket, a post office delivery hub*, a café**, a shoe shop, a tailor, and an electronics vendor.

* In this part of Green, deliveries and mail are sent to one of these unless you specifically sign up for doorstep dropoff, although many people do that for some or all items.
** Literally "drink-restaurant", this type of establishment sells interesting beverages and light appetizer/snack/dessert accompaniments to them. Sort of a cultural cross between a bar and a coffeeshop.

Awww. Wash smiles at the sight of the slide.

Hotel time! Do they need to interact with a person to check in?

There is a person available but if he just wants to buy a keycard for a vacant room from this machine instead he can do that.