"No, no, no, yes," he says, raising an eyebrow. "I don't think I have heard of any recent... inventions, as such."

"Well... that pretty much exhausts how much I know about the history of technology." Thomas shrugs. "On the bright side, we should figure out how to give you a thousand years' head start on a lot of things. Mass production without all the smog. Neat."

"Smog?"

"The simple version is that some kinds of machines require you to burn things for them to work. They are useful enough to become quickly popular and there would be so much of them that towns would get perpetually covered by smoke clouds, like a fog."

"Huh. That sounds... very unpleasant."

"Extremely!" Thomas says brightly. "But we can just skip the nasty parts. Maybe come out famous enough to have statues in our honor."

Taharqi laughs. "I think I'm fine but you do you."

Grin. "Thanks. Anyway, hold this support beam up?"

And they go back to construction.

Back to construction they go.

After they have sufficiently digested their food, Sendhei can start teaching the dance magic. It's pretty similar in concept to the music magic but involves more body movements to trigger the appropriate mental states.

Interesting, what sort of things does it do? It's presumably something Sendhei could teach? Henry is willing to give it a try.

It helps with making people feel more energetic and recover from trauma, physical or mental.

Gabe can see how watching dancing naked men would have that effect. Maybe Henry should remove his underwear to improve his chances of learning it.

Anyway, he tries to mimic Sendhei's movements to achieve the effect.

He will not succeed in replicating anything, not today at any rate. Sendhei tries to correct his posture, and has useful tips on how to achieve that, so he can improve at least in the physical aspect of it, but even regular dancing takes more than just a day to learn.

Henry is fine with that learning rate and tries his best to incorporate the corrections.

Maybe Henry should get rid of the underwear (he is the only one wearing anything) to facilitate movement.

"You're getting a bit repetitive, there," he tells Gabe with no heat. "That piece of clothing does look kind of... strangely constraining, though. I don't think I have ever seen it."

(Gabe just shrugs.)

"It's meant to give the outer layer of clothing some protection from... products from that area. And also some support, I guess. It's not particularly constraining."

Pause.

"Just to be sure, you don't think one needs to be naked to perform the dance magic?" He asks Sendhei.

"No, not at all, what you're wearing doesn't matter."

"Good. Sorry, Gabe."

"It's kinda silly to hold to the concept of modesty, but I got the sense that Henrys just be silly like that."

"The concept of... what, now?"

"Modesty is like being ashamed of being naked? Or thinking that being naked is shameful? It's a silly rule, but societies sometimes just be like that."

"Shameful. Why?"

"I think it's mostly an excuse to oppress people by making them feel bad about random things?"