phosfate

Author's Note: I should really make an effort to actually watch this show one day...

My First Secret Adventures of Jules Verne Fanfic!

By Ann Larimer, age 39½

Phileas Fogg was a happy man. A comfortable chair, a glass of sherry at his side, and a freshly-ironed newspaper. His world, albeit airborne and prone to a faint hum of engines, was complete.

“Monsieur Fogg? Will zere be anything elses?” Passepartout, Fogg’s valet of no fixed accent, queried.

Yes, Fogg thought. Learn to speak English properly, you Gallic twat. It was the end of a long day, and Phileas was in a near-Cleesian frame of mind – more in a mood to make fools suffer than to suffer them. But good help that didn’t mind being shot at with harpoons was hard to find, and so he remained civil. Aloud he said, “No, thank you, Passepartout.”

“Vairy good, sir. I will be hemming the parachuting now.”

“You’re a wild man, Passepartout.”

“Sank you, monsieur.” And Passepartout drifted out of the room.

Phileas was just getting to the good bits of a story about the Cleveland Street Scandal when he heard two voices, one feminine, in earnest discussion. The two other members of the Aurora crew, novelist manqué Jules Verne, and Fogg’s cousin (or at least that was their story and they were sticking to it), Emma P—er, Rebecca Fogg, entered. They appeared to be having words.

“…can’t possibly be already!” Jules was saying.

“You’re blind,” Rebecca replied primly. “And deaf. Phileas, on the other hand, will see the sense of it.”

Phileas was not feeling particularly sensible. “What? What is the matter? What?”

“Are we interrupting?” Rebecca asked, though she obviously knew that they were.

“Nothing of importance,” Phileas lied, and put down his paper. Politeness, as a rule, would clear a room more quickly than rancor. And in any case, he knew it was never wise to provoke this young woman. She was perfectly capable of beating the shit out of him.

Passepartout entered almost on their heels, clearly agitated. For some reason his clothing was smeared with what appeared to be acid-green paint. “Meestair Fogg, I try to keep zem out, but zey only sink eet ees an excuse furrr…fur…oh merde…” Passepartout’s accent had grown too thick, and he began to cough, choking on it.

Jules obligingly hit him between the shoulder blades, and the fit passed.

“Thank you, Master Jules,” the valet said gratefully.

“No prob.”

“And please pardon mon francais.”

“It’s all right, Passepartout,” Phileas reassured him. He decided it would be best not to inquire about the green paint. Let the man have his privacy.

“Very well. I must return to galvanizing Monsieur’s tea kettle and brushing the dog.”

“Good man.” Dog? Perhaps he meant rug. No, best not to think too much about Passepartout’s own unique mode of verbal expression. That way lay madness.

Passepartout turned to leave, but Rebecca said: “No, Passepartout, wait. This concerns you as well. It concerns all of us, and our futures.”

The valet caught Phileas’ eye, and Fogg nodded, indicating that he should stay.

Rebecca took up a stance in front of the others, crossed her arms, and announced, “I believe that it’s time for another story.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, we just finished an episode!” Phileas protested.

“That’s what I was trying to tell her,” Jules agreed. “Stuff blew up and everything.”

“We escap-ed by the hairs of our teeth,” added Passepartout.

“That’s as may be,” said Rebecca. “Even so, haven’t you noticed? Can’t any of you hear it?”

“What are you on about?” Fogg asked.

Verne merely looked blank.

“I ‘ear nothings.”

Rebecca would have stamped her little foot, if she had been the sort of girl who went in for little foot-stamping. “Listen!”

The room was very, very quiet.

Phileas shook his head. “I don’t hear a thing.”

“Sh!”

Silence once more, apart from the ever-present noise of the Aurora’s works.

“No background music,” said Jules wisely. “I told you…”

Rebecca held up a hand to silence him and said, very softly, “Narration.”

There was a long silence. Even a pregnant silence, or at least a silence whose period was several days late and which was beginning to worry.

“Mon Dieu,” said Guess Who.

“That syntax!” said Jules, alarmed. “It…hurts.”

Rebecca’s face clouded. “I think this is a fan fiction story.”

“Dude! No way!”

“Oh, Christ,” muttered Phileas.

“See?” Rebecca said. “It must be fan fiction. If it were a novelization, you wouldn’t be allowed to swear.”

“I shall damn well swear if I bloody feel like it!”

There was another uncomfortable pause. Even the narrator was shocked.

“Forgive me,” Phileas said. “Sometimes a gentleman needs to be alone with his newspaper. It has been a somewhat trying day.”

“Well,” said Passepartout, “If we are truly having a new story, I must shake out the piss-i-tons and re-grout the flange couplings. Also, my soufflé she is cooking.” And he left again.

“You could both learn a thing or two from him,” Fogg said to his friends. “About carrying on in the face of adversity.”

“And flanges,” Jules added brightly.

“But what are we going to do?” Rebecca asked.

“Do? About what?”

“This…this verbal construct in which we are so fiendishly ensnared!”

Fogg looked at her. “Are you quite well?”

“I’m sorry. I…I think the narrator is a bit over-excited.”

“My dear Emma—“

“Rebecca!”

“Rebecca, you know perfectly well, there’s nothing we can do except let the thing play itself out. With luck it will turn out to be a first draft that is never used, or at worst a post-episode vignette, it will run its course in a short while, and we can get on with our lives.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Rebecca agreed demurely, because the narrator declared that she should do so. “But – wait.” For a moment her real personality reasserted itself. “What if this is only the beginning to some sort of horrible multi-volume alternate-universe mass character death…thingie?”

“Then bring on the mass character death, I say, as long as I can enjoy a few moments’ peace. There will always be another story tomorrow.”

Rebecca stood. “Oh very well. Fatalist. Let’s go, Jules.”

Verne, whose attention had been briefly distracted by a nearby shiny object, said, “Huh?”

“It’s all right now,” she explained to him as one would a trusting five-year-old.

“Okay. Cool.”

But a figure with a rather upsetting goatee entered the room once more.

“Excusing me again, Monsieur Fogg?”

“What is it, Passepartout?” Phileas asked through clenched teeth.

“Do you know if this story is …a slash fiction?”

Phileas colored slightly. “Er…I shouldn’t think so, not with Verne and Emma—”

“Rebecca, Monsieur.”

“—Rebecca traipsing about the place.”

“Because I have the ironing of the pantses and re-boning of Mademoiselle Rebecca’s titanium corseting, and then I must squeeze the orange juice, and then I think I may be discovering a way for difference engines to speak to each others over great distances…”

Get out! “That’s excellent, Passepartout. Carry on.”

“If you are requiring me later to be your hot monkeys—“

“THANK YOU, Passepartout.”

The valet left. Again. Finally. Really.

There was an awkward silence.

After a moment, Rebecca asked, “What would be the purpose in difference engines speaking to one another?”

“I’m not sure,” Jules replied.

“One might be able to transmit French postcards over long distances,” Phileas said thoughtfully. “Clandestinely. Money to be made there.”

Jules got a faraway look, the sort of expression usually reserved for thoughts of giant mole-machines and propeller-driven aerial fortresses crewed by uniformed dog-men. “A view of the Arc de Triomphe sent across the sea. That would be something!”

Rebecca and Phileas merely stared at him.

“Well it would.”

They kept staring at him.

Then Rebecca said, “I…think I’m going to go do something somewhere else. In another part of the ship. Far away.”
She left the room quickly, and Jules thought he heard her make small squeaking noises as she went through the door.

“Girls sure are weird,” said Jules.

“Shouldn’t you be writing or something?” Phileas asked.

“Now that you mention it, I’ve been mulling over an idea about an airship that flies into the crater of a volcano and encounters a lost race of beautiful naked women. And they all fight dinosaurs!”

“Sounds like a winner.”

“I think I’ll go work on that.” He paused thoughtfully. “Er…unless this is a slash story after all…” His face was a bit pale, but his expression game. He knew from experience that art occasionally required sacrifices.

“No.” Phileas became very interested in his newspaper.

“Good.” Then, realizing that this might not be the most politic thing to say, he added, “I mean, good…night.”
Jules was out the door, quickly and quietly.

Fogg listened for a moment, but there were no further sounds of footsteps, argument, feminine ire, or Gallic histrionics. Nor was there any trace of sudden gunfire, explosion, distress signal, or carrier pigeon.
He decided to risk opening his paper again.

“Good God, I hate fan fiction.” And he took a sip of sherry that, in one less of a gentleman (or an American), might have been described as a swig.

For Susan, on the occasion of her birthday.
From Ann with love.