Jenny Everywhere: Just Dropping In
Dec. 22nd, 2023 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scott_sanfordIt’s way past time I dropped some more Jenny Everywhere fiction.
For anyone expecting a real story, nope, this is just a short piece of light fluff.
A certain someone has a very sparse Advent calendar this year, so here, have something to read written by someone else. :-)
Jenny Everywhere is
Just Dropping In
by Scott Sanford; December 2023
Let me tell you, being Jenny Everywhere is amazing! I love being me, almost all of me are great people, and I wouldn’t want to be anyone else.
But here I am hanging off the side of a zeppelin, on a freezing cold night high above the ocean, and I have to wonder if this is really the best use of my time.
I could be at a club listening to live music by promising new bands, or at least energetic hopeful ones.
I could be at home, maybe watching a movie or eating take-out.
I could be somewhere warm.
I am not anywhere warm and am very aware of that. At some point in all this I’ve forgotten if we’re defending Sweden against Denmark or Denmark against Sweden, and I really don’t care at the moment, but someone has to restart the starboard engine so here I am, outside, trying not to think about the cold.
I get to the sponson, the little wing between the engine and the body of the zeppelin, and it’s nice to have something solid to stand on.
I unclip the demon broom, tap on the outside of the engine pod to make sure they know I’m here, and open up the main hatch. Inside the little black Hulduefni demons look up at me.
“C’mon, guys, get going again so I can get back inside, okay?”, I ask. One of them stands on its hind legs and looks up at me curiously; it’s weirdly cute, like a furry cat with glowing red eyes, but I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be petting anything called a Hulduefni demon.
They’re not moving so I reach in with the broom handle and poke a few of them in their butts.
That reminds them and they all start running in their little wheels. (There has got to be a more practical way to power a zeppelin.) At the back of the engine pod the propeller starts turning again.
The engine noise isn’t so loud that I don’t hear another whirring propeller nearby; I turn in time to see a now familiar figure land on the wing, which jerks under my feet with the impact.
“You again, von Mummen!?”, I snap. Him again!
The demons see him and hiss angrily; our own propeller spins faster as they get worked up. I slam shut the engine cover. One problem at a time.
“I didn’t expect to find you alone, Everywhere, but I’ll take my luck where I find it!” He draws his sword even as his heli-cape folds away, and I realize this isn’t the encounter I wanted.
“Why the hell are you even here, Baron?”, I demand even as I wish I had something better than a broom at hand. He’s between me and the rest of the zeppelin, too. “How did you even find the Blå Løve in the middle of the ocean?”
He swings but he’s not skilled with a sword; I take his blade with my broom and sweep it out of the way, even managing to whack him on the head right next to his silly mustache.
“Perkele!”, he swears, and smacks me with his free hand.
I go stumbling back against the engine pod. Crap, he can’t fence but he sure can hit. He’s not just big, he’s strong too.
Fighting alone out here is stupid, I tell myself; it’s time to get past him and inside.
I lunge with the broom, he parries, and gets me a good punch right in the stomach.
Ouch!
I’m only out for a moment but when I catch my breath again I see the bottom of the zeppelin above me, already receding fast.
Oh, crap.
I realize that I’m already off the Blå Løve and there’s nothing between me and the ocean below. I’m not getting back up there.
For a few moments I’m really afraid – I’m Jenny Everywhere, I’ve died before, I die every day, but this one hasn’t died before and I really like her.
After a few heartbeats I pull myself together; this isn’t the first time one of me has fallen to my death, I just need to keep my head while I still have it. I figure the only way out is to shift out, so I just need to find someplace safe to land; concentrate on that and go.
I think desperately about landing on something soft, something very soft, and shift –
– and I am instantly in bright sunlight, falling into a soft, warm, welcoming new world. I’m alive! And even warm, too!
I laugh in relief for a moment, happy to just lay where I’ve fallen, in what feels like the biggest softest mattress in the world.
From somewhere nearby I hear someone ask, “Is that a Jenny Everywhere?”
“Yes!”, I call out. If people here know me I should be fine, wherever here is. My head is still reeling from the fall; I don’t know where I am yet.
I sit up to figure out where here is and meet everyone, and I discover I’m in a picturesque cartoon Heaven full of puffy white clouds floating in a bright blue sky.
There’s another me already here, darker and curvier than this one, so I smile and wave at myself and so do I.
The me that was here first is sitting at a little round table with a tea set on it, apparently having a picnic on a cloud. I might be alone, there’s a baby carriage next to the table, and a big doll wearing a trench coat and a battered hat sitting in another chair, but I don’t see anyone other than the two of me.
There’s no sign of how any of it got here and I’m sure it doesn’t matter.
“Oh, hi!”, I call.
“Just dropping in?”, I joke, and I giggle at it.
“Yeah, literally, too... I hope I’m not disturbing you!”
“Not really, this kind of thing happens all the time”, I assure me.
“In my world too,” I admit.
That reminds me I’m sitting in a cloud and I start to get up but for the first time I get a good look at the cloud here.
It looks like a fluffy white cloud but it’s not a cloud at all – not the water vapor that I’ve seen in other universes. Whatever this is, it’s some kind of spacetime distortion, like a fractal expressed in domain boundaries; it’s tangible like baryonic matter but it’s definitely something else.
“Oh, wow…”, I breathe, fascinated. I realize that I could stare at the cloud-stuff for hours, but I’d better not. Besides, the me that lives here probably already has.
“Sorry,” I tell the me at the table, “but your cloud is really amazing.”
“Yeah, I know,” I agree, grinning back.
I stand up on the soft non-substance of the cloud, giggling at myself.
I take a breath, re-orienting myself, and get a feel for this universe. Yes, I can get home from here.
“This is a beautiful world but I should be getting home,” I say.
I’m obviously having a nice picnic there, complete with a big yellow doll that seems to be watching me suspiciously. (There’s also a blue glow that looks like Cherenkov radiation from inside the baby carriage but I’m sure I know what I’m doing.) I shouldn’t hang around and distract myself from my day out.
“Okay. Have a nice trip!”, I tell myself encouragingly.
I wave one last time and tell myself, “I love your clouds!”
Focusing on home I shift –
– and I reappear in my apartment and I breathe a heartfelt sigh of relief.
“I have had an adventure,” I announced, with feeling. “It’s good to be home.”
It feels good to be back in my home universe. And now that there’s just one of me here it’s a lot easier to remember which me is this one.
“You sound like it,” my roommate Kim agrees, poking her head out of the kitchen.
“Oh, yeah. I left in the middle of something in another universe and I should at least try to get back there, but there’s no hurry. Even if I can find that world again I’m going to have to catch up with everyone else at the blimp field… Also, I need to change clothes into something warmer.”
As I head toward my bedroom I feel a weight in my coat and stop.
“Oh, right, I got your surströmming!”, I tell Kim.
I dig the several cans of the stuff I’d left the universe for out of my coat pockets and stack them on the dining table.
Kim makes appreciative noises at me. I guess it’s been a while since she had any.
“Thank you, Jenny. I don’t know why we can’t get it around here.”
“Just, uh, don’t open it in the house, okay?”
While this is not officially a crossover with anything (he claimed unconvincingly), readers might also enjoy the Scandinavia and the World web comic. If nothing else, a SatW reader could sort out which side was which.
2 Jan 2024: Greatly to my surprise, this story has been included in The Book of the Snowstorm, a collection of stories edited by Aristide Twain and available on the big river site. Wow!
Read other Jenny Everywhere 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.
For anyone expecting a real story, nope, this is just a short piece of light fluff.
A certain someone has a very sparse Advent calendar this year, so here, have something to read written by someone else. :-)
Just Dropping In
by Scott Sanford; December 2023
Let me tell you, being Jenny Everywhere is amazing! I love being me, almost all of me are great people, and I wouldn’t want to be anyone else.
But here I am hanging off the side of a zeppelin, on a freezing cold night high above the ocean, and I have to wonder if this is really the best use of my time.
I could be at a club listening to live music by promising new bands, or at least energetic hopeful ones.
I could be at home, maybe watching a movie or eating take-out.
I could be somewhere warm.
I am not anywhere warm and am very aware of that. At some point in all this I’ve forgotten if we’re defending Sweden against Denmark or Denmark against Sweden, and I really don’t care at the moment, but someone has to restart the starboard engine so here I am, outside, trying not to think about the cold.
I get to the sponson, the little wing between the engine and the body of the zeppelin, and it’s nice to have something solid to stand on.
I unclip the demon broom, tap on the outside of the engine pod to make sure they know I’m here, and open up the main hatch. Inside the little black Hulduefni demons look up at me.
“C’mon, guys, get going again so I can get back inside, okay?”, I ask. One of them stands on its hind legs and looks up at me curiously; it’s weirdly cute, like a furry cat with glowing red eyes, but I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be petting anything called a Hulduefni demon.
They’re not moving so I reach in with the broom handle and poke a few of them in their butts.
That reminds them and they all start running in their little wheels. (There has got to be a more practical way to power a zeppelin.) At the back of the engine pod the propeller starts turning again.
The engine noise isn’t so loud that I don’t hear another whirring propeller nearby; I turn in time to see a now familiar figure land on the wing, which jerks under my feet with the impact.
“You again, von Mummen!?”, I snap. Him again!
The demons see him and hiss angrily; our own propeller spins faster as they get worked up. I slam shut the engine cover. One problem at a time.
“I didn’t expect to find you alone, Everywhere, but I’ll take my luck where I find it!” He draws his sword even as his heli-cape folds away, and I realize this isn’t the encounter I wanted.
“Why the hell are you even here, Baron?”, I demand even as I wish I had something better than a broom at hand. He’s between me and the rest of the zeppelin, too. “How did you even find the Blå Løve in the middle of the ocean?”
He swings but he’s not skilled with a sword; I take his blade with my broom and sweep it out of the way, even managing to whack him on the head right next to his silly mustache.
“Perkele!”, he swears, and smacks me with his free hand.
I go stumbling back against the engine pod. Crap, he can’t fence but he sure can hit. He’s not just big, he’s strong too.
Fighting alone out here is stupid, I tell myself; it’s time to get past him and inside.
I lunge with the broom, he parries, and gets me a good punch right in the stomach.
Ouch!
I’m only out for a moment but when I catch my breath again I see the bottom of the zeppelin above me, already receding fast.
Oh, crap.
I realize that I’m already off the Blå Løve and there’s nothing between me and the ocean below. I’m not getting back up there.
For a few moments I’m really afraid – I’m Jenny Everywhere, I’ve died before, I die every day, but this one hasn’t died before and I really like her.
After a few heartbeats I pull myself together; this isn’t the first time one of me has fallen to my death, I just need to keep my head while I still have it. I figure the only way out is to shift out, so I just need to find someplace safe to land; concentrate on that and go.
I think desperately about landing on something soft, something very soft, and shift –
– and I am instantly in bright sunlight, falling into a soft, warm, welcoming new world. I’m alive! And even warm, too!
I laugh in relief for a moment, happy to just lay where I’ve fallen, in what feels like the biggest softest mattress in the world.
From somewhere nearby I hear someone ask, “Is that a Jenny Everywhere?”
“Yes!”, I call out. If people here know me I should be fine, wherever here is. My head is still reeling from the fall; I don’t know where I am yet.
I sit up to figure out where here is and meet everyone, and I discover I’m in a picturesque cartoon Heaven full of puffy white clouds floating in a bright blue sky.
There’s another me already here, darker and curvier than this one, so I smile and wave at myself and so do I.
The me that was here first is sitting at a little round table with a tea set on it, apparently having a picnic on a cloud. I might be alone, there’s a baby carriage next to the table, and a big doll wearing a trench coat and a battered hat sitting in another chair, but I don’t see anyone other than the two of me.
There’s no sign of how any of it got here and I’m sure it doesn’t matter.
“Oh, hi!”, I call.
“Just dropping in?”, I joke, and I giggle at it.
“Yeah, literally, too... I hope I’m not disturbing you!”
“Not really, this kind of thing happens all the time”, I assure me.
“In my world too,” I admit.
That reminds me I’m sitting in a cloud and I start to get up but for the first time I get a good look at the cloud here.
It looks like a fluffy white cloud but it’s not a cloud at all – not the water vapor that I’ve seen in other universes. Whatever this is, it’s some kind of spacetime distortion, like a fractal expressed in domain boundaries; it’s tangible like baryonic matter but it’s definitely something else.
“Oh, wow…”, I breathe, fascinated. I realize that I could stare at the cloud-stuff for hours, but I’d better not. Besides, the me that lives here probably already has.
“Sorry,” I tell the me at the table, “but your cloud is really amazing.”
“Yeah, I know,” I agree, grinning back.
I stand up on the soft non-substance of the cloud, giggling at myself.
I take a breath, re-orienting myself, and get a feel for this universe. Yes, I can get home from here.
“This is a beautiful world but I should be getting home,” I say.
I’m obviously having a nice picnic there, complete with a big yellow doll that seems to be watching me suspiciously. (There’s also a blue glow that looks like Cherenkov radiation from inside the baby carriage but I’m sure I know what I’m doing.) I shouldn’t hang around and distract myself from my day out.
“Okay. Have a nice trip!”, I tell myself encouragingly.
I wave one last time and tell myself, “I love your clouds!”
Focusing on home I shift –
– and I reappear in my apartment and I breathe a heartfelt sigh of relief.
“I have had an adventure,” I announced, with feeling. “It’s good to be home.”
It feels good to be back in my home universe. And now that there’s just one of me here it’s a lot easier to remember which me is this one.
“You sound like it,” my roommate Kim agrees, poking her head out of the kitchen.
“Oh, yeah. I left in the middle of something in another universe and I should at least try to get back there, but there’s no hurry. Even if I can find that world again I’m going to have to catch up with everyone else at the blimp field… Also, I need to change clothes into something warmer.”
As I head toward my bedroom I feel a weight in my coat and stop.
“Oh, right, I got your surströmming!”, I tell Kim.
I dig the several cans of the stuff I’d left the universe for out of my coat pockets and stack them on the dining table.
Kim makes appreciative noises at me. I guess it’s been a while since she had any.
“Thank you, Jenny. I don’t know why we can’t get it around here.”
“Just, uh, don’t open it in the house, okay?”
While this is not officially a crossover with anything (he claimed unconvincingly), readers might also enjoy the Scandinavia and the World web comic. If nothing else, a SatW reader could sort out which side was which.
2 Jan 2024: Greatly to my surprise, this story has been included in The Book of the Snowstorm, a collection of stories edited by Aristide Twain and available on the big river site. Wow!
