Jenny Everywhere: Parallax
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scott_sanfordJenny Everywhere in
Parallax
A Jenny Nowhere Story
By Scott Sanford, 2008; some rights reserved
The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.
Picture a cityscape. Any cityscape. There are an infinite number of cities in the universes. This is one of them, but the details don’t matter.
Zoom in from the rooftops down to a single nightclub. It might be any club or bar; tonight it’s this one.
Inside the club is dark and noisy. The band is loud but not very good. Nobody cares. Pick a girl out of the crowd – that one, there.
She’s sitting with friends around a table, all of them yelling to be heard over the music. She’s maybe Chinese, maybe Native American, maybe not; her hair is short and needs professional attention. She’s wearing a long coat and scarf and, perhaps oddly, a pair of aviator’s goggles, currently pushed up on top of her head. She’s been drinking, but not too much yet. That will come later.
Her name is Jenny Everywhere.
Some people call her other things. She looks normal. Don't be fooled.
Jenny belched loudly.
“Excuse you!”
“Oh, man, that’s coming back on me.”
“If you’re going to hurl, don’t do it here.”
“You think?”
“Kim, take her to the bathroom before she throws up!”
“Why me?”
“Because they’re guys and I really don’t want to clean up barf tonight.”
“That’s your reason?”
“Ooh… Come on, Kim, give me a hand here…”
They made it to the bathroom in time.
Kim leaned against the wall while Jenny finished being sick into a toilet.
“Are you okay in there?”, she asked.
“Bleah. Maybe.”
“I didn’t think you’d had that much beer, Jenny.”
“I didn’t! This is supposed to come a lot later in the evening…”
“This is just one of so many reasons I like not getting drunk.”
“So why do you come out to bars and clubs with the rest of us?”
“I like the company. And not getting drunk doesn’t keep me from enjoying music. Crappy cover bands do that.”
Neither woman paid any attention to the opening door of the restroom, but a sudden loud pop echoed off the tile walls.
“Ow!” Kim looked down to see a feathered metal dart sticking out of her upper arm, and up to see the woman who’d just entered and shot her.
“Sorry about that,” the woman said, “but I need to borrow your friend a little while. She’ll be back better than ever, I promise.”
“Uh, Jenny?”, Kim said. “I think this is one of your problems.”
Jenny looked out from the stall and said simply, “Oh.”
The newcomer held a slim black pistol but neither of them paid it any attention. She was young, black haired, of medium height, and clad in tight leather gear. And she was the identical twin of Jenny Everywhere.
“Sorry to interrupt your evening, Jenny,” she said, “but you need to get away from all this. You just don’t know it yet.”
“So you shot Kim?”
“It’s a harmless drug, I promise. She’ll wake up in a few hours none the worse for it. She should be falling over, um, any moment now, really…”
“I don’t think so,” Kim said, belatedly plucking the dart from her arm.
“It’ll take more than that,” Jenny agreed.
The newcomer promptly shot her again, putting a dart neatly into Kim’s cleavage.
“Ow. Stop that.”
“This isn’t a group tour. I don’t need extra people tagging along, just Jenny.”
“So what’s the story here, Jenny?”, Kim asked, sounding less annoyed than most shot people. “Extra-dimensional analogue? Evil twin? Clone? Time traveler?”
“I…don’t know,” Jenny admitted. She looked at her twin in some combination of curiosity and horrified fascination. “She looks like me, but… She’s not me. I don’t know.”
“Not yet. But you will, I promise. I’m not you, no, but I was.”
“Ah, so you're a time traveler!”
“Hey, why aren’t you unconscious yet?”
Kim frowned. “Damn. If you were a time traveler you’d know that.”
“It’s a long story and this isn’t going according to plan, so –”
“Hey! You messed with Jenny’s beer, didn’t you?”
“Duh. Yeah.”
“How?”
“I’m very resourceful,” Jenny admitted.
“So she is you?”
“No! She’s not, I know that. I…just don’t know.”
“I was supposed to be explaining it to you later!”
Kim sprung forward with surprising speed, grabbing the newcomer and pressing her against the wall. She grunted as she hit the wall, her small pistol skittering away across the floor. She struggled, only to find that Kim was stronger than she looked.
“How about explaining now?”, Kim suggested.
“I really hate messing with a Jenny’s friends,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt a Jenny and I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Good,” Kim said. “I don’t want you to hurt her, either. Of course, that doesn’t look too likely right now.”
The newcomer struggled briefly against Kim’s grip, accomplishing nothing.
“Okay, good point.” She looked past Kim’s shoulder and said, “For what it’s worth, Jenny, I really am doing this for your own good. See you later, Shifter.”
The intruder gleamed with iridescent light for an instant, fell away into the distance without moving, and was gone. For a moment Kim was left holding nothing but gleaming air but Jenny leapt towards the lingering aura with a curse and they both fell forwards into infinity. Another burst of rainbow light flashed, and the bathroom was empty.
Flare light dimmed around them and the two friends stepped out of forever into a brick walled alley. Kim stumbled briefly and Jenny steadied her as the dim passage settled into reality around them. A raggedly dressed and odoriferous man was already fleeing in one direction; in the other –
“There she is!” Kim pointed.
The strange woman looked back at the cry and turned around.
“So you’re strong enough to shift already! Good for you, Jenny!”
“You can’t get away from me that easily!”
“It was worth a try!”
“Are you kidding? I’m Jenny Everywhere, the Shifter! I exist in all dimensions, and can –”
“I know the damn mantra!”, the other woman yelled. “I know who you are! I’ve said it, too!”
“So who the hell are you?,” Jenny demanded. “What’s your story?”
“My story? You want my story? Stop me if you’ve heard this one!” She struck a pose and proclaimed, “Once upon a time there were a billion, billion girls named Jenny Everywhere… One for every dimension, across all the uncountable worlds! Every one with the potential to Shift between worlds, and every one able to tune into the knowledge and wisdom of all her infinite selves! Sound familiar?”
“Good God,” Kim breathed. “Jenny, are you –”
“Talk about it later, okay?”, Jenny asked her, then called, “So what?”
“So we had adventures! Incredible ones, unbelievable ones. And stupid ones, but who cares? We had every world, every location, every challenge that anyone could imagine, all of it closer than our extra scarves!”
Jenny, the ‘real’ Jenny, touched the scarf at her neck.
“And then, on yet another adventure, one single Jenny Everywhere had a freak accident. Not a one in a million event; we see those every damn day. This was really rare. Never mind what the adventure was about, it doesn’t matter. But Jenny, just this one Jenny, was hurt just the right way. A freak brain injury.” The mystery woman tapped the side of her head, grinning cynically. “It wouldn’t have happened to a normal human being in a million years, but the math is different for us, isn’t it? ‘Positing infinity…”
“…the rest is easy’,” Jenny echoed. “Yeah.”
“And when she woke up, for the first time in her life, she was free.”
“What?”
“Free?”
“For the first time ever, as far as I can tell. Let’s call her Jenny Nowhere, because she did. She wasn’t just one Jenny Everywhere anymore, not just one point in an infinite continuum, but a real individual. With real free will.”
“You really aren’t me,” Jenny said, understanding. “You aren’t me any more… You poor girl!”
“Don’t pity me! You have no idea what you’re missing in your soul, Jenny.”
“Jenny’s soul, my Jenny’s, seems to be okay,” Kim said. “I know a little about these things.”
“Don’t you get it yet?,” Jenny Nowhere demanded in righteous fury. “You, you’re her friend, have you ever thought about Jenny’s powers? Has she ever mentioned that she can tap into the minds of an infinite number of other selves? Well, guess what! It works both ways!”
Kim gasped.
“Of course it does,” Jenny said. “They can read me, too.”
“No…” Kim breathed.
“You understand, don’t you? What chance do you think any one woman has of making up her own mind against the hyper-dimensional congregation of Jenny Everywheres? One single cell in your body has more chance of defying your will than that. And why not, any one cell isn’t as outnumbered as she is.”
“Look at yourself, Jenny. You can’t even choose your own clothes. How many Jenny Everywheres are wearing goggles right now?” The other Jenny reached into a belt pouch and pulled out some goggles. She held them up so the others could see; they looked much like the ones on Jenny Everywhere’s head.
“I like my goggles,” she protested weakly.
“I don’t know,” Kim said. “Jenny seems to have free will…”
“She likes toast!”, Jenny Nowhere countered. “Seriously, Jennies from worlds that haven’t invented agriculture yet shift across dimensions just to pick up a snack. Are you telling me that’s right?”
“Okay, so you had an accident,” Jenny called. “Why come after me? I didn’t do it!”
Jenny Nowhere said quietly, “No, you didn’t. That’s not the point. None of this is about you, the particular woman I’m talking to. You’re just a tiny part of an infinite hyper-dimensional entity, Jenny Everywhere. It could have been any Jenny.”
“So why are you screwing up my night out, then?”
Kim said softly, “She can replicate the accident.”
Jenny looked at her friend in astonishment, and no little horror.
“It stands to reason.” She looked down the alley at the other woman. “Isn’t that right, Jenny?”
“Ooh, you’re a smart one. I should have expected anyone Jenny Everywhere hung out with would be special. I remember that from when I was Everywhere.”
She put on the goggles. “Think about it, Jenny. Ask yourself how much of yourself is really you, and how much is from the trillions of sisters who share your mind. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”
The other woman Shifted out, but Jenny was ready. Twin flares of unreal light flashed briefly and they were gone.
Jenny and Kim flashed into reality an instant after the other Jenny, appearing on a broad flat concrete surface. The other Jenny was only yards away, up on a grassy incline.
“Look out,” called the lone Jenny helpfully, pointing off to one side.
Kim reacted with inhuman speed, grabbing her friend around the waist and launching both of them through the air out of the path of the oncoming truck. It drove past at high speed, hooting an annoyed horn at them as it passed. Her leap brought them down towards the stranger Jenny, who looked up with a smile and shifted away.
Nobody landed on the grass.
Kim came out of the shift still in free fall, Jenny in one arm and high up in a forest of towering pines. Suddenly the ground was much, much farther away.
“Shift out!”, called the strange Jenny, standing on a branch as momentum carried Kim and her Jenny past on their way the distant ground.
The two women vanished into the darkness of the night. The sound of branches and twigs breaking as they passed through lasted only a second.
Jenny Nowhere peered down into the depths, a look of honest concern on her face. The noise of their passage had stopped long before they would have cleared the canopy, and she knew very well how resourceful a Jenny Everywhere could be, but she hadn’t seen any shift-light.
Kim rose up from the darkness in perfect silence, still holding her friend Jenny cradled like a doll in one arm, rising like a figure on a wire. She stood on nothing but air, and now she looked annoyed. Leaves and twigs were mixed into her hair, and her blood glowed where her face had been hurt.
Jenny coughed and said, “Ow… Some of us need to breathe, you know.”
“Oh, wow…” said the other Jenny.
“Now I’m getting pissed off,” Kim announced.
“Yeah, this could be tricky.” Nowhere shifted out. Jenny Everywhere groaned and followed.
They shifted into reality high above a city street lit up like downtown Tokyo. Jenny Nowhere stood on a narrow ledge, watching for them. Kim stood on nothing, hundreds of feet up.
“Nice try,” Nowhere said, already shifting out. Everywhere followed.
Reality burst into being around them like a flare, all brilliant light and dry heat.
Kim screamed and dropped Jenny onto the sand at their feet, throwing her hands up over her eyes.
Jenny blinked, suddenly transported into blinding sunlight and dumped onto her butt.
“I thought so!“, Jenny Nowhere called from yards away, shielding her eyes from the sun despite her goggles.
“Jenny, we’re twenty miles from Giza, at high noon, and there’s no shade. This is no place for your friend. You can either chase me or get her out of here.” Nowhere turned and ran down a sandy incline out of sight.
“Kim, come on!” Jenny tried to take her friend’s arm and follow. Kim’s skin was already too hot, and beginning to burn. The other woman was heavier than she looked.
“I can’t run in this! Get me out of the sun!”
Jenny felt a shift start nearby and said, “Done!”
They shifted.
A tropical rainforest surrounded them, wet and dank with many heavy smells of nature. Diffuse sunlight filtered through the primeval trees in the fern bed where two women shifted in through inconceivable dimensions to fall over into the mud.
Kim moaned unhappily, covering her face.
“Are you okay, Kim?”
“Overcast,” she gasped. “Too bright. Better. Be okay soon.”
A human scream came from nearby, too quickly ended.
“Oh, no… Hold on, Kim, I have to check this out!”
Jenny waded awkwardly through the ferns and tangled underbrush, only to come to a steep-sided ravine. She could hear something below, grunting and snuffling. She looked over the rim only once and vomited into a bush.
“It isn’t the beer this time, is it?” Kim came through Jenny’s path and peered over the sharp edge. “Oh. I didn’t think so.”
“A dinosaur! Can you believe it? As many times as I’ve run into dinosaurs, I never really thought one of them would get me…”
“Well, she wasn’t technically you… Hm. Wait here, okay?”
Kim launched herself over the cliff. A thump, an outraged squeal, a crack of broken bone, and a dull thud followed almost immediately. Kim’s voice came up from below, “For what it’s worth, you’re avenged. She is. Whatever.”
“It’s just a damn lizard.”
“Maybe so, Jenny, but I didn’t do this just to uphold a point of honor or avenge a blood debt. I wanted to check the body.”
“First of all, eww, yuck. Second, why? She was a Jenny Everywhere. She looked just like me.”
“Because of what she didn’t say, and what I’ve just found. Jenny, you’re not going to like this.”
“In the last half hour I’ve been drugged, you’ve been shot, and a psycho evil twin tried to kidnap me and cut me off from my other selves. Are you going to tell me something I’m not going to like more than all that?”
Kim was silent a moment, then said solemnly, “Yes, I think so, Jenny.”
Jenny took a deep breath, the prehistoric jungle air little comfort to her. “Lay it on me.”
“She tapped her head when she spoke of the accident that started this. Her head does have a scar near the left ear, suggesting brain modification near Broca’s area, which --”
“Kim! Get to the point!”
“Sorry, Jenny. The point is that Jenny Nowhere repeatedly said that her, um, independence came from a freak accident. This woman’s scar isn’t accidental, Jenny, it’s surgical.”
“Surgical? You mean somebody did it to her intentionally?”
“Yes, exactly. I’m sorry, Jenny. This isn’t the original Jenny Nowhere.”
“Oh, God…” Jenny leaned against a tree, feeling uncharacteristically tired.
“Ours wasn’t the first dimension she visited,” Kim said. “There’s no guessing how many Jenny Nowheres there might be…and she can’t tell us any more.”
“Let’s go home,” Jenny said bleakly. “Right now I think I want a drink. Maybe a lot of them.”
“Me, too, Jenny. But no music, okay?”
Parallax
A Jenny Nowhere Story
By Scott Sanford, 2008; some rights reserved
The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.
Picture a cityscape. Any cityscape. There are an infinite number of cities in the universes. This is one of them, but the details don’t matter.
Zoom in from the rooftops down to a single nightclub. It might be any club or bar; tonight it’s this one.
Inside the club is dark and noisy. The band is loud but not very good. Nobody cares. Pick a girl out of the crowd – that one, there.
She’s sitting with friends around a table, all of them yelling to be heard over the music. She’s maybe Chinese, maybe Native American, maybe not; her hair is short and needs professional attention. She’s wearing a long coat and scarf and, perhaps oddly, a pair of aviator’s goggles, currently pushed up on top of her head. She’s been drinking, but not too much yet. That will come later.
Her name is Jenny Everywhere.
Some people call her other things. She looks normal. Don't be fooled.
Jenny belched loudly.
“Excuse you!”
“Oh, man, that’s coming back on me.”
“If you’re going to hurl, don’t do it here.”
“You think?”
“Kim, take her to the bathroom before she throws up!”
“Why me?”
“Because they’re guys and I really don’t want to clean up barf tonight.”
“That’s your reason?”
“Ooh… Come on, Kim, give me a hand here…”
They made it to the bathroom in time.
Kim leaned against the wall while Jenny finished being sick into a toilet.
“Are you okay in there?”, she asked.
“Bleah. Maybe.”
“I didn’t think you’d had that much beer, Jenny.”
“I didn’t! This is supposed to come a lot later in the evening…”
“This is just one of so many reasons I like not getting drunk.”
“So why do you come out to bars and clubs with the rest of us?”
“I like the company. And not getting drunk doesn’t keep me from enjoying music. Crappy cover bands do that.”
Neither woman paid any attention to the opening door of the restroom, but a sudden loud pop echoed off the tile walls.
“Ow!” Kim looked down to see a feathered metal dart sticking out of her upper arm, and up to see the woman who’d just entered and shot her.
“Sorry about that,” the woman said, “but I need to borrow your friend a little while. She’ll be back better than ever, I promise.”
“Uh, Jenny?”, Kim said. “I think this is one of your problems.”
Jenny looked out from the stall and said simply, “Oh.”
The newcomer held a slim black pistol but neither of them paid it any attention. She was young, black haired, of medium height, and clad in tight leather gear. And she was the identical twin of Jenny Everywhere.
“Sorry to interrupt your evening, Jenny,” she said, “but you need to get away from all this. You just don’t know it yet.”
“So you shot Kim?”
“It’s a harmless drug, I promise. She’ll wake up in a few hours none the worse for it. She should be falling over, um, any moment now, really…”
“I don’t think so,” Kim said, belatedly plucking the dart from her arm.
“It’ll take more than that,” Jenny agreed.
The newcomer promptly shot her again, putting a dart neatly into Kim’s cleavage.
“Ow. Stop that.”
“This isn’t a group tour. I don’t need extra people tagging along, just Jenny.”
“So what’s the story here, Jenny?”, Kim asked, sounding less annoyed than most shot people. “Extra-dimensional analogue? Evil twin? Clone? Time traveler?”
“I…don’t know,” Jenny admitted. She looked at her twin in some combination of curiosity and horrified fascination. “She looks like me, but… She’s not me. I don’t know.”
“Not yet. But you will, I promise. I’m not you, no, but I was.”
“Ah, so you're a time traveler!”
“Hey, why aren’t you unconscious yet?”
Kim frowned. “Damn. If you were a time traveler you’d know that.”
“It’s a long story and this isn’t going according to plan, so –”
“Hey! You messed with Jenny’s beer, didn’t you?”
“Duh. Yeah.”
“How?”
“I’m very resourceful,” Jenny admitted.
“So she is you?”
“No! She’s not, I know that. I…just don’t know.”
“I was supposed to be explaining it to you later!”
Kim sprung forward with surprising speed, grabbing the newcomer and pressing her against the wall. She grunted as she hit the wall, her small pistol skittering away across the floor. She struggled, only to find that Kim was stronger than she looked.
“How about explaining now?”, Kim suggested.
“I really hate messing with a Jenny’s friends,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt a Jenny and I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Good,” Kim said. “I don’t want you to hurt her, either. Of course, that doesn’t look too likely right now.”
The newcomer struggled briefly against Kim’s grip, accomplishing nothing.
“Okay, good point.” She looked past Kim’s shoulder and said, “For what it’s worth, Jenny, I really am doing this for your own good. See you later, Shifter.”
The intruder gleamed with iridescent light for an instant, fell away into the distance without moving, and was gone. For a moment Kim was left holding nothing but gleaming air but Jenny leapt towards the lingering aura with a curse and they both fell forwards into infinity. Another burst of rainbow light flashed, and the bathroom was empty.
Flare light dimmed around them and the two friends stepped out of forever into a brick walled alley. Kim stumbled briefly and Jenny steadied her as the dim passage settled into reality around them. A raggedly dressed and odoriferous man was already fleeing in one direction; in the other –
“There she is!” Kim pointed.
The strange woman looked back at the cry and turned around.
“So you’re strong enough to shift already! Good for you, Jenny!”
“You can’t get away from me that easily!”
“It was worth a try!”
“Are you kidding? I’m Jenny Everywhere, the Shifter! I exist in all dimensions, and can –”
“I know the damn mantra!”, the other woman yelled. “I know who you are! I’ve said it, too!”
“So who the hell are you?,” Jenny demanded. “What’s your story?”
“My story? You want my story? Stop me if you’ve heard this one!” She struck a pose and proclaimed, “Once upon a time there were a billion, billion girls named Jenny Everywhere… One for every dimension, across all the uncountable worlds! Every one with the potential to Shift between worlds, and every one able to tune into the knowledge and wisdom of all her infinite selves! Sound familiar?”
“Good God,” Kim breathed. “Jenny, are you –”
“Talk about it later, okay?”, Jenny asked her, then called, “So what?”
“So we had adventures! Incredible ones, unbelievable ones. And stupid ones, but who cares? We had every world, every location, every challenge that anyone could imagine, all of it closer than our extra scarves!”
Jenny, the ‘real’ Jenny, touched the scarf at her neck.
“And then, on yet another adventure, one single Jenny Everywhere had a freak accident. Not a one in a million event; we see those every damn day. This was really rare. Never mind what the adventure was about, it doesn’t matter. But Jenny, just this one Jenny, was hurt just the right way. A freak brain injury.” The mystery woman tapped the side of her head, grinning cynically. “It wouldn’t have happened to a normal human being in a million years, but the math is different for us, isn’t it? ‘Positing infinity…”
“…the rest is easy’,” Jenny echoed. “Yeah.”
“And when she woke up, for the first time in her life, she was free.”
“What?”
“Free?”
“For the first time ever, as far as I can tell. Let’s call her Jenny Nowhere, because she did. She wasn’t just one Jenny Everywhere anymore, not just one point in an infinite continuum, but a real individual. With real free will.”
“You really aren’t me,” Jenny said, understanding. “You aren’t me any more… You poor girl!”
“Don’t pity me! You have no idea what you’re missing in your soul, Jenny.”
“Jenny’s soul, my Jenny’s, seems to be okay,” Kim said. “I know a little about these things.”
“Don’t you get it yet?,” Jenny Nowhere demanded in righteous fury. “You, you’re her friend, have you ever thought about Jenny’s powers? Has she ever mentioned that she can tap into the minds of an infinite number of other selves? Well, guess what! It works both ways!”
Kim gasped.
“Of course it does,” Jenny said. “They can read me, too.”
“No…” Kim breathed.
“You understand, don’t you? What chance do you think any one woman has of making up her own mind against the hyper-dimensional congregation of Jenny Everywheres? One single cell in your body has more chance of defying your will than that. And why not, any one cell isn’t as outnumbered as she is.”
“Look at yourself, Jenny. You can’t even choose your own clothes. How many Jenny Everywheres are wearing goggles right now?” The other Jenny reached into a belt pouch and pulled out some goggles. She held them up so the others could see; they looked much like the ones on Jenny Everywhere’s head.
“I like my goggles,” she protested weakly.
“I don’t know,” Kim said. “Jenny seems to have free will…”
“She likes toast!”, Jenny Nowhere countered. “Seriously, Jennies from worlds that haven’t invented agriculture yet shift across dimensions just to pick up a snack. Are you telling me that’s right?”
“Okay, so you had an accident,” Jenny called. “Why come after me? I didn’t do it!”
Jenny Nowhere said quietly, “No, you didn’t. That’s not the point. None of this is about you, the particular woman I’m talking to. You’re just a tiny part of an infinite hyper-dimensional entity, Jenny Everywhere. It could have been any Jenny.”
“So why are you screwing up my night out, then?”
Kim said softly, “She can replicate the accident.”
Jenny looked at her friend in astonishment, and no little horror.
“It stands to reason.” She looked down the alley at the other woman. “Isn’t that right, Jenny?”
“Ooh, you’re a smart one. I should have expected anyone Jenny Everywhere hung out with would be special. I remember that from when I was Everywhere.”
She put on the goggles. “Think about it, Jenny. Ask yourself how much of yourself is really you, and how much is from the trillions of sisters who share your mind. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”
The other woman Shifted out, but Jenny was ready. Twin flares of unreal light flashed briefly and they were gone.
Jenny and Kim flashed into reality an instant after the other Jenny, appearing on a broad flat concrete surface. The other Jenny was only yards away, up on a grassy incline.
“Look out,” called the lone Jenny helpfully, pointing off to one side.
Kim reacted with inhuman speed, grabbing her friend around the waist and launching both of them through the air out of the path of the oncoming truck. It drove past at high speed, hooting an annoyed horn at them as it passed. Her leap brought them down towards the stranger Jenny, who looked up with a smile and shifted away.
Nobody landed on the grass.
Kim came out of the shift still in free fall, Jenny in one arm and high up in a forest of towering pines. Suddenly the ground was much, much farther away.
“Shift out!”, called the strange Jenny, standing on a branch as momentum carried Kim and her Jenny past on their way the distant ground.
The two women vanished into the darkness of the night. The sound of branches and twigs breaking as they passed through lasted only a second.
Jenny Nowhere peered down into the depths, a look of honest concern on her face. The noise of their passage had stopped long before they would have cleared the canopy, and she knew very well how resourceful a Jenny Everywhere could be, but she hadn’t seen any shift-light.
Kim rose up from the darkness in perfect silence, still holding her friend Jenny cradled like a doll in one arm, rising like a figure on a wire. She stood on nothing but air, and now she looked annoyed. Leaves and twigs were mixed into her hair, and her blood glowed where her face had been hurt.
Jenny coughed and said, “Ow… Some of us need to breathe, you know.”
“Oh, wow…” said the other Jenny.
“Now I’m getting pissed off,” Kim announced.
“Yeah, this could be tricky.” Nowhere shifted out. Jenny Everywhere groaned and followed.
They shifted into reality high above a city street lit up like downtown Tokyo. Jenny Nowhere stood on a narrow ledge, watching for them. Kim stood on nothing, hundreds of feet up.
“Nice try,” Nowhere said, already shifting out. Everywhere followed.
Reality burst into being around them like a flare, all brilliant light and dry heat.
Kim screamed and dropped Jenny onto the sand at their feet, throwing her hands up over her eyes.
Jenny blinked, suddenly transported into blinding sunlight and dumped onto her butt.
“I thought so!“, Jenny Nowhere called from yards away, shielding her eyes from the sun despite her goggles.
“Jenny, we’re twenty miles from Giza, at high noon, and there’s no shade. This is no place for your friend. You can either chase me or get her out of here.” Nowhere turned and ran down a sandy incline out of sight.
“Kim, come on!” Jenny tried to take her friend’s arm and follow. Kim’s skin was already too hot, and beginning to burn. The other woman was heavier than she looked.
“I can’t run in this! Get me out of the sun!”
Jenny felt a shift start nearby and said, “Done!”
They shifted.
A tropical rainforest surrounded them, wet and dank with many heavy smells of nature. Diffuse sunlight filtered through the primeval trees in the fern bed where two women shifted in through inconceivable dimensions to fall over into the mud.
Kim moaned unhappily, covering her face.
“Are you okay, Kim?”
“Overcast,” she gasped. “Too bright. Better. Be okay soon.”
A human scream came from nearby, too quickly ended.
“Oh, no… Hold on, Kim, I have to check this out!”
Jenny waded awkwardly through the ferns and tangled underbrush, only to come to a steep-sided ravine. She could hear something below, grunting and snuffling. She looked over the rim only once and vomited into a bush.
“It isn’t the beer this time, is it?” Kim came through Jenny’s path and peered over the sharp edge. “Oh. I didn’t think so.”
“A dinosaur! Can you believe it? As many times as I’ve run into dinosaurs, I never really thought one of them would get me…”
“Well, she wasn’t technically you… Hm. Wait here, okay?”
Kim launched herself over the cliff. A thump, an outraged squeal, a crack of broken bone, and a dull thud followed almost immediately. Kim’s voice came up from below, “For what it’s worth, you’re avenged. She is. Whatever.”
“It’s just a damn lizard.”
“Maybe so, Jenny, but I didn’t do this just to uphold a point of honor or avenge a blood debt. I wanted to check the body.”
“First of all, eww, yuck. Second, why? She was a Jenny Everywhere. She looked just like me.”
“Because of what she didn’t say, and what I’ve just found. Jenny, you’re not going to like this.”
“In the last half hour I’ve been drugged, you’ve been shot, and a psycho evil twin tried to kidnap me and cut me off from my other selves. Are you going to tell me something I’m not going to like more than all that?”
Kim was silent a moment, then said solemnly, “Yes, I think so, Jenny.”
Jenny took a deep breath, the prehistoric jungle air little comfort to her. “Lay it on me.”
“She tapped her head when she spoke of the accident that started this. Her head does have a scar near the left ear, suggesting brain modification near Broca’s area, which --”
“Kim! Get to the point!”
“Sorry, Jenny. The point is that Jenny Nowhere repeatedly said that her, um, independence came from a freak accident. This woman’s scar isn’t accidental, Jenny, it’s surgical.”
“Surgical? You mean somebody did it to her intentionally?”
“Yes, exactly. I’m sorry, Jenny. This isn’t the original Jenny Nowhere.”
“Oh, God…” Jenny leaned against a tree, feeling uncharacteristically tired.
“Ours wasn’t the first dimension she visited,” Kim said. “There’s no guessing how many Jenny Nowheres there might be…and she can’t tell us any more.”
“Let’s go home,” Jenny said bleakly. “Right now I think I want a drink. Maybe a lot of them.”
“Me, too, Jenny. But no music, okay?”
