"Earth had a long tradition of powerful families colluding and backstabbing, though it worked differently because we don't have the change, of course... Wait how do you prevent a hurricane - even with heat and force mages, forces of nature are big. I suppose you could steer it away from the continent or help it dissipate... Eh, nevermind."

"You cool the ocean and have force mages fighting the wind. It takes a lot of mages but everything besides the cooling is just meant to delay it long enough for it to weaken before it hits land. You can have that one for free, I think I ran a little short of five minutes."

"A lot short of five minutes, actually. More like two and a half. I think you should either keep talking or give me three more questions."

"You can have three more questions, sure."

"How often do men switch families, move around? Does it cause problems that the annoying humans sometimes shack up with caralendri men and deny the rest of you some? What's the average number of men per woman, and what's the number that's generally considered impressive and successful?"

"You usually leave your birth family in your teens, of course, otherwise you'd be fucking your mother, and sometimes you stay with someone kinda casually till you're old enough to really know what you want your life to be like, sometimes a few someones in a row. Sometimes you'd break up with your family after that, too, but it's kind of a big deal then, sometimes you choose it because there was a lot of drama and you're sick of it and sometimes because someone dies and everything's different. And, you know, not just because you happen to want to that day.

"Humans! There are fifty of us for every one human! I don't think about interspecies relationships. But if I cared there's nothing stopping me from winning myself a couple human men, if I wanted them, which I don't really but maybe just the right humans would change my mind on that.

"Sixty men is too many. Look, that's just my opinion, I haven't polled every caralendar on how many men you should have, I just think sixty is too many. You're not really a family if you can't spend quality time with all your men once a month. I mean, success doesn't exactly come down to raw numbers, if you've turned away two men this week because you're really happy with your four, people hear about that, they don't think of you as a lady with only four men. ...Okay, that was probably pretty opaque to you, I was saying I think a successful businesswoman like Curina Marenvoru who has a personal life is better than a clan higher-up like Malar Sorota who has a collection that she shows off. I guess it's true that no one thinks you're a failure if you have half a dozen and no one even thinks you're just average if you have forty-eight or so, but there are people with two that I'm impressed by, you know? I personally want a couple dozen, I think I can actually have that many relationships, and I don't want as many as Malar Sorota because I'd forget their favorite colors or mix up which one likes I Will Become A Woman and which one likes It Happened In The Storm.

"Oh, of course, age matters too. If so-and-so has three and hasn't turned anyone down but she's thirty-two, that's pretty impressive, way more than having a dozen and being a hundred forty-four. Being ready to start a family at thirty-two is really rare, if you try it and no one wants you everyone will laugh at you and the change doesn't go the other way so you can't even go back to being a man. But if you try it and you immediately get three men who want you, then no one will laugh, even if it's only three. You were right, you were ready. So it's hard to say that this number is normal and that number is successful. Personally I have nine dads in my birth family and the family I just left had thirteen men besides me."

"Can't boil these things down to a number, it's more about context than collecting for most people, makes sense. It may interest you to know that most humans have a monogamy thing, at least a bit. Being one of many for a woman bugs us on an instinctive level. Most of us, anyway. It's kind of weird that caralendri and humans have more or less the same body plan despite several large important differences, eh? We're about as close as agerah and beluli, maybe closer."

"I'm not an evolutionary biologist and I have no idea who'd know but I'm very sure there's a book on the subject somewhere."

"Maybe I'll go searching later. Well, my curiosity is sated, anyway."

"If you start making electronics I wouldn't be able to find from the ratios you gave me, let me know, I'll pay for the new recipe, too."

"Sure. What's your name and where can I send you mail?"

"Nimo Saramel, I'm renting a place in that green and white building at the south end of town for now, I can let you know if I move."

"Nikolas Roth. I live upstairs. I need to hurry up and invent e-mail, it'd make keeping track of correspondences easier..." He types this into his little tablet. "I think we're done here, then, unless you want to buy something from the shop?"

"How much for a computer?"

"Computers start at 1728. That's the base model that's slower and can't remember as much. Screen and sound-maker and keyboard and flash card reader to load new programs and files integrated into the case. Text editor, spreadsheet program, calculator, music player if you buy music cards, calendar, clock, drawing app, encryption system, and the game Minefield already loaded in. More programs and games available for purchase. Probably going to teach other people how to make their own soonish, if there's hundreds of programs I don't have to bother making myself out there, more people want the computer itself. Maybe you'd want to be the first? User's manual included."

"I want one. And yeah, I might want to make programs, how long does it take to learn how?"

"Clever people can figure out how to do basic ones that just put words on a screen and do math in a few hours if the programming tools are good. A program that actually does something useful like, say, controlling some lights on a schedule, will probably take two weeks or so to learn how to do. You can spend years studying it if you want to get really, really good at it. Better quality programs don't have as many bugs - that is, conditions where they'll do something they're not supposed to - have more features, take less time and memory to run, or are really easy to build more programs on."

"And how much do you charge for lessons?"

"I'll give you a book I wrote on it and an hour's lessons after you read it and try it out for 288 rings, if you keep the book hidden for now and tell me what's hardest to understand in the book. I'll need to install the special programming program on your computer too. No charge for that bit. Part of the beauty of programs is that you can copy them for the price of the flash card, like someone making an illusion."

"Sure, sounds good."

So he gets the book and gets her computer and takes payment and loads the IDE and sends her off.

Nimo studies and eventually comes back to ask about some things in the book that aren't clear.

"Some of that confusion is because I'm obscuring the underlying mechanisms a bit, but the rest of it I can clear up for you now and fix in version two of the tutorial book."

"So how much do I get if I figure out your secrets and then tell you how I did it?"

"I know I can't keep the cat in the bag forever, I won't be stupid enough to pay and pay and pay as the secret gets less and less valuable. And there's... Layers of secrets, if you get my meaning. But if it's an important one and you swear you haven't told anyone and agree to a term nondisclosure, depends on the secret but probably at least a couple thousand rings."