That was ... different. Jane is still in her fur coat, and it feels silly that our 'cuddling after sex' feels a bit different due to that, since she's still wearing sexy underwear underneath her fur coat while resting half-lying on me, a bit distant in thoughts with a couple of fingers playing with the hair on my chest, and a sexy leg lying over mine. It does feel manly to feel her against my body, and that she likes feeling my arm around her body caressing her sexy bum and back.

  "Robert..."

  I recognise that slightly questioning tone from Jane, and she clearly has something on her mind.

  "What is it, my dear ?lskarinna?"

  Jane smiles and gives me a kiss. She likes when I use her 'title'. And I like being able to use it and how she rewards me using it with her beautiful smile.

  "I've remembered something interesting, and have been contemplating. Ever heard of the Kallmann syndrome?"

  "Nope."

  "I knew someone who have that. It's when a human doesn't go through puberty or just partially. They need lifelong hormone treatment, and as far as I know, it's many times more common amongst human men than women, and male attributes like deeper voice, muscles, more hair, the dick and testicles doesn't develop as it should, and men can become infertile. I've been thinking, and you know how the average Elvish male looks, and how difficult they have in getting children compared to a human. What if male Elves in general have low male sex hormone and testosterone?"

  That is one hell of a thought! "Woah! Jane, that is a hell of a thought! Especially with their more androgynous look and lack of body hair! Oh, that actually fit with the common Fantasy trope of Elves living long but having low birth and fertility. Damn! Who knows if the modern fantasy lore is actually based on murky historic knowledge. Sadly we can't really test that. Or even try to cure that. It's not like we can produce testosterone."

  "Also, as far as I know, beside fucking up the kidneys and such issues, alcoholism can lead to testosterone deficiency, and here, everyone drinks alcohol all the time, including children and very much so amongst the richer. What if the Elves are just more sensitive to that?"

  "Oof! That... Damn!"

  "Human fertility drops off with age, and Elvish seems to go way faster, but higher alcohol sensitivity might be partially to blame."

  "Yeah, it might. The only real way to test that would be let Elvish children grow up without ever allowing them alcohol. Only water, milk, fruit juices, berry drinks and tea. And then see if the sons look more manly and have it easier to have children. That will be a generational project, but this is very important information and absolutely worth to try. It's after all common that human children won't be allowed alcohol until older. For several good reason."

  "I did good!"

  "Yes you did!"

  The rest of the afternoon is spent building bell striking mechanisms for the pendulum clock and installing that, although the kinetic marble machine sculpture's lifting mechanism gets some work too, as the lifting mechanism is the most important part. It's quite simple, with a weight hanging from a string wound round a shaft, which drives the larger lifting arm via a gear. Once the glass marble is in the low lifting position, it releases the catch that holds the lifting arm, so the drive wheel with its weight starts to rotate and the lifting arm gracefully lifts the glass marble 60 cm up to the top position, and once there, the catch snaps back on, the lifting arm is released and falls back down by gravity, triggering the hook that releases the lifted glass marble and it starts rolling down for the cycle to be repeated. The weight solution provides a fixed amount of lifting motions, not a duration that the whole kinetic mechanism cycle.

  If many glass marbles are used, all can be lifted rather quickly, but the idea is to only use one or two glass marbles, so the time for the marble to reach the bottom is the delay to the next lifting motion. If, for example, the mechanism can do 52 lifts before the weight reaches its bottom, and the ball takes 30 seconds to reach the bottom, it takes 26 minutes before the marble machine stops, and it is possible to crank the weight up as the ball rolls, because the shaft has a latching mechanism connected to the drive wheel.

  To make the marble machine even more interesting, the plan is to use a Y-tilting divider at the very beginning, so the ball alternates between two tracks. I'm considering putting two Y-tilting dividers after the first one so there can be a total of four lanes down to the bottom, and if I design for two balls, I can do ball locks and other interesting little tricks, but of course the machine will cycle for a shorter duration until the weights energy has been used up. I'm contemplating several marble races such as a spiral, zig-zag, loop, squiggly slalom, jump, and dropping into funnels etc. But, I will start 'simple', so the first marble machine will have two tracks, but there will be one or more marbles machine in the future.

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  It's amusing how Gisela makes some kind of religious gesture towards the pendulum clock when it strikes, especially as she's learning how to operate electricity and radios which is much harder to explain and more magical. But then again, she's used to clocks signalling time for prayer, religious celebration or call to gathering and the like, so it's perhaps not that surprising that she thinks the pendulum clock is rather holy. However, it's a striking contrast to her opinion of what happens in my workshop, because when the steam engine is running and we've using the lathe or something, Gisela hugs the corner as she walks by in the corridor outside, so she is as far away from my workshop as possible. Because even behind a door, the machines and other things there are strange and mysterious, and she is convinced that just the steam engine would have had me burned at the stake in her homeland. The water wheels that power everything in the village are far more acceptable, and apparently there are simple water wheels in her home country that look like the paddles on the boat and sit in steeper streams. Just not very common, and not with the design I use. Or all the strange and big moving things we have connected to it in the village sawmill and workshop.

  Haera has told me that she and her family were impressed when very advanced and exact sundials were introduced last summer and were expensive, but these mechanical clocks are so much more practical; indoors and not dependent on the sun, and they show the time very precisely. There is no sign informing that the yearly movement of the sun needs to be compensated for. And apart from the pendulum clock now also have a bell strike mechanism, the newest wall clocks are so very small, and they are somehow controlled from the staff room clock, and that is why they don't need a pendulum. And then there's Ciara's cat clock. Everyone loves that clock.

  I don't think Haera truly understands the huge problems there might be in making a clock precise and accurate; it's just assumed to be right, because why wouldn't it be? If you don't understand the problems of length expansion, friction, air resistance, and how precise something has to be, etc, it's hard to understand why the clock would drift, because what reference do you have if you've never even used a clock before? Does it really matter if the clock drift a quarter of an hour each day?

  Over the last six months, the bodyguards, Ciara and Iselin have helped me collect enough measurement points from the sun, that I'll be able to calculate the time equation for sundials quite accurately, although I will continue to collect measurement points to make it more accurate. In the future there will be a proper observatory built, and with better data I will make an updated board for sundials available for Digraldi to sell.

  Of course the bodyguards suggest another viewing of the Atomic Blonde sequences, so that Hillevi and Raneigh have also seen it. So we do, and as expected, the shock is greatest for Raneigh, but the others have tried to prepare her for what she's about to see and learn, and I start with the same introduction with the camera and music videos. Of course, the other bodyguards also want to see that too once again. And I'll also show Iselin and Kari who have not seen the movie or the scenes.

  Eventually, Lorraine has more fangirls, and Gunhild and Alith are getting into it and enjoying it, and I know at least Alith would like to see the whole movie. It's a shame I don't have or can't show the first Jason Bourne movie, but maybe I can show when Perkins surprises Wick in the hotel room? Both Iselin and Kari want to see the whole Atomic Blonde movie, but Kari should see the Johan Falk movie first, and we might as well do it tonight.

  This evening and night is Kari's, but before we see the movie, Kari complains about Haera's stupidity and her presence here. Of course it had to happen in winter so building her mansion will take longer! If Kari knew about the baby, it would probably be worse. But I shouldn't say anything, even though I'm pretty sure Kari will suspect the truth as soon as Haera officially gets pregnant. At least I manage to make Kari take her mind of that when I 'welcome her back' and show how much I've missed her, because I've really missed my stately goddess, and I'm looking forward to asking her to be my wife, even though that is still nerve-wracking. And it's better to have sex now than after the movie.

  So Kari will watch the Johan Falk movie 'The mother of all robberies' alone with me, but I know it will be a really big adjustment for her to accept modern human life. Just as I did with Iselin, but more carefully, I explain it's a fictional story about bad guys trying to pull off a huge robbery against a kingdom, more easily thought of as the king, and the guards trying to stop them. I explain what a policeman is, and there is violence etc in the film, she will get a pretty realistic picture of modern society, with modern warriors weapons in the robbery scenes and it is filmed in the area where Borgarsandr is located, so she will see a modern Nordic city that I myself have been in many times. But I don't expect Kari to accept things as easily as Iselin does, so I tell her to take a break whenever she wants, and we don't have to finish the movie tonight. We can continue another evening. If she wants us to talk about something, pause, and we'll talk about it, and we can jump back to see something over an over.

  Of course, she doesn't understand most of the dialogue because Modern Swedish is just too different, and she doesn't understand the technology. Mobile phones and radios are very easy to explain compared to many other things, and she has such a hard time keeping up with the cuts and scene changes, but like Iselin, Kari appreciates seeing what mine and Jane's world is like, even if the story is made up. But she has a hard time with it, and it takes time to watch because of the many pauses where I need to explain something because there are so many amazing things, like just seeing all the cars. All the big beautiful roads. How fast everything goes on the roads, and the huge tunnels. A very tall bridge. Houses. The tower blocks. So many lights and lamps, even in the forest. There's no end of amazing sights and things. Helicopters flying. Automatic weapons. Motor boats without sails. The size and number of people.

  It's after midnight when the movie have ended, and we go down to the toilet in the wing. Gunhild and Raneigh who are awake see us coming but I just say that everything is fine, Kari has just seen something more shocking than the first time they saw music videos, and Gunhild just nods. I ask them to let us sleep in and not wake up until 7 a.m. Kari is still deep in thought as we crawl into bed, and Kari just wants me to hold her and we fall asleep that way.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kallmann_syndrome

  https://ww19.0123movie.net/movie/atomic-blonde-21461.html