Feuilly awoke with a jolt, his sleep-fogged brain going from zero to panicked in about two seconds upon realizing that the room was bright enough for it to be late morning. I'm late, I'm going to be so entirely late for work, I am going to be in so much trouble, oh God above, what am I going to tell — the rest of his brain then caught up and remembered where he was. This wasn't his room. The furnishings, although not terribly dissimilar to his own, were just a little too nice, the chest against the wall lacking the water stain from where the ceiling had leaked the spring before last, and the bed — he flopped back down on it, trying to calm his rapidly beating heart — whatever the mattress on this bed was made of, it was heavenly. That was probably why he had overslept for the second day running. Enjolras had assured him that they would be able to return only a short time after they had originally left so that he wouldn't miss a day of work, but it really wouldn't do to be forming bad habits that would be hard to break.
He sighed. He supposed this TARDIS, this strange transport that somehow managed to be larger inside than out, would grow more familiar with time. As it was, however, they had only been here for a short while, and it was still a strange, alien environment. Its winding corridors were seemingly endless, and although the bedrooms were very nice, there was something uncanny about them. Some of them seemed to resemble the rooms they had back in Paris, some of them were completely different, but whatever artificial intelligence it was that powered the ship seemed to have decorated the rooms so cunningly that everyone could find a room and say without a doubt, "This one is mine" (or "ours," in the case of some).
The room's wardrobe had a wide selection of clothes, seemingly from a variety of times and places. Feuilly chose a simple button-up shirt and trousers made of some sort of sturdy blue fabric. Past experience had already shown him that it would be best to wear something that would stand up to any sort of strange adventure.
He found most of his friends in the console room, sitting on an assortment of chairs and couches that had been carried in from other rooms to form a semi-circle around the glowing central column. Bossuet greeted him with a sunny, "Good morning!" and a cup of coffee. "There's bread and cheese over there. Grantaire found them in the kitchen down that hall." He gestured behind him vaguely.
Feuilly thanked him and sat down next to Joly. He looked around the room, at the soft glow that seemed to fill it. "Where do you think the light in here comes from? There's no windows and no flame anywhere."
"Mm?" Joly replied, his mouth full of bread. He hurriedly chewed and swallowed. "I suppose it's a bit like fireflies. Bossuet had a mishap last night and I thought for certain he would have burnt his hand on the table lamp in our room, but he emerged unscathed, thankfully. The lamp seemed to emit no heat at all, only light. When I was a boy, I would catch fireflies in a jar, and the jar would never grow hot like it would if I had put a candle in it. So the light in here might be produced by the same means as that used by fireflies, just on a larger scale. Combeferre might know more about it; he's far more interested in natural history than I am. Combeferre?"
"Yes?" Combeferre turned from the console, where he was prodding at some sort of flat glass panel that was showing what looked like it might be a diagram of the solar system.
"The light in here, do you think it could be similar to whatever it is that provides fireflies with their glow?" Joly asked.
Combeferre looked up at the ceiling, frowning in thought. "Perhaps. Whatever it is that causes it, it seems to be commonplace throughout the ship. It certainly seems effective."
"Speaking of effectiveness," Bahorel put in, "I move that it would be highly effective to decide where we will go next."
"I vote for Venus," Jean Prouvaire said from where he sat, upside-down in an overstuffed armchair, his long legs dangling over the back and his head aimed toward the ground.
Combeferre poked some more at the glass panel. "Prouvaire, it says here that the temperature on Venus is in excess of 450 degrees Celsius. It would be like walking into a fire."
"I never said we had to go and actually walk about there; I just think it would be very novel to see the surface of the evening star if we have the ability to travel anywhere in time and space."
"Surely there are other planets that are more hospitable," Bahorel said. "I did not plan on being burnt to a crisp when our journey has only barely begun."
"Poland, 1772," Feuilly suggested.
"How do we even know that this machine is truly trustworthy?" Grantaire pointed out. "Perhaps we are all in Hades, having been lured in by this contraption's siren song, only to end up in not a contraption, but a trap. And now that we have all partook of food and drink," he gestured with his mug, sloshing it slightly, "we are as lost as poor Persephone."
"R, what is that you have there?" Bahorel asked. "Surely it isn't coffee, not with that shade of blue."
"Blue it may look, but it tastes like pink," Grantaire responded.
"That doesn't make any sense," Bahorel said. "May I have a taste?"
Grantaire handed the mug over, then crossed his arms and slouched down in his chair.
"Well. That is odd," Bahorel said. He handed it to the person next to him. "Here, Pontmercy, you give it a try."
Marius, startled, obediently took the mug that was thrust into his hands. He took a hesitant sip. "It tastes like … like the color of a newly-opened rose," he said.
The mug was deftly plucked from his hands by Éponine, who took a gulp from it and said thoughtfully, "It don't taste a thing like real roses, though. But it's like he says, it tastes like how they look, instead of how they actually taste, but only the pink ones."
"See," Grantaire said. "Pink."
"Grantaire, did you find that in the kitchen?" Joly asked. "Are you sure it's wise to be sampling anything in this ship when we don't know what it is? I am not sure that alien food and drink will agree with you. Or any of us, for that matter," he added, looking pointedly at Bahorel, Marius, and Éponine.
"The bottle said 'Bordeaux' on it," Grantaire said. He extracted a dark-tinted bottle from his coat, and tossed it at Joly. "Here, catch." There was a collective wince from the room as the throw fell short. The bottle fell on the floor not with the expected crash of shattering glass but with a dull "thunk."
Combeferre picked up the bottle from where it had rolled. He tapped it with a finger. "What is this made of?" He then turned it around to read the label. "This does say 'Bordeaux,' true, but it also says 'Synesthetium' and '2325.' I believe you're drinking something from nearly five hundred years in the future."
A silence greeted that declaration, as everyone contemplated that vast gulf of time.
Bossuet broke the quiet by asking aloud, of no one in particular, "Has anyone seen Enjolras?"
"And what of Mademoiselle — oh, what is it, not Lanoire, starts with a 'C,'" Bahorel added, glancing at Marius. "I could swear I saw her earlier this morning, but she isn't here now."
"Cosette said she was going to continue to explore the ship," Marius said.
"On her own? This place is like a maze. She could get horribly lost and we'd never know where to find her."
"Or where to find Enjolras. I haven't seen him all morning," Jehan said, twisting around so he was sitting upright.
"Perhaps he's still asleep?" Courfeyrac suggested. "You know how terrible he is about waking up in the morning."
As if summoned by the mention of their names, Enjolras and Cosette came running into the room together, clattering down the stairs to the main floor. Both were out of breath, but while Cosette was still well put-together, Enjolras looked particularly disheveled, his hair threatening to escape its tie, and Feuilly was almost certain he was wearing the exact same outfit he had on yesterday.
"Enjolras, did you even go to bed last night?" Combeferre asked, a tone of fond exasperation creeping into his voice.
"Combeferre!" Enjolras exclaimed, turning towards him. "You have to come and see this." He looked around the room. "You too, Feuilly and, oh, all of you, just follow us!"
"You didn't go to bed, did you?" Courfeyrac said. "Here, at least have something to eat." He handed over some bread and cheese. "And I'll get you some coffee."
"But —" Enjolras protested.
"Monsieur Enjolras, it won't be going anywhere while we're gone," Cosette said, guiding him to a seat.
"What is all the excitement about, anyway?" Grantaire asked, watching in distracted fascination as Enjolras gulped down coffee that had to still be hot enough to burn his tongue.
"It's a library," Cosette said.
"But more than that," Enjolras said around a mouthful of bread and cheese. "It's as though all other libraries have been but shadows of this one, and I can walk and eat at the same time, Combeferre, can we please go now?"
"Well, if it's to see a Platonic ideal of a library, then by all means," Combeferre said, taking his hand off his friend's shoulder and letting him stand up.
"It's amazing, isn't it?" Enjolras said in a reverent tone, once they were all standing in the doorway to the library. Feuilly craned his head back to look at the shelves upon shelves of books, stretching up to the very ceiling of the cavernous space, with rows of bookshelves zig-zagging across the floor behind a cluster of reading tables. "Guh," he intelligently said.
"Be careful of the books in jars," Cosette warned. "They whisper to you if knocked over, and some of it is," she paused, searching for an appropriate phrase, "not very nice. The words slither around you, like snakes."
"And if anyone has any more luck than I did at getting close to the Earth History section, please let me know," Enjolras said. "I never seemed to be able to get any closer to it no matter how I tried."
"Is that—" Bossuet started, tugging at Joly's sleeve to get his attention.
"Musichetta," Joly finished. "I think it is! Hallo, 'Chetta," he called to the figure leaning on a short row of shelves, engrossed in a book.
"Oh, you know how she is once she gets involved in a book; she's as bad as Feuilly," Bossuet said. He walked over towards her and waved his hand between her face and the book.
She looked up in surprise, her face quickly turning to delight. "Well, it's about time you two got here," she said. "And I see you brought everyone else as well."
"Well, technically it was Enjolras and Cosette who brought us," Joly said.
"What do you think of her?" Musichetta asked. "I feel like I've hardly had a chance to talk to her before today, but she seems very kind, very sensible. She's a good match for Marius. I ran into her while I was on my way to find the kitchen Grantaire had been talking about, and we became quite lost together before we found this place."
A sudden, loud "pop" from the direction of the reading tables drew their attention, as did an accompanying exclamation of, "Eureka!" from Jean Prouvaire. An image of the solar system appeared above one of the tables, floating in midair and glowing slightly.
"Well done!" said Combeferre. He hesitantly poked his hand at the image, waving it through one of the planets. A label popped up, indicating that the planet was JUPITER. A box of text appeared below the label, giving a selection of basic facts, and a flurry of orbiting moons appeared around the planet. He gestured, spreading his hands apart, and the view widened. He repeated the gesture, and it widened even further to show a multitude of stars, some of which were blinking.
"What is that there?" Enjolras asked, pointing a finger at a blinking star. A label popped up, declaring it to be ALPHA CENTAURI BINARY STAR SYSTEM: FIVE PLANETS.
There was a sharp intake of breath from Combeferre. "There are planets. Around other stars." He sat down heavily in a nearby chair. "Do you realize what this means?"
"The universe is a far vaster place than we had imagined," Enjolras said, looking at the map thoughtfully.
"There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio," Jehan said in English, "Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"Your accent is terrible," Courfeyrac said.
"Better than yours," Jehan retorted.
"True enough."
"Look here," Marius exclaimed from where he was bent over a book entitled 1001 Things To See In The Andromeda Galaxy Before You Die. "It says there is a library the size of a planet in the 50th century."
"The size of a planet?" Feuilly echoed, looking around the vast room, which was already a collection of an almost unimaginable wealth of knowledge. "How is that possible?"
"Well, there's only one way to find out," Courfeyrac said.
"All those in favor of visiting a library the size of a planet?" Enjolras said.
A unanimous chorus of "ayes," was the response. Even Bahorel, who usually did all he could to avoid libraries on principle, agreed after an elbow to the side, courtesy of Jehan.
"It's settled, then. Marius, does that book have any sort of coordinates?" Enjolras asked.
"I'm not quite sure. Perhaps this string of numbers here?"
"Bring that book with you back to the console room, and we can see if we can figure it out," Combeferre said.
Author's Notes:
This was written for the Every Century Happy 'verse on Tumblr. You can find it at amisdelespace dot tumblr dot com. Just change the "dot"s to the appropriate punctuation. All of the other stories on there are fabulous and you should read them.
This probably should be obvious, but Grantaire should not be a role model when it comes to drinking habits. Don't drink stuff in strange bottles, kids.
Similarly, although rose petals are actually edible, many flowers aren't. Do NOT eat any flowers unless you know exactly what they are and you know for a fact that they haven't been treated with pesticides or other chemicals.
And no, Enjolras and Cosette were not getting up to any pants business when they were offscreen, although you'd be forgiven for that mistake if you had heard the noise that Enjolras made when he first saw the library.
Bordeaux, a small planetoid approximately eighty light years from Earth, was settled in the late 22nd century by refugees from the Second Trapsian War. It became known throughout the galaxy in the early 24th century as the sole producer of a line of synesthetic drinks. Outlawed in at least nine star systems, the drinks were able to produce a taste or smell that would then be perceived by at least one other sense. Their all-time best seller was Oceanus, said to taste like the sound of waves crashing on a rocky shore. Production of synesthetium halted abruptly in the aftermath of the Great Paisley Scandal of 2347.
This was going to be very Feuilly-centric, then everyone started talking, and I couldn't get them to stop. And then Musichetta pointed out that I hadn't written her in anywhere yet, so I had to add her, and poor Feuilly sort of got shoved aside. I don't think I've ever written anything with this many characters, and I hope the characterizations aren't too off.