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scott_sanfordProfessor Awesome wouldn't leave it at that, would he? Nope! Last week he began to get a clue about his crush; now he gets some more food for thought.
You should read Preludes and Knick-Knacks before this story.
Professor Awesome in
The Doll's Source
by Scott Sanford; 13 October 2023
Eric was a mad scientist with a mission.
Or so he told himself, because being a kid doing dumb stuff because he had a crush on a girl would be embarrassing and a lot less interesting.
She’d said he could call her if he knew how. He darn well meant to figure out how.
It shouldn’t be this hard to find someone, he thought, but none of the obvious people to ask had known where to find her. David Lowe had seen her but didn’t know where to find her. That fat kid Herbie probably did but nobody knew where to find him either. Jenny Everywhere sort of knew everyone but that was in the sense that she knew everyone, in some timeline or another and asking her about “a girl with blue dreadlocks” hadn’t narrowed it down enough for her to help. He’d tried asking a few people at Temple Emanuel where he’d run into her but nobody he’d talked to could help him. He’d tried things online and that had been even less help.
He was beginning to think the person he wanted to find had vanished off the face of the Earth, and not just as a figure of speech. Last week he’d discovered that the girl he wanted to find was a shifter, with the power to step between parallel worlds.
So he needed to try something else, and somewhere very else indeed. Where Eric the normal kid had failed, Professor Awesome the mad scientist would step in.
Between the shift engine Jenny Everywhere had hidden in his apartment building’s basement and the dream spinner he’d had to repair for a different Jenny Everywhere - it was complicated - he’d seen enough of the technology that it was easy to whip up a self-contained dimensional shifting system that would fit in a backpack.
Easy for him, anyway. He was a mad scientist.
So he’d gotten dressed up enough to be presentable, left his lab coat at home to blend in, and taken the Number One bus over to Temple Emanuel. He figured that if nobody was helpful in this universe he could try asking in neighboring worlds. If he could find a lead there, the odds were good she’d be in the same place here.
Shifting into an unknown universe in the middle of a temple without calling ahead would just be asking for trouble and misunderstandings, so he went around to the dead-end street beside the building that they used as a parking lot. There was some space there that seemed to be out of the way and as good a transit spot as he was going to get.
Eric turned on the shift engine, nervously fingered the control box at his belt, and told himself there was no reason to delay any longer. He pushed the button.
Instantly he found himself elsewhere, in a boundless expanse of clouds as far as the eye could see, roiling visibly as if in a storm. He wasn’t standing on anything he could see, but there was no rush of air as he fell; he was just there, wherever he was.
If he’d messed up the settings this could be bad, he thought nervously, as he had expected to see a city street very much like the one he left. But he didn’t panic; anything he’d set he could just as easily reverse and go back to where he started. And his next shift engine should have an automatic Undo button. But he didn’t think he was in any immediate danger.
He wasn’t sure if he was floating in mid-air or not; he wasn’t falling. Imagining it differently he could also see all of this as floating underwater, with things moving in the distance, but he wasn’t drowning, either.
Something was moving below him, a great dark green shape moving through the clouds. For a moment he was afraid he was falling – but no, there was no sense of motion.
Instead something huge was rising up beside him, a vast mass covered in shimmying cilia. Like a whale with tentacles? A building sized bacterium? His mind couldn’t resolve it clearly; he didn’t know what he was looking at.
There was a dark spot on one side, and when it rotated enough for him to see that it was an enormous eye he knew. This was the original of Sophie’s plushie toy. He didn’t know if that was good or bad; too many stuffed animals were of very dangerous creatures.
It stopped turning, watching him with its gargantuan cyclopean eye. His fingers played over the shift engine controls he didn’t dare look at, but nothing happened.
“𝔼ℝ𝕀ℂ 𝕁𝔼ℝ𝕆𝕄𝔼 𝕎ℍ𝕀𝕋𝕋𝔸𝕂𝔼ℝ.” The sound was like a hurricane through wind chimes, but the voice was perfectly understandable. “𝕋ℍ𝕆𝕌 𝔸ℝ𝕋 ℕ𝕆𝕋 𝕋𝕆 𝔹𝔼 𝕆𝕌𝕋𝕊𝕀𝔻𝔼 𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕍𝔼ℝ𝕊𝔼 𝕐𝔼𝕋.”
“Hello?”, he ventured, both terrified and very interested in how this thing knew his name.
“𝕋ℍ𝕆𝕌 𝔸ℝ𝕋 𝕄𝕀𝕃𝕃𝕀𝕆ℕ𝕊 𝕆𝔽 𝕊𝔼ℂ𝕆ℕ𝔻𝕊 𝔼𝔸ℝ𝕃𝕐 𝔽𝕆ℝ 𝕃𝔼𝔸𝕍𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕍𝔼ℝ𝕊𝔼.” It blinked at him with an eye meters across, like an enormous bottomless abyss briefly shutting and opening. “𝕐𝕆𝕌 𝕎𝕀𝕃𝕃 ℝ𝔼𝕋𝕌ℝℕ ℍ𝕆𝕄𝔼. 𝔸ℕ𝔻 𝕋𝔼𝕃𝕃 𝕊𝕆ℙℍ𝕀𝔼 𝕋ℍ𝔸𝕋 𝕋𝕀ℕ𝕐 𝕊𝔸𝕐𝕊 ℍ𝕀.”
Abruptly he found himself back in the Temple Emanuel parking lot. The shift engine in his backpack bucked and made a terrible noise; he immediately knew it would be beyond repair, but also that he wouldn’t need it.
He didn’t waste time wondering if this was a similar nearby universe; whatever it was, the thing knew where he belonged. He was home.
And it knew him somehow.
And it knew Sophie!
He smiled to himself and did a joyful little dance. He’d be going somewhere in a few million seconds. And he was going to see Sophie again!
And he would remember to tell her that Tiny said hi.
Read other Jenny Everywhere stories
(In case you didn't already do the math, a million seconds is about about 278 hours, or 11.6 days.)
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.
You should read Preludes and Knick-Knacks before this story.
The Doll's Source
by Scott Sanford; 13 October 2023
Eric was a mad scientist with a mission.
Or so he told himself, because being a kid doing dumb stuff because he had a crush on a girl would be embarrassing and a lot less interesting.
She’d said he could call her if he knew how. He darn well meant to figure out how.
It shouldn’t be this hard to find someone, he thought, but none of the obvious people to ask had known where to find her. David Lowe had seen her but didn’t know where to find her. That fat kid Herbie probably did but nobody knew where to find him either. Jenny Everywhere sort of knew everyone but that was in the sense that she knew everyone, in some timeline or another and asking her about “a girl with blue dreadlocks” hadn’t narrowed it down enough for her to help. He’d tried asking a few people at Temple Emanuel where he’d run into her but nobody he’d talked to could help him. He’d tried things online and that had been even less help.
He was beginning to think the person he wanted to find had vanished off the face of the Earth, and not just as a figure of speech. Last week he’d discovered that the girl he wanted to find was a shifter, with the power to step between parallel worlds.
So he needed to try something else, and somewhere very else indeed. Where Eric the normal kid had failed, Professor Awesome the mad scientist would step in.
Between the shift engine Jenny Everywhere had hidden in his apartment building’s basement and the dream spinner he’d had to repair for a different Jenny Everywhere - it was complicated - he’d seen enough of the technology that it was easy to whip up a self-contained dimensional shifting system that would fit in a backpack.
Easy for him, anyway. He was a mad scientist.
So he’d gotten dressed up enough to be presentable, left his lab coat at home to blend in, and taken the Number One bus over to Temple Emanuel. He figured that if nobody was helpful in this universe he could try asking in neighboring worlds. If he could find a lead there, the odds were good she’d be in the same place here.
Shifting into an unknown universe in the middle of a temple without calling ahead would just be asking for trouble and misunderstandings, so he went around to the dead-end street beside the building that they used as a parking lot. There was some space there that seemed to be out of the way and as good a transit spot as he was going to get.
Eric turned on the shift engine, nervously fingered the control box at his belt, and told himself there was no reason to delay any longer. He pushed the button.
Instantly he found himself elsewhere, in a boundless expanse of clouds as far as the eye could see, roiling visibly as if in a storm. He wasn’t standing on anything he could see, but there was no rush of air as he fell; he was just there, wherever he was.
If he’d messed up the settings this could be bad, he thought nervously, as he had expected to see a city street very much like the one he left. But he didn’t panic; anything he’d set he could just as easily reverse and go back to where he started. And his next shift engine should have an automatic Undo button. But he didn’t think he was in any immediate danger.
He wasn’t sure if he was floating in mid-air or not; he wasn’t falling. Imagining it differently he could also see all of this as floating underwater, with things moving in the distance, but he wasn’t drowning, either.
Something was moving below him, a great dark green shape moving through the clouds. For a moment he was afraid he was falling – but no, there was no sense of motion.
Instead something huge was rising up beside him, a vast mass covered in shimmying cilia. Like a whale with tentacles? A building sized bacterium? His mind couldn’t resolve it clearly; he didn’t know what he was looking at.
There was a dark spot on one side, and when it rotated enough for him to see that it was an enormous eye he knew. This was the original of Sophie’s plushie toy. He didn’t know if that was good or bad; too many stuffed animals were of very dangerous creatures.
It stopped turning, watching him with its gargantuan cyclopean eye. His fingers played over the shift engine controls he didn’t dare look at, but nothing happened.
“𝔼ℝ𝕀ℂ 𝕁𝔼ℝ𝕆𝕄𝔼 𝕎ℍ𝕀𝕋𝕋𝔸𝕂𝔼ℝ.” The sound was like a hurricane through wind chimes, but the voice was perfectly understandable. “𝕋ℍ𝕆𝕌 𝔸ℝ𝕋 ℕ𝕆𝕋 𝕋𝕆 𝔹𝔼 𝕆𝕌𝕋𝕊𝕀𝔻𝔼 𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕍𝔼ℝ𝕊𝔼 𝕐𝔼𝕋.”
“Hello?”, he ventured, both terrified and very interested in how this thing knew his name.
“𝕋ℍ𝕆𝕌 𝔸ℝ𝕋 𝕄𝕀𝕃𝕃𝕀𝕆ℕ𝕊 𝕆𝔽 𝕊𝔼ℂ𝕆ℕ𝔻𝕊 𝔼𝔸ℝ𝕃𝕐 𝔽𝕆ℝ 𝕃𝔼𝔸𝕍𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝕌ℕ𝕀𝕍𝔼ℝ𝕊𝔼.” It blinked at him with an eye meters across, like an enormous bottomless abyss briefly shutting and opening. “𝕐𝕆𝕌 𝕎𝕀𝕃𝕃 ℝ𝔼𝕋𝕌ℝℕ ℍ𝕆𝕄𝔼. 𝔸ℕ𝔻 𝕋𝔼𝕃𝕃 𝕊𝕆ℙℍ𝕀𝔼 𝕋ℍ𝔸𝕋 𝕋𝕀ℕ𝕐 𝕊𝔸𝕐𝕊 ℍ𝕀.”
Abruptly he found himself back in the Temple Emanuel parking lot. The shift engine in his backpack bucked and made a terrible noise; he immediately knew it would be beyond repair, but also that he wouldn’t need it.
He didn’t waste time wondering if this was a similar nearby universe; whatever it was, the thing knew where he belonged. He was home.
And it knew him somehow.
And it knew Sophie!
He smiled to himself and did a joyful little dance. He’d be going somewhere in a few million seconds. And he was going to see Sophie again!
And he would remember to tell her that Tiny said hi.
The Sophiad:
0) How Sophie Met Professor Awesome → 1) Preludes & Knick-Knacks → 2) The Doll’s Source → 3) Treat Counting → 4) Session of Mystics → 5) A Game of Two → omake
0) How Sophie Met Professor Awesome → 1) Preludes & Knick-Knacks → 2) The Doll’s Source → 3) Treat Counting → 4) Session of Mystics → 5) A Game of Two → omake
(In case you didn't already do the math, a million seconds is about about 278 hours, or 11.6 days.)
The character of Sophie Everytime, created by Aristide Twain, is available for use by anyone. All rights reversed.
The character of "Tiny" Thymon was also created by Aristide Twain and is used by kind permission.
