The Absquatulation of Jenny Everywhere
Jun. 17th, 2022 01:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scott_sanfordOne night I got the image of David having to wake Kim the hard way and one thing led to another. Most Jenny Everywhere stories have no particular time or place for their setting; this one does and readers may figure it out before it’s spelled out in the afterword.
The Absquatulation of
Jenny Everywhere
by Scott Sanford, 2022
Rapid banging on the apartment door got David’s attention. He sighed at the intrusion of worldly problems, but there was no help for it. He set down his quill carefully, knowing he would have to finish his mezuzot later, rose, and answered the door.
He found his teenage neighbor Eric there, looking distraught.
“Hu, what’s all this?”, he asked.
“Something’s wrong with Kim!”, the boy blurted. “Please, I think it’s bad!”
“What?”, he asked, glancing across the hall to the open door opposite his. “What is going on?”
“I came up because nobody’s seen Jenny for days and I wanted to check on her or just ask Kim, but she didn’t answer no matter how much I knocked, so I got the toaster to open the door for me and she’s laying in her bed and she’s not moving and I think it’s bad!” He danced in place, on the edge of tears.
“Okay, let’s go look,” David told the young man.
They went together into the other apartment, where the door of Kim’s bedroom was also standing open. David could see her lying on her back in bed, motionless.
“She’s not moving and she won’t wake up and I don’t know what else to do!” Eric was on the edge of tears.
“Hrm. This?” David sounded grim but not distressed. He knocked on the bedroom’s door frame, if only for show. “Kim? Wake up, maybe? We need you.”
She didn’t move.
He went in to where Kim was laying unresponsive on the bed. He bent over; she didn’t seem to be breathing. Gently he touched the exposed skin of the neck. It was leathery, and about room temperature.
“Oh dear.” He stood up to see Eric in the doorway, looking distraught.
“Is she…?”
“Eh, she’s a lot of things. A doctor you want me to be? You disturb a lady when she’s trying to sleep, maybe you don’t see her at her best. It’s not her fault.”
“You’ve got to do something!”
“Something, it’s always something. Easy to do something, harder to do the right thing.” He gave a low grumble, considering.
“But Jenny’s gone and Kim is, is –”
“Okay, okay, you make your point. Something it is.” He stood, looking more resolved, and added, “This bit maybe you shouldn’t see. If you have to look, you keep your mouth shut.”
Eric nodded uncertainly.
“Okay, then.” David went over to a large wall mounted mirror and considered it for a moment, then reached up to grope around on its upper edge. “Somewhere here there should be a thing...”
His hand found the thing and the entire mirror smoothly slid sideways to reveal a bookshelf sized cabinet recessed into the wall. A surprising number of small objects were hidden away there, both mundane and unusual.
Ignoring most of them, David extracted a bundle which he unwrapped to reveal a small ceramic bottle, tightly capped and sealed with wax.
“See all this?”, he remarked, half to himself. “This is how they did it in the old days, before plastics and zip lock whatever. You see this, you expect either it’s very old or someone did it themselves at home.”
“What, what is it?”, Eric asked uncertainly.
“What we need to wake up Kim. And to find Jenny.”
David slid the mirror back into place and returned to Kim’s bedside, looked down at her, and sighed.
“This is another thing maybe you don’t want to watch,” he said, not looking.
He sat down by her side and broke the seal on the bottle. A familiar smell wafted out. David carefully put the bottle to her lips, letting the contents drain.
The rich liquid disappeared into her mouth with no immediate effect.
“There you go, drink up,” he said softly. “Sorry to wake you up in the middle of the day but here we are.”
Without warning her hands flew upwards, clawed nails slicing open his sweater. Her eyes opened, unseeing, and she gave out an inarticulate hiss.
Eric yelped and ran out of the doorway. David could hear him in the living room, but for the moment the boy would have to fend for himself.
“There, there,” David comforted, holding her down with his free hand. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine. Lots of people are cranky when they wake up.”
Blindingly fast her hands scratched at his chest and face, slicing his sweater to shreds of yarn. She screamed and struck at his face, batting his head back and forth. He let her.
Her attacks slowed and stopped.
She blinked several times, and finally focusing on David’s face.
“Good morning, there,” he said. “Sorry to wake you up like this.”
She blinked several times and took notice of the bottle still at her lips. Wordlessly she licked it. She looked back up at David.
“You woke me up,” she said.
“Yes. I’m sorry to bother you when you’re asleep but things are happening. Young Eric is in the living room, and in a panic.”
She sat up unsteadily and gave David a confused look. She looked again at the bottle, and frowned.
“You got – this? You knew what was in this?”
“Yes. Jenny is missing and I remembered you telling me where you kept it.”
“Please, wake me up with regular blood next time,” she said. “There’s some in the fridge. I can get to Jenny’s if I need it.”
“Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that,” he apologized, wincing in embarrassment.
Kim nodded.
“No harm done, but don’t leave me alone, David. I keep that bottle locked up for good reasons. After the last time I told myself I’d never to do this again.”
“I didn’t know...”
“Not your fault,” she assured him. “It’s not painful, just overwhelming.”
“But you can find her, yes?”
“Most people, yes, I could find them like this. Jenny is... different. She’s everywhere. I don’t think I can explain what it’s like to drink from that – a whisker away from our world there are thousands of other Jennies almost breathing down our necks, and millions more behind those. She’s one person from outside, but inside she really is everywhere.”
“That’s the name,” David said.
“And I think something’s wrong.” Kim trembled and turned to look at David with a worried expression. “I should feel them by now. All the other Jennies. I can feel that there are other worlds, I remember that from the last time I did this – but there aren’t any Jennies. There are supposed to be Jennies everywhere!”
“Oh, dear,” David sighed, looking worried himself. “Nobody’s seen our Jenny for a few days, but all of them? What could happen to the other ones?”
“I don’t know, I can’t hear them. The last time I did this there were – they were everywhere. She talks about infinite worlds but it’s easy to forget just how overwhelming it all is. And I don’t hear any Jennies.”
“So, not our Jenny’s problem,” David said thoughtfully. “Not just something here where we are, but a bigger problem in a lot of worlds.”
“Tricky to handle if Jenny is the one in trouble, too. She’s told me about a few back doors out of the universe, just in case, but it’s not like running out to the supermarket.”
“You can use the kefitzat haderech without her?”, he asked with surprise.
“The Kwisatz Haderach? Like Paul Atreides?”
“Him I don’t know. It’s not important. I’m asking, where would you go outside the universe?”
“I don’t know yet. First, and right now, we go to the kitchen. I wasn’t expecting to be up at this hour.” She tried to get up, groaned, and asked, “Give me a hand?”
David offered his arm and helped her to stand up and walk out into the living room.
Eric was there, sitting hunched over in distress with the robot toaster at his feet. He saw them and his face lit up.
“KIM!”, Eric cried. “You’re okay!”
He leapt up and ran to hug her, sending the toaster skittering for cover. Clinging tightly, he thought to ask, “Wait, are you okay?”
“Hello, Eric,” she said quietly, patting him. “Yes, I’m okay. I was just asleep; I’m going to be fine.”
“I, I couldn’t wake you up and I was really scared.” He sniffled. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“Getting David was the right thing to do. But now I need to get to the kitchen and – oh wow –”
Kim lurched sideways and sat down heavily on the couch instead, holding her head.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she insisted as her friends crowded around her.
“What is it this time?”, David asked.
“I feel them. Thousands of them,” Kim said, at first weakly and then more strongly. “They’re coming back… All of them, they’re all coming back!”
“Who?”, Eric asked, confused.
“Jenny is coming back! All of her are coming back!”
With a loud pop Jenny Everywhere burst into existence in mid air, bounced off the coffee table, and landed with a thud on the floor.
She yelped in surprise even as Eric and David rushed to her side.
“Jenny, Jenny, you’re back!”, Eric cried as he wrapped his arms around the disoriented Shifter.
“Wha’?” She looked around in confusion, still getting her bearings.
“We’ve been worried,” David told her. “Young Eric noticed you hadn’t been around for a few days.”
“Everywhere, they’re everywhere…”, Kim moaned quietly, holding her head.
“Ah, I’d better get this.” David went back to sit next to Kim, offering his hand. She took it.
“They’re all coming back,” she told him. “All of the Jennies, everywhere...”
“Are you, um, okay?”, Eric asked the returned Shifter.
“Um… yeah?” Jenny blinked a few times, looking around.
“Are you still you?” David asked her pointedly, not leaving Kim’s side.
She took a moment to answer, looking around.
“I think so. Yes. This looks right. This looks like my universe. But what’s up with Kim?” She blinked, belatedly taking in Kim’s robe and David’s shredded sweater and a surprising amount of chest hair. “What’s going on with both of you, what did I miss?”
“You disappeared for a while and we got worried,” David explained quickly. “I got into her emergency supplies to let her be a little bit you for a while.”
“What? Oh! You used that...” She looked embarrassed, and a little guilty. “Um, that should wear off pretty soon.”
“It did before,” Kim acknowledged. “I’ll be fine in an hour or two.”
“I was really worried,” Eric told her. “What happened? Where did you go?”
“And did all of you really disappear from every world?”, David asked.
“I don’t think I can explain it a lot more than ‘going away,’ guys.” Jenny gestured vaguely, sat cross-legged in an overstuffed recliner, and tried, “There’s normally supposed to be a Jenny Everywhere in every universe, more or less, but it’s not that simple in practice. If nothing else we keep moving around. So every once in a while, after thousands or millions of years of shifting, the connections between my selves get… confused? Tangled up? Whatever. So we all get pulled out of reality to re-synchronize with ourselves.”
“You turned it off and turned it back on again,” Eric said, a little skeptically.
“Basically, yeah.” Jenny shrugged, grinning. She indicated herself and said, “I don’t think this Jenny ever thought of it before, but there are trillions of me thinking about it now so it’s on my mind. I really didn’t expect to happen so suddenly but a lot of interdimensional stuff has been happening lately. I must have been pulled out of a lot of my lives without any warning.”
She paused, laughed sheepishly, and added, “Sorry to worry you guys. I think a lot of me are having this conversation with our friends right now.”
Kim got up and gave Jenny a hug. “It’s good to know you’re everywhere again.”
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.
Commentary
One night I got the image of David having to wake up Kim the hard way and one thing led to another… Kim’s excursion into Everywhere was a lot more dramatic in my head than the version that made it into the story. Poor Kim has a trying day in this one; she’s opened someone else’s inner eye, seen the fnords – and it’s Jennies all the way down.
(Anyone want to tackle a psychological study of a Jenny just waking up to who she is? I’d enjoy reading such a thing.)
Most Jenny Everywhere stories happen at no particular time and, often, no particular place. This one is set during one specific event, as chronicled earlier in The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere, as many readers will have spotted while reading.
Believe it or not I had this title in my head as far back as 2008. As I said on the Discord channel after Jenny Everywhere Day 2021, I couldn’t make it work back then. Now my Jenny has a larger supporting cast.
Because I know people are wondering, to absquatulate is 19th century slang for departing, intentionally and with connotations of abruptness; it can also include absconding with something. (Meriam-Webster, Wictionary)
David’s claim of being perfectly normal may seem a little dubious now. Is it normal not to have read Dune? Kim has. What he actually said was “kefitzat haderech,” literally “contraction of the road,” a term for miraculous travel.
< Back to Jenny Everywhere stories >
Jenny Everywhere
by Scott Sanford, 2022
Rapid banging on the apartment door got David’s attention. He sighed at the intrusion of worldly problems, but there was no help for it. He set down his quill carefully, knowing he would have to finish his mezuzot later, rose, and answered the door.
He found his teenage neighbor Eric there, looking distraught.
“Hu, what’s all this?”, he asked.
“Something’s wrong with Kim!”, the boy blurted. “Please, I think it’s bad!”
“What?”, he asked, glancing across the hall to the open door opposite his. “What is going on?”
“I came up because nobody’s seen Jenny for days and I wanted to check on her or just ask Kim, but she didn’t answer no matter how much I knocked, so I got the toaster to open the door for me and she’s laying in her bed and she’s not moving and I think it’s bad!” He danced in place, on the edge of tears.
“Okay, let’s go look,” David told the young man.
They went together into the other apartment, where the door of Kim’s bedroom was also standing open. David could see her lying on her back in bed, motionless.
“She’s not moving and she won’t wake up and I don’t know what else to do!” Eric was on the edge of tears.
“Hrm. This?” David sounded grim but not distressed. He knocked on the bedroom’s door frame, if only for show. “Kim? Wake up, maybe? We need you.”
She didn’t move.
He went in to where Kim was laying unresponsive on the bed. He bent over; she didn’t seem to be breathing. Gently he touched the exposed skin of the neck. It was leathery, and about room temperature.
“Oh dear.” He stood up to see Eric in the doorway, looking distraught.
“Is she…?”
“Eh, she’s a lot of things. A doctor you want me to be? You disturb a lady when she’s trying to sleep, maybe you don’t see her at her best. It’s not her fault.”
“You’ve got to do something!”
“Something, it’s always something. Easy to do something, harder to do the right thing.” He gave a low grumble, considering.
“But Jenny’s gone and Kim is, is –”
“Okay, okay, you make your point. Something it is.” He stood, looking more resolved, and added, “This bit maybe you shouldn’t see. If you have to look, you keep your mouth shut.”
Eric nodded uncertainly.
“Okay, then.” David went over to a large wall mounted mirror and considered it for a moment, then reached up to grope around on its upper edge. “Somewhere here there should be a thing...”
His hand found the thing and the entire mirror smoothly slid sideways to reveal a bookshelf sized cabinet recessed into the wall. A surprising number of small objects were hidden away there, both mundane and unusual.
Ignoring most of them, David extracted a bundle which he unwrapped to reveal a small ceramic bottle, tightly capped and sealed with wax.
“See all this?”, he remarked, half to himself. “This is how they did it in the old days, before plastics and zip lock whatever. You see this, you expect either it’s very old or someone did it themselves at home.”
“What, what is it?”, Eric asked uncertainly.
“What we need to wake up Kim. And to find Jenny.”
David slid the mirror back into place and returned to Kim’s bedside, looked down at her, and sighed.
“This is another thing maybe you don’t want to watch,” he said, not looking.
He sat down by her side and broke the seal on the bottle. A familiar smell wafted out. David carefully put the bottle to her lips, letting the contents drain.
The rich liquid disappeared into her mouth with no immediate effect.
“There you go, drink up,” he said softly. “Sorry to wake you up in the middle of the day but here we are.”
Without warning her hands flew upwards, clawed nails slicing open his sweater. Her eyes opened, unseeing, and she gave out an inarticulate hiss.
Eric yelped and ran out of the doorway. David could hear him in the living room, but for the moment the boy would have to fend for himself.
“There, there,” David comforted, holding her down with his free hand. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine. Lots of people are cranky when they wake up.”
Blindingly fast her hands scratched at his chest and face, slicing his sweater to shreds of yarn. She screamed and struck at his face, batting his head back and forth. He let her.
Her attacks slowed and stopped.
She blinked several times, and finally focusing on David’s face.
“Good morning, there,” he said. “Sorry to wake you up like this.”
She blinked several times and took notice of the bottle still at her lips. Wordlessly she licked it. She looked back up at David.
“You woke me up,” she said.
“Yes. I’m sorry to bother you when you’re asleep but things are happening. Young Eric is in the living room, and in a panic.”
She sat up unsteadily and gave David a confused look. She looked again at the bottle, and frowned.
“You got – this? You knew what was in this?”
“Yes. Jenny is missing and I remembered you telling me where you kept it.”
“Please, wake me up with regular blood next time,” she said. “There’s some in the fridge. I can get to Jenny’s if I need it.”
“Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that,” he apologized, wincing in embarrassment.
Kim nodded.
“No harm done, but don’t leave me alone, David. I keep that bottle locked up for good reasons. After the last time I told myself I’d never to do this again.”
“I didn’t know...”
“Not your fault,” she assured him. “It’s not painful, just overwhelming.”
“But you can find her, yes?”
“Most people, yes, I could find them like this. Jenny is... different. She’s everywhere. I don’t think I can explain what it’s like to drink from that – a whisker away from our world there are thousands of other Jennies almost breathing down our necks, and millions more behind those. She’s one person from outside, but inside she really is everywhere.”
“That’s the name,” David said.
“And I think something’s wrong.” Kim trembled and turned to look at David with a worried expression. “I should feel them by now. All the other Jennies. I can feel that there are other worlds, I remember that from the last time I did this – but there aren’t any Jennies. There are supposed to be Jennies everywhere!”
“Oh, dear,” David sighed, looking worried himself. “Nobody’s seen our Jenny for a few days, but all of them? What could happen to the other ones?”
“I don’t know, I can’t hear them. The last time I did this there were – they were everywhere. She talks about infinite worlds but it’s easy to forget just how overwhelming it all is. And I don’t hear any Jennies.”
“So, not our Jenny’s problem,” David said thoughtfully. “Not just something here where we are, but a bigger problem in a lot of worlds.”
“Tricky to handle if Jenny is the one in trouble, too. She’s told me about a few back doors out of the universe, just in case, but it’s not like running out to the supermarket.”
“You can use the kefitzat haderech without her?”, he asked with surprise.
“The Kwisatz Haderach? Like Paul Atreides?”
“Him I don’t know. It’s not important. I’m asking, where would you go outside the universe?”
“I don’t know yet. First, and right now, we go to the kitchen. I wasn’t expecting to be up at this hour.” She tried to get up, groaned, and asked, “Give me a hand?”
David offered his arm and helped her to stand up and walk out into the living room.
Eric was there, sitting hunched over in distress with the robot toaster at his feet. He saw them and his face lit up.
“KIM!”, Eric cried. “You’re okay!”
He leapt up and ran to hug her, sending the toaster skittering for cover. Clinging tightly, he thought to ask, “Wait, are you okay?”
“Hello, Eric,” she said quietly, patting him. “Yes, I’m okay. I was just asleep; I’m going to be fine.”
“I, I couldn’t wake you up and I was really scared.” He sniffled. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“Getting David was the right thing to do. But now I need to get to the kitchen and – oh wow –”
Kim lurched sideways and sat down heavily on the couch instead, holding her head.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she insisted as her friends crowded around her.
“What is it this time?”, David asked.
“I feel them. Thousands of them,” Kim said, at first weakly and then more strongly. “They’re coming back… All of them, they’re all coming back!”
“Who?”, Eric asked, confused.
“Jenny is coming back! All of her are coming back!”
With a loud pop Jenny Everywhere burst into existence in mid air, bounced off the coffee table, and landed with a thud on the floor.
She yelped in surprise even as Eric and David rushed to her side.
“Jenny, Jenny, you’re back!”, Eric cried as he wrapped his arms around the disoriented Shifter.
“Wha’?” She looked around in confusion, still getting her bearings.
“We’ve been worried,” David told her. “Young Eric noticed you hadn’t been around for a few days.”
“Everywhere, they’re everywhere…”, Kim moaned quietly, holding her head.
“Ah, I’d better get this.” David went back to sit next to Kim, offering his hand. She took it.
“They’re all coming back,” she told him. “All of the Jennies, everywhere...”
“Are you, um, okay?”, Eric asked the returned Shifter.
“Um… yeah?” Jenny blinked a few times, looking around.
“Are you still you?” David asked her pointedly, not leaving Kim’s side.
She took a moment to answer, looking around.
“I think so. Yes. This looks right. This looks like my universe. But what’s up with Kim?” She blinked, belatedly taking in Kim’s robe and David’s shredded sweater and a surprising amount of chest hair. “What’s going on with both of you, what did I miss?”
“You disappeared for a while and we got worried,” David explained quickly. “I got into her emergency supplies to let her be a little bit you for a while.”
“What? Oh! You used that...” She looked embarrassed, and a little guilty. “Um, that should wear off pretty soon.”
“It did before,” Kim acknowledged. “I’ll be fine in an hour or two.”
“I was really worried,” Eric told her. “What happened? Where did you go?”
“And did all of you really disappear from every world?”, David asked.
“I don’t think I can explain it a lot more than ‘going away,’ guys.” Jenny gestured vaguely, sat cross-legged in an overstuffed recliner, and tried, “There’s normally supposed to be a Jenny Everywhere in every universe, more or less, but it’s not that simple in practice. If nothing else we keep moving around. So every once in a while, after thousands or millions of years of shifting, the connections between my selves get… confused? Tangled up? Whatever. So we all get pulled out of reality to re-synchronize with ourselves.”
“You turned it off and turned it back on again,” Eric said, a little skeptically.
“Basically, yeah.” Jenny shrugged, grinning. She indicated herself and said, “I don’t think this Jenny ever thought of it before, but there are trillions of me thinking about it now so it’s on my mind. I really didn’t expect to happen so suddenly but a lot of interdimensional stuff has been happening lately. I must have been pulled out of a lot of my lives without any warning.”
She paused, laughed sheepishly, and added, “Sorry to worry you guys. I think a lot of me are having this conversation with our friends right now.”
Kim got up and gave Jenny a hug. “It’s good to know you’re everywhere again.”
One night I got the image of David having to wake up Kim the hard way and one thing led to another… Kim’s excursion into Everywhere was a lot more dramatic in my head than the version that made it into the story. Poor Kim has a trying day in this one; she’s opened someone else’s inner eye, seen the fnords – and it’s Jennies all the way down.
(Anyone want to tackle a psychological study of a Jenny just waking up to who she is? I’d enjoy reading such a thing.)
Most Jenny Everywhere stories happen at no particular time and, often, no particular place. This one is set during one specific event, as chronicled earlier in The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere, as many readers will have spotted while reading.
Believe it or not I had this title in my head as far back as 2008. As I said on the Discord channel after Jenny Everywhere Day 2021, I couldn’t make it work back then. Now my Jenny has a larger supporting cast.
Because I know people are wondering, to absquatulate is 19th century slang for departing, intentionally and with connotations of abruptness; it can also include absconding with something. (Meriam-Webster, Wictionary)
David’s claim of being perfectly normal may seem a little dubious now. Is it normal not to have read Dune? Kim has. What he actually said was “kefitzat haderech,” literally “contraction of the road,” a term for miraculous travel.
