The more Kate was allowed to operate in this semi-autonomous manner, the more ingrained and easy these behaviors became for her. Kate had learned that... she didn't need to obey every whim, or ill-formed command, of her owner to provide him the services he truly desired of her. And that she liked how this happened.The end of this cozy arrangement came when her owner was informed by his family that he'd had enough playing around, and there was an arranged marriage that he must now consummate for. He did not know how he was going to live with it, but today was the day of the big payoff. He would have to live with the moral compromises, but busting this organization was going to be the most important thing he would do in his entire life.She had a check-out sheet hanging around her neck. The staff had carefully noted the preparation work they had done, ticking off boxes and adding annotations to a convenient ponygirl-shaped diagram in the center of the page. He took the sheet in his left. "We got your message about our friends, and decided we should come check on them before winter sets in." Of course! Beletara is quite a bit south of your valley, and we will not have the cold frozen winter you will, but the winter storms are coming, and things will become colder and quieter here when the ship traffic slows." Cap said. "We were hoping to hear from you, and glad to see the message found you safely." Will you be spending the night?" Marsh asked."Not unless we decide we need to. "Yeah, but while you're stretching wires, there's other stuff you should be doing," Cindy said. I watched Nikki's head bob in assent. "We should do this because we need to learn."Jason walked over and looked at us. "Yes, please learn. You'd be surprised at how much equipment is designed with no thought given to how it has to be built, or worse, serviced in the future." Yeah," I said. "I haven't seen a good historical citation for it, but there's a saying that Roman law required the engineer to.