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scott_sanfordVarious tidbits too small to stand on their own. The completely arbitrary cutoff is 500 words; longer than that and stories get their own files.
The Freeing of Genie Everywhere (10 July 2021)
Awakening (8 Oct 2021)
Frogs (31 Jan 2022)
Nowhere Plan (28 Feb 2022)
The Summoning (29 May 2022)
Lunchtime in the Old West (26 May 2022)
Fanfic Critique (16 Aug 2022)
Heavy Reading (16 Sept 2022)
Professional Ethics (28 Sept 2022)
Guinevere and Mordred (22 Nov 2022)
(31 Jan 2022) The other night I was at the keyboard and this popped out. It’s arguably not a story, although Ficly had posts shorter and less coherent, but it stands as a quiet interlude in the often noisy life of Jenny Everywhere. Like Awakening it can be enjoyed as a mood piece.
Jenny Everywhere in
Frogs
by Scott Sanford
January 2022
I’m sitting beside a waterfall in the rain forest, listening to a chorus of frogs.
They sing a six voice polyphonic madrigal, and I understand about half of the lyrics. Bach would approve; so would those Mormons at the Tabernacle.
A leopard emerges from the bushes and stops to drink from the stream. Some of the frogs fall silent, the music smoothly transitioning to a four voice round for several minutes while the cat lingers on the bank.
Bored, it silently pads away downstream and the frogs seamlessly return to their sixfold harmonies.
I wish the me that was listening had a recorder.
The phone rings, and the me that’s here sighs and lets go of the waterfall. Back to my own reality.
(28 Feb 2022) On the Discord channel some of us were kicking around the idea "Jenny Nowhere shows up to ruin Jenny E's birthday celebration." This is not that story. This is a few words from one of the witnesses after the fact.
Jenny Everywhere in
Nowhere Plan
by Scott Sanford
February 2022
I tried to kill myself today.
Sort of.
People say everyone has hidden urges and uncomfortable secrets. I guess it’s true. But for me things are a bit different.
I am Jenny Everywhere. The Shifter. I exist in every universe and can shift between them. That means I can’t be just one person. Oh, I am – but I’m not only Jenny, I’m also Everywhere. I am as infinite and varied as all of the universes.
Sometimes… Well, you have self destructive urges once in a while, don’t you?
Sometimes she calls herself Jenny Nowhere. She can’t be a unique person any more than I can, but bear with me.
This was just recently, when I was having a birthday party at this place I made. A few hundred friends. A few hundred of me.
And Jenny Nowhere.
She must have known better, at some level.
She knows me. She knows my friends. But she had a big plan again and some new tricks and it would have worked if she’d surprised only one of me alone. But she had to do it here, where everyone could see, hundreds of me and my friends.
Just so you know, I love making friends and I’ve got a lot, across the whole multiverse.
Lots of them are ordinary people, for whatever ordinary means in their universe, or people. And some aren’t.
Nowhere crashed the party – my party – and acted surprised when we fought back. There were warriors. Wizards. Mad scientists. Superheroes. Kaiju. Gods and things beyond gods.
She must have known better. I think she knows she’ll fail, at some level. We’ve done this thousands of times. We’ll do it again.
But not today and not at the next party.
Postscript People have wondered about the line "There were warriors. Wizards. Mad scientists. Superheroes. Kaiju. Gods and things beyond gods." Yeah, Jenny has interesting friends.
Was "the place I made" the Infinite? It could be, though this would be the first time Jenny's said she created it. If you have another idea, that could be the seed of a story...
(26 April 2022) Okay, yes, I went there. It is a horrible pun. Also, mood whiplash ahead!
Jenny Everywhere in
The Summoning
by Scott Sanford
April 2022
Jenny Everywhere crept through the night, hoping to be silent and unseen, and painfully aware that an alley behind a strip mall offered basically no good hiding places.
Suddenly her friend Kim was beside her, as if she’d been there all along.
“Are you sure about this?”, she asked quietly.
Jenny held out the badly made flier announcing a gathering to SUMMUN STAAN, created by someone whose graphic arts skills were worse than their spelling.
“I wouldn’t bet on them being able to summon a pizza delivery but, you know, I can’t ignore horrible incursions from other dimensions.”
“I agree,” Kim said. “Even incompetent ones by cultists setting up in empty store fronts – and making illiterate fliers. They’ve covered the front windows with old comic book posters, so we know that whatever they’re doing they don’t want their neighbors watching.”
“Okay, so here’s the back door…” Jenny tried the handle and found it was locked, as she’d expected. She pulled out her lockpicks and selected a tool. While she fiddled she let her mouth run to defuse the tension. “The next space over is a pet store so try not to take a fight through that wall if things go bad. The used book store, not so bad, nothing there is going to run away on its own. We should try to avoid the bar on the corner. The nearest holy ground is the mosque right behind us; jump over that fence and you’re in their parking lot.”
“I don’t think it’s working. Let me try,” Kim said.
“Sure, if you want...” Jenny looked up and found she was alone in the alley.
A few moments later the handle turned and Kim pushed the door open. “Come on in.”
“Okay, that’s cool, I admit. Am I superfluous here?” Jenny tried to look around the dark windowless room she found herself in.
“Not at all. Dimensional shenanigans are definitely your thing,” Kim whispered. “Everyone else is in the front room, the only door is at your eleven o’clock. There’s about twenty of them.”
“Twenty?!”
“You deal whatever horror from the abyss they call, I’ll keep the humans off your back.”
“Fair enough,” Jenny acknowledged.
A sudden bang shook the building and cheers erupted from the front room. Both women turned toward the noise.
“Hello, everyone!” exulted a deep resonant voice. “At long last, I’m BACK!”
“Hey…” Jenny paused as recognition dawned. “I know that voice!”
“Well done, true believers!”
“Him?!?,” Jenny marveled.
From out front came the sound of many cheers and cries of “Excelsior!”
“What’s going on?”, Kim asked.
“It’s a false alarm, everything is okay.” Jenny giggled to herself and pulled out the horrible flier and held it out to Kim. “There’s no danger from these guys. They’re… Stan worshipers.”
(29 May 2022) On the Discord server Dizzy H. Slightly Voided commented, "There's got to be Jennies who've moved to another universe because they were envious of how other Jennies lived their lives. ...i.e. she's Cowboy Jenny Everywhere and the era of the Wild West is now over." Hm, I thought, I had an idea about that...
Jenny Everywhere in
Lunchtime in the Old West
by Scott Sanford
May 2022
People say there’s no fate but what you make for yourself, but once in a while fate will do all the work for you and you just have to be awake enough to grab the opportunity.
One day about noon we were mostly set up for Cody’s Wild West Show when a mark dressed up like an eastern dandy wandered into the site, looking for something or other.
He spots a few of us having lunch and comes over to put his face in. I don’t know why he picked out me, but I’m the one he picks out.
“I see you’ve got a rifle, young lady,” he says, as if maybe I hadn’t noticed my own Winchester slung over my shoulder. I don’t really know what to say to that but after a heartbeat he picks up with, “Are you very good with it?”
“Me?”, I say, because right at that moment I know that I’ve been handed a treasure by fate and it’s mine to use, so I scratch my chin thoughtfully for a moment, trying not to look over at Annie and Frank.
“I reckon I’m no better shot than the next woman,” I say with exact truthfulness and a straight face.
If he doesn’t recognize that the next woman sitting beside me is Annie Oakley that’s his funeral. Maybe literally.
(16 August 2022) What if Jenny read what’s posted on Jenny Everywhere Day? (If you haven’t read The Showdown yet, um, maybe don’t read it at work...) Here’s a brief interlude I conceived, typed, and poorly edited within 24 hours; if you don’t like it that’s fine and I’m sure the next thing along won’t dent the fourth wall so badly.
Jenny Everywhere in
Fanfic Critique
by Scott Sanford
August 2022
Jenny finished reading the story that claimed to be about her, sat back, and crossed her arms skeptically.
“I don’t know. Whoever this is, they don’t write very long stories. But it starts out okay and it ends with another Jenny Everywhere riding away with a girl tied to her saddle. Undressed, tied up, and then packed up and ridden off into the sunset.”
“Oh, it’s one of those stories?” Kim asked with amusement.
“Yeah, and it doesn’t keep going after that, darn it.” She pouted. “Besides, I never bring home any naked girls tied to my saddle… Or naked boys, for that matter.”
“You don’t have a saddle,” Kim pointed out.
“I could get one.”
“And a horse?”
“That’s not the point. I think some of me are having more fun than others.”
“And you call that fun?”
“Well, you know, whatever.”
“It sounds as if you want a little whatever in your life, yes.” Kim grinned knowingly.
“It’s not like I could keep a boy here anyway,” Jenny prevaricated. “Remember that letter everyone got about the new apartment pet policy?”
“The management company’s lawyers made them do that because of the thing with the spherical cow.”
“It wasn’t even my cow. Although I could probably keep a boy if I already had one. I remember reading that any existing pets were grandfathered in. Thoth says that’s why he’s allowed to keep Steve Lucas.”
“I don’t know if I believe that. Some cats are terrible liars.”
“It’s not as if I know where to find a lot of cute naked guys anyway...”
“I do not, in fact, have a stockpile of naked men hidden away for a rainy day,” Kim said dryly, stifling a grin.
“Neither do I, and it’s too bad.” Jenny considered the possibilities. “Maybe if I got some kind of a clothing disintegrator ray…”
“Not around here you won’t,” Kim pointed out. “Eric promised not to build another de-pants-icator.”
“Oh, good point. I’d have to go shopping. Somewhere.” Jenny looked at the story still on her laptop’s screen and idly wondered, “And why do writers keep matching me up with tall redheads?”
(16 September 2022) Over on the Discord server we happened to get on the subject of the Understanding Teleportation book that appeared as a background detail in Misunderstandings. This brought up the subject of what else Jenny Everywhere might be reading – or not reading – and I remembered I had a half written scene about that.
Jenny Everywhere in
Heavy Reading
by Scott Sanford
September 2022
“Argh, which one of me writes this crap?”
Jenny tossed aside An Introduction to Recreational Metric Engineering, which landed on the floor with a dense thud; this was also how the writing style landed in the reader’s mind.
“I know I can write better than that! I do not need to be a pretentious ass. And who is she writing to, anyway? Anyone who can use it is going to be me.”
She flopped backwards on the living room sofa and gave a dramatic sigh.
Kim looked down at the tome on the floor, read the title, and asked, “You have something against the metric system?”
“It’s not that kind of metric engineering.”
“Oh?”
“It means changing the properties of local spacetime. Playing games with the shape of the universe for fun and profit. Mostly fun, if I’m doing it right. Like, anyone can carry a purse in her car. But what if you want to carry a car in your purse?”
“Is that a thing you can do?”, Kim asked, sounding very skeptical but also a little worried.
“Eh, some of me can.” Jenny shrugged.
“Ah,” Kim said noncommittally. “And this is… a grimoire? A how-to manual?”
Jenny snorted. “Sort of. It’s supposed to be a how-to manual on reshaping local spacetime. What it really is is six hundred pages of unreadably turgid prose.” She waved an arm vaguely and elaborated, “But yeah, someone who could learn all of that could do a lot of stuff like teleportation, time travel, opening wormholes, even building pocket universes. Assuming they could wade through the writing style, and practiced a little, and was also me.”
Kim was silent for a moment, across the room where Jenny was not looking at her wide eyed expression during the moments it lasted.
“Why are you reading that, anyway?”, she asked after discarding several other questions.
“I wanted to know what’s actually in it,” Jenny explained. “Next year I left it out where Professor Awesome could find it, and he read it and got the ideas for the Time Pestle.”
Kim shuddered. “Let’s not do that again.”
“No kidding,” Jenny agreed. “Once was enough. Will be. Whatever.”
“When you’re done not reading it,” Kim proposed, “let’s lock it away where it won’t be found. Ever.”
Metric engineering is a thing some Jenny Everywheres have been seen to do.
(26 September 2022) I was trying to make progress on some serious stories. What I got instead was the return of the Puritan Streaker. And then this came out.
Professional Ethics
by Scott Sanford
September 2022
“Hello, Eric?”
“Hi, Kim!” The young mad scientist looked up from his work, a collection of odd electronics spread out in chaos across his bedroom desk. He smiled and put his soldering iron into its holder. “Come on in!”
“Your mother said you wanted to see me.”
“Yeah.” His eyes flickered briefly to his bedroom door, then back to Kim. “I wanted to ask someone about something and you’re a grownup but not my mom...”
“And a responsible adult, so not Jenny?”, she asked with a smile.
“She’s great but she’s … um… human perspective, you know?”
“I live with her; trust me, I know.” She sat down on his bed and asked, “So what’s on your mind?”
“Last week at school, Coach Haggard caught Greg and Billy making out in the locker room and freaked out and yelled at them, and then he yelled at all of us about it later,” Eric spewed in a breathless expository lump.
“Later on he caught me alone and wanted to know if I could do something about it and I told him no, I didn’t want to and that it was impossible anyway.
“And he said what if I gave you fifty bucks and I said no.
“And then he said what if I gave you a hundred bucks and I said I can’t guarantee it will work and you’ll have to buy the parts.”
He sighed and gestured to the pile of components on his desk.
“So now I’m making a wide-area-effect heteronormalizer that will harmonically re-synchronize the human body’s standing wave tantric field as far as Coach Haggard knows. But he shouldn’t play with the controls because it works just as well in reverse too.”
“And this… works?”, Kim asked guardedly.
“Nope!” Eric said lightly. “And it’s not going to. But he’s paying me a hundred dollars to build it and I’m charging him almost two hundred for sixty bucks worth of parts.”
He looked up at Kim and asked, “I wanted to ask, is that unethical?”
She pondered this question a moment, giving it at least as much thought as it merited, and nodded.
“Yes, I think it’s unethical to sell a machine that you know won’t work. Almost every part of this situation is awful – but so is your coach so I’m not going to tell you to stop.”
“Mm, that’s what I thought you’d say.”
“Does it help?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m still gonna do it but I’m not going to enjoy it or make a habit of it.”
Kim was thoughtful herself a moment, then laughed wryly. “Sometimes, Eric, that’s as close to ethics as we can manage.”
(22 November 2022) I hope I haven’t written the next New York Chaos...
Guinevere and Mordred
by Scott Sanford
November 22nd, 2022
In another world it was the last day of Camelot.
In this world, the day wasn’t over yet.
The morning rain had cleared up. The sun was out. Visibility was, unfortunately, perfect.
Below her a crowd had gathered but the rooftop was empty.
Jenny Everywhere crouched high atop of the Post Office terminal building, out of sight of the people below, and lowered her goggles over her eyes. Nervously she checked her watch; it was twenty minutes past noon. Showtime.
Taking a breath and steeling her nerves, she looked north and steadied her rifle on the parapet.
There were only two people in the universe who knew where to look. Blessed or cursed with foreknowledge, she found him exactly where she expected him, a shadowed figure almost hidden in an upper window of the state government building on the other side of Dealey Plaza. Nobody else would look twice at a warehouse for school supplies.
She took aim and waited.
Two people, two good rifles, two roads for history to take...
Down on the street the noise changed, becoming more excited, and she ignored the crowd. She knew what was happening below. For now the world’s destiny pivoted on only the two of them.
She centered him in the scope’s view as if she had all the time in the world, and squeezed the trigger. Her rifle spoke and two hundred meters away a Marine she never met fell away from the window.
On the street below people heard the shot and cried out. Tires squealed, no doubt the president’s motorcade suddenly accelerating out of the kill box.
Jenny didn’t have to watch him leaving. She’d already seen the movie Abraham Zapruder was filming down below.
Idly she wondered what stories conspiracy theorists would dream up about this. It wouldn’t be her problem.
She flipped the rifle’s safety on and backed away from the edge of the roof. By the time anyone came looking she’d be gone too.
I’ve been reminded that the Kennedy Camelot was a more familiar metaphor fifty years ago. If you were confused, you've got my apologies.
This grew out of pondering, "What would it take for Jenny Everywhere to kill someone?" The logical other question is "What would it take for Jenny Everywhere to kill herself?" In time I realized I knew that story too - and that I don't want to write it.
You can read later short fragments or see all the stories
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.
The Freeing of Genie Everywhere (10 July 2021)
Awakening (8 Oct 2021)
Frogs (31 Jan 2022)
Nowhere Plan (28 Feb 2022)
The Summoning (29 May 2022)
Lunchtime in the Old West (26 May 2022)
Fanfic Critique (16 Aug 2022)
Heavy Reading (16 Sept 2022)
Professional Ethics (28 Sept 2022)
Guinevere and Mordred (22 Nov 2022)
(31 Jan 2022) The other night I was at the keyboard and this popped out. It’s arguably not a story, although Ficly had posts shorter and less coherent, but it stands as a quiet interlude in the often noisy life of Jenny Everywhere. Like Awakening it can be enjoyed as a mood piece.
Frogs
by Scott Sanford
January 2022
I’m sitting beside a waterfall in the rain forest, listening to a chorus of frogs.
They sing a six voice polyphonic madrigal, and I understand about half of the lyrics. Bach would approve; so would those Mormons at the Tabernacle.
A leopard emerges from the bushes and stops to drink from the stream. Some of the frogs fall silent, the music smoothly transitioning to a four voice round for several minutes while the cat lingers on the bank.
Bored, it silently pads away downstream and the frogs seamlessly return to their sixfold harmonies.
I wish the me that was listening had a recorder.
The phone rings, and the me that’s here sighs and lets go of the waterfall. Back to my own reality.
(28 Feb 2022) On the Discord channel some of us were kicking around the idea "Jenny Nowhere shows up to ruin Jenny E's birthday celebration." This is not that story. This is a few words from one of the witnesses after the fact.
Nowhere Plan
by Scott Sanford
February 2022
I tried to kill myself today.
Sort of.
People say everyone has hidden urges and uncomfortable secrets. I guess it’s true. But for me things are a bit different.
I am Jenny Everywhere. The Shifter. I exist in every universe and can shift between them. That means I can’t be just one person. Oh, I am – but I’m not only Jenny, I’m also Everywhere. I am as infinite and varied as all of the universes.
Sometimes… Well, you have self destructive urges once in a while, don’t you?
Sometimes she calls herself Jenny Nowhere. She can’t be a unique person any more than I can, but bear with me.
This was just recently, when I was having a birthday party at this place I made. A few hundred friends. A few hundred of me.
And Jenny Nowhere.
She must have known better, at some level.
She knows me. She knows my friends. But she had a big plan again and some new tricks and it would have worked if she’d surprised only one of me alone. But she had to do it here, where everyone could see, hundreds of me and my friends.
Just so you know, I love making friends and I’ve got a lot, across the whole multiverse.
Lots of them are ordinary people, for whatever ordinary means in their universe, or people. And some aren’t.
Nowhere crashed the party – my party – and acted surprised when we fought back. There were warriors. Wizards. Mad scientists. Superheroes. Kaiju. Gods and things beyond gods.
She must have known better. I think she knows she’ll fail, at some level. We’ve done this thousands of times. We’ll do it again.
But not today and not at the next party.
Postscript People have wondered about the line "There were warriors. Wizards. Mad scientists. Superheroes. Kaiju. Gods and things beyond gods." Yeah, Jenny has interesting friends.
Was "the place I made" the Infinite? It could be, though this would be the first time Jenny's said she created it. If you have another idea, that could be the seed of a story...
(26 April 2022) Okay, yes, I went there. It is a horrible pun. Also, mood whiplash ahead!
The Summoning
by Scott Sanford
April 2022
Jenny Everywhere crept through the night, hoping to be silent and unseen, and painfully aware that an alley behind a strip mall offered basically no good hiding places.
Suddenly her friend Kim was beside her, as if she’d been there all along.
“Are you sure about this?”, she asked quietly.
Jenny held out the badly made flier announcing a gathering to SUMMUN STAAN, created by someone whose graphic arts skills were worse than their spelling.
“I wouldn’t bet on them being able to summon a pizza delivery but, you know, I can’t ignore horrible incursions from other dimensions.”
“I agree,” Kim said. “Even incompetent ones by cultists setting up in empty store fronts – and making illiterate fliers. They’ve covered the front windows with old comic book posters, so we know that whatever they’re doing they don’t want their neighbors watching.”
“Okay, so here’s the back door…” Jenny tried the handle and found it was locked, as she’d expected. She pulled out her lockpicks and selected a tool. While she fiddled she let her mouth run to defuse the tension. “The next space over is a pet store so try not to take a fight through that wall if things go bad. The used book store, not so bad, nothing there is going to run away on its own. We should try to avoid the bar on the corner. The nearest holy ground is the mosque right behind us; jump over that fence and you’re in their parking lot.”
“I don’t think it’s working. Let me try,” Kim said.
“Sure, if you want...” Jenny looked up and found she was alone in the alley.
A few moments later the handle turned and Kim pushed the door open. “Come on in.”
“Okay, that’s cool, I admit. Am I superfluous here?” Jenny tried to look around the dark windowless room she found herself in.
“Not at all. Dimensional shenanigans are definitely your thing,” Kim whispered. “Everyone else is in the front room, the only door is at your eleven o’clock. There’s about twenty of them.”
“Twenty?!”
“You deal whatever horror from the abyss they call, I’ll keep the humans off your back.”
“Fair enough,” Jenny acknowledged.
A sudden bang shook the building and cheers erupted from the front room. Both women turned toward the noise.
“Hello, everyone!” exulted a deep resonant voice. “At long last, I’m BACK!”“Hey…” Jenny paused as recognition dawned. “I know that voice!”
“Well done, true believers!”
“Him?!?,” Jenny marveled.
From out front came the sound of many cheers and cries of “Excelsior!”
“What’s going on?”, Kim asked.
“It’s a false alarm, everything is okay.” Jenny giggled to herself and pulled out the horrible flier and held it out to Kim. “There’s no danger from these guys. They’re… Stan worshipers.”
(29 May 2022) On the Discord server Dizzy H. Slightly Voided commented, "There's got to be Jennies who've moved to another universe because they were envious of how other Jennies lived their lives. ...i.e. she's Cowboy Jenny Everywhere and the era of the Wild West is now over." Hm, I thought, I had an idea about that...
Lunchtime in the Old West
by Scott Sanford
May 2022
People say there’s no fate but what you make for yourself, but once in a while fate will do all the work for you and you just have to be awake enough to grab the opportunity.
One day about noon we were mostly set up for Cody’s Wild West Show when a mark dressed up like an eastern dandy wandered into the site, looking for something or other.
He spots a few of us having lunch and comes over to put his face in. I don’t know why he picked out me, but I’m the one he picks out.
“I see you’ve got a rifle, young lady,” he says, as if maybe I hadn’t noticed my own Winchester slung over my shoulder. I don’t really know what to say to that but after a heartbeat he picks up with, “Are you very good with it?”
“Me?”, I say, because right at that moment I know that I’ve been handed a treasure by fate and it’s mine to use, so I scratch my chin thoughtfully for a moment, trying not to look over at Annie and Frank.
“I reckon I’m no better shot than the next woman,” I say with exact truthfulness and a straight face.
If he doesn’t recognize that the next woman sitting beside me is Annie Oakley that’s his funeral. Maybe literally.
(16 August 2022) What if Jenny read what’s posted on Jenny Everywhere Day? (If you haven’t read The Showdown yet, um, maybe don’t read it at work...) Here’s a brief interlude I conceived, typed, and poorly edited within 24 hours; if you don’t like it that’s fine and I’m sure the next thing along won’t dent the fourth wall so badly.
Fanfic Critique
by Scott Sanford
August 2022
Jenny finished reading the story that claimed to be about her, sat back, and crossed her arms skeptically.
“I don’t know. Whoever this is, they don’t write very long stories. But it starts out okay and it ends with another Jenny Everywhere riding away with a girl tied to her saddle. Undressed, tied up, and then packed up and ridden off into the sunset.”
“Oh, it’s one of those stories?” Kim asked with amusement.
“Yeah, and it doesn’t keep going after that, darn it.” She pouted. “Besides, I never bring home any naked girls tied to my saddle… Or naked boys, for that matter.”
“You don’t have a saddle,” Kim pointed out.
“I could get one.”
“And a horse?”
“That’s not the point. I think some of me are having more fun than others.”
“And you call that fun?”
“Well, you know, whatever.”
“It sounds as if you want a little whatever in your life, yes.” Kim grinned knowingly.
“It’s not like I could keep a boy here anyway,” Jenny prevaricated. “Remember that letter everyone got about the new apartment pet policy?”
“The management company’s lawyers made them do that because of the thing with the spherical cow.”
“It wasn’t even my cow. Although I could probably keep a boy if I already had one. I remember reading that any existing pets were grandfathered in. Thoth says that’s why he’s allowed to keep Steve Lucas.”
“I don’t know if I believe that. Some cats are terrible liars.”
“It’s not as if I know where to find a lot of cute naked guys anyway...”
“I do not, in fact, have a stockpile of naked men hidden away for a rainy day,” Kim said dryly, stifling a grin.
“Neither do I, and it’s too bad.” Jenny considered the possibilities. “Maybe if I got some kind of a clothing disintegrator ray…”
“Not around here you won’t,” Kim pointed out. “Eric promised not to build another de-pants-icator.”
“Oh, good point. I’d have to go shopping. Somewhere.” Jenny looked at the story still on her laptop’s screen and idly wondered, “And why do writers keep matching me up with tall redheads?”
(16 September 2022) Over on the Discord server we happened to get on the subject of the Understanding Teleportation book that appeared as a background detail in Misunderstandings. This brought up the subject of what else Jenny Everywhere might be reading – or not reading – and I remembered I had a half written scene about that.
Heavy Reading
by Scott Sanford
September 2022
“Argh, which one of me writes this crap?”
Jenny tossed aside An Introduction to Recreational Metric Engineering, which landed on the floor with a dense thud; this was also how the writing style landed in the reader’s mind.
“I know I can write better than that! I do not need to be a pretentious ass. And who is she writing to, anyway? Anyone who can use it is going to be me.”
She flopped backwards on the living room sofa and gave a dramatic sigh.
Kim looked down at the tome on the floor, read the title, and asked, “You have something against the metric system?”
“It’s not that kind of metric engineering.”
“Oh?”
“It means changing the properties of local spacetime. Playing games with the shape of the universe for fun and profit. Mostly fun, if I’m doing it right. Like, anyone can carry a purse in her car. But what if you want to carry a car in your purse?”
“Is that a thing you can do?”, Kim asked, sounding very skeptical but also a little worried.
“Eh, some of me can.” Jenny shrugged.
“Ah,” Kim said noncommittally. “And this is… a grimoire? A how-to manual?”
Jenny snorted. “Sort of. It’s supposed to be a how-to manual on reshaping local spacetime. What it really is is six hundred pages of unreadably turgid prose.” She waved an arm vaguely and elaborated, “But yeah, someone who could learn all of that could do a lot of stuff like teleportation, time travel, opening wormholes, even building pocket universes. Assuming they could wade through the writing style, and practiced a little, and was also me.”
Kim was silent for a moment, across the room where Jenny was not looking at her wide eyed expression during the moments it lasted.
“Why are you reading that, anyway?”, she asked after discarding several other questions.
“I wanted to know what’s actually in it,” Jenny explained. “Next year I left it out where Professor Awesome could find it, and he read it and got the ideas for the Time Pestle.”
Kim shuddered. “Let’s not do that again.”
“No kidding,” Jenny agreed. “Once was enough. Will be. Whatever.”
“When you’re done not reading it,” Kim proposed, “let’s lock it away where it won’t be found. Ever.”
Metric engineering is a thing some Jenny Everywheres have been seen to do.
(26 September 2022) I was trying to make progress on some serious stories. What I got instead was the return of the Puritan Streaker. And then this came out.
by Scott Sanford
September 2022
“Hello, Eric?”
“Hi, Kim!” The young mad scientist looked up from his work, a collection of odd electronics spread out in chaos across his bedroom desk. He smiled and put his soldering iron into its holder. “Come on in!”
“Your mother said you wanted to see me.”
“Yeah.” His eyes flickered briefly to his bedroom door, then back to Kim. “I wanted to ask someone about something and you’re a grownup but not my mom...”
“And a responsible adult, so not Jenny?”, she asked with a smile.
“She’s great but she’s … um… human perspective, you know?”
“I live with her; trust me, I know.” She sat down on his bed and asked, “So what’s on your mind?”
“Last week at school, Coach Haggard caught Greg and Billy making out in the locker room and freaked out and yelled at them, and then he yelled at all of us about it later,” Eric spewed in a breathless expository lump.
“Later on he caught me alone and wanted to know if I could do something about it and I told him no, I didn’t want to and that it was impossible anyway.
“And he said what if I gave you fifty bucks and I said no.
“And then he said what if I gave you a hundred bucks and I said I can’t guarantee it will work and you’ll have to buy the parts.”
He sighed and gestured to the pile of components on his desk.
“So now I’m making a wide-area-effect heteronormalizer that will harmonically re-synchronize the human body’s standing wave tantric field as far as Coach Haggard knows. But he shouldn’t play with the controls because it works just as well in reverse too.”
“And this… works?”, Kim asked guardedly.
“Nope!” Eric said lightly. “And it’s not going to. But he’s paying me a hundred dollars to build it and I’m charging him almost two hundred for sixty bucks worth of parts.”
He looked up at Kim and asked, “I wanted to ask, is that unethical?”
She pondered this question a moment, giving it at least as much thought as it merited, and nodded.
“Yes, I think it’s unethical to sell a machine that you know won’t work. Almost every part of this situation is awful – but so is your coach so I’m not going to tell you to stop.”
“Mm, that’s what I thought you’d say.”
“Does it help?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m still gonna do it but I’m not going to enjoy it or make a habit of it.”
Kim was thoughtful herself a moment, then laughed wryly. “Sometimes, Eric, that’s as close to ethics as we can manage.”
(22 November 2022) I hope I haven’t written the next New York Chaos...
by Scott Sanford
November 22nd, 2022
In another world it was the last day of Camelot.
In this world, the day wasn’t over yet.
The morning rain had cleared up. The sun was out. Visibility was, unfortunately, perfect.
Below her a crowd had gathered but the rooftop was empty.
Jenny Everywhere crouched high atop of the Post Office terminal building, out of sight of the people below, and lowered her goggles over her eyes. Nervously she checked her watch; it was twenty minutes past noon. Showtime.
Taking a breath and steeling her nerves, she looked north and steadied her rifle on the parapet.
There were only two people in the universe who knew where to look. Blessed or cursed with foreknowledge, she found him exactly where she expected him, a shadowed figure almost hidden in an upper window of the state government building on the other side of Dealey Plaza. Nobody else would look twice at a warehouse for school supplies.
She took aim and waited.
Two people, two good rifles, two roads for history to take...
Down on the street the noise changed, becoming more excited, and she ignored the crowd. She knew what was happening below. For now the world’s destiny pivoted on only the two of them.
She centered him in the scope’s view as if she had all the time in the world, and squeezed the trigger. Her rifle spoke and two hundred meters away a Marine she never met fell away from the window.
On the street below people heard the shot and cried out. Tires squealed, no doubt the president’s motorcade suddenly accelerating out of the kill box.
Jenny didn’t have to watch him leaving. She’d already seen the movie Abraham Zapruder was filming down below.
Idly she wondered what stories conspiracy theorists would dream up about this. It wouldn’t be her problem.
She flipped the rifle’s safety on and backed away from the edge of the roof. By the time anyone came looking she’d be gone too.
I’ve been reminded that the Kennedy Camelot was a more familiar metaphor fifty years ago. If you were confused, you've got my apologies.
This grew out of pondering, "What would it take for Jenny Everywhere to kill someone?" The logical other question is "What would it take for Jenny Everywhere to kill herself?" In time I realized I knew that story too - and that I don't want to write it.
