"Gravity," Combeferre rasped into the heavy air. The word hovered there for a moment, then settled into the invisible bands holding his arms to the floor.

"Gravity," he tried again, slowly turning his head and squinting at where Joly was propped up beside him on the haphazard pile of cushions. "That's what it's like. Earth's gravitation rearranged against me, like on the surface of Saturn. Pulling down on every…every atom of my body." His chin fell back down to his chest, where he could better regard the splay of his legs. "My God. Every atom. I can feel them all."

" 's good," Joly replied, "gravity. Or magnets."

"Magnets?"

"A magnetic field, all around me, puuuuuuulling me down." With that last phrase, his body slid several inches down the cushions, knocking his head against the wall with a hollow clunk. "….ow."

Combeferre jumped at the noise, sat for a moment, then jumped again. "Magnets! Yes! Take that one down."

"Take one where?"

"Aren't you writing down our observations?"

"I…was? I was, and then," Joly rubbed his eyes, scanned the room, then let out a pitiful whine. "And then the paper was over there."

This presented a problem. Over there was halfway across the room, somehow underneath the table bearing the messy preliminaries of the hashish experiment. Combeferre gave a little twitch, then decided against motion.

"Yes. Over there. So it is. Go get it."

Joly shot him what would've been a fierce glare had his eyes not already been half-shut. "You. I'll write if you get. I'll write magnets."

"Our data, Joly. We must have our data. Farewell, if I never return. Write on my tomb that I died for data and for a lazy friend." With that, he took a deep breath, and surged forward and up -

- before gravity decided to reassert itself, and he fell forward with a little shriek that ended in a whuff.

"Stupid data," he spat into the pillow that had broken his fall. "We don't need….oh, this is a very nice pillow. Lovely, lovely pillow." His arms curled up around it of their own volition.

"Really?" Joly asked somewhere above him. From the sudden whump at his side, he gathered that his friend had now joined him in his inelegant sprawl. He lifted his head to see Joly's impossibly large ear obscuring his vision. "Yes, a very nice pillow. Right as usual, Combeferre."

"Magnets. Gravity. I can remember this. We'll just…stay. Here. Very good."

"Mmm." It seemed that Joly was now nuzzling the cushion.

He couldn't say how long they lay there, with Joly slowly rubbing his face into the stuffing while Combeferre watched the curve of his eyebrow appear and disappear into the fabric, but there eventually came footfalls, which Combeferre felt before he heard.

"You idiot, Joly!" the door burst open. "I can smell you from three floors down. The neighbors are sure to complain, and then where will we be? Well, is there any left for me? And what are you doing to that pillow? Ah, hello Combeferre. Is this your doing?"

Combeferre flopped onto his back to see a bald head floating above him. "Call me Micromégas, honorary citizen of Saturn," he waved up, not caring that his fingers didn't seem to follow the motion of his wrist. "And your head, Eagle, your brow is the Sun. Could you put it behind a cloud? It's very bright."

Bossuet plopped his hat down over Combeferre's face. "Joly, since when do you do hashish?"

"Since…since…" he gave a weak giggle, "since science. We are performing science here. For science. And science needs something to drink. Anything to drink. Would you please, Bossulé…Bossu…Lèsgu…let… please?"

"I'll get your drink if there's some of that left for me."

"And would you get me my mirror? There is something very not right with my tongue. We need data. Is my tongue data, Combeferre?"

"Stupid data," he groaned, then immediately regretted it as the word bounced off Bossuet's hat to sink back down into the hollow tingle in his skull. "Stupid science."