Who: Philip with a bit of Mick and Gil. What: There is such a thing as reading too much. Where: The Library, of course. When: Now. Warnings: Self-neglect?
The library was immense by Earth standards and certainly would have provided a lifetime's worth of reading for a normal human being. Its many floors were lined by thousands of spines in all descriptions--- perhaps tens of thousands. Philip was pleased but not unduly impressed. It would take a planet-sized store of books to keep the avatar of the Gaia Library occupied so long. However, this would be slower going than usual considering he could not use keywords to locate information. Browsing, consulting indexes (if there were any to be had), locating, unshelving, and reshelving were proving an arduous process. He had never been forced to climb a ladder for a book before! Tedious human speed had ratcheted up impatience from the moment he found books did not float to his hand. But he would persevere--- there was nothing but immanent death of his Partner that could keep Philip from his research.
He had meant to seek information pertinent to advances in space travel before moving on to planets discovered outside his own solar system. Unfortunately and inevitably Philip had been distracted by a wealth of information on something else entirely. (In this case the history and evolution of intergalactic trade laws. Really, it was quite fascinating.) Books yielding any information on the subject had piled higher and higher in an ever-growing structure of ink and pulp. The stacks were beginning to take on a disconcertingly bastille-like shape. One could only see the gangly boy from behind now as tomes surrounded him on three sides. Obsession had descended with nothing to intercept or temper it. No one would barge into his space and demand company, services, or 'eat this before you kill yourself, stupid'. Only replacing the books he had finished (an unfortunate necessity since he read an average of two pages per second) broke the stream of voracious reading.
There were advantages to having an obnoxiously loud but equally caring adoptive family. After reading for over 75 hours without food, sleep, or bathroom breaks Philip's body had staged a coup. Though used to being severely misused during research binges of every conceivable nature there was only so much foolishness it would allow. He abruptly lost conciousness face-first onto the last pages of the 'Compleat Encyclopaedia Of Ushakaron Export' and had stayed there for the past twelve hours. The gentle rise and fall of his shoulders--- and slightly muffled breathing due to having his nose mashed in book binding--- was the only indication that he hadn't expired.
The Chosen Child was well-protected while he recovered. Prowling the perimeter of the table as sentry was a robotic dinosaur of deceptively small design. Now and then it paused to make distressed mechanical cries and hop in aimless circles. Fang had not been programmed to protect Philip from bibliophilia-related harm and was unsure of what it was supposed to do. Nearby, a large grey cat was curled atop an oddly pentagonal tome bound in scaly metallic material. Though maintaining typically lazy posture the cat's eyes were focused watchfully on the surrounding area. Should some threat approach the former feline assassin would not hesitate to attack with precision wrought of years' training. Mick had kept his strength up with a diet of koi fish caught in a conveniently located pond for this reason. He rather liked this peculiar facility--- though he dearly missed gourmet meals in fine crystal. Not that Master had been feeding him thus since the fall of the Sonozaki family but... What was that sound? An intruder? The cat's ears pricked to attention. Philip, however, slept on blissfully unaware.