Jenny Everywhere: As Foretold by Prophecy
Aug. 13th, 2024 01:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scott_sanfordNotice for Jenny Everywhere Day readers: This story is not a stand-alone one shot. These events follow other stories. If that doesn’t bother you, just skip down to the title; you should be able to follow along from context.
This Jenny and her friend Kim first appeared in the story Parallax.
Sophie Everytime first appeared in Family Business and met Eric in an arc called the Sophiad.
An epilogue was added for Valentine's Day 2025 as a thematically appropriate interlude; see also the Relationship Questions asked that day.
Jenny Everywhere meets Sophie Everytime,
As Foretold by Prophecy
by Scott Sanford; 13 August 2024
It was past two in the morning when Jenny Everywhere returned home. Some people would have been surprised to find anyone else awake at that hour – but Jenny knew her roommate much too well for that.
“Welcome home, Jenny,” Kim said. “Did you have a good night out?”
“Yes, and productive!”, Jenny enthused as she stowed away her coat in the closet. “I got to hear the Crash Blossoms do songs off of their Garden Path album, then I ran over to the Swan Dive and caught the last half of MILFshake’s gig. It was great.”
“It sounds like it! But I’m glad you’re back for another reason, too.” Kim shifted nervously and told her, “I think there’s a situation going on that you should know about.”
“Ooh,” Jenny said, suddenly attentive and refocused on Kim. “How serious is it? Like, on a scale from alien invasion to Professor Awesome discovering girls?”
Kim blinked and did not answer for a moment.
“I did not see that coming. Did you already know? Also, which end of that scale is supposed to be the bad one?”
“It doesn’t matter. But wait, it’s really aliens?”
“No, no, girls. One girl. I think Eric has found himself a young lady.”
“You mean, Eric? And a girl his age? A girl and Eric?” Jenny sat down heavily and said, “I don’t think I’m ready for that. Is he ready for that? I don’t think I am.”
“We might have to be. I’ve spotted him a few times out on the street with a blue haired girl about his age and I don’t think she lives around here.”
“He was asking me about a blue haired girl a while back,” Jenny recalled. “I guess he found her.”
“So it would seem, yes. You haven’t seen her yet?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Jenny shook her head.
“I’m sure you would have noticed her if you’d seen her with Eric. And I don’t remember seeing her around without Eric, which makes me think she’s coming to see him.”
“We should figure out some way to talk to him and find out what he’s willing to tell us. Maybe we could invite him over for a movie night…”
“That could work. He’s a teenage boy, we could offer to show him some explosion movies.”
“Oh, yeah, action movies, that’s a good idea; I’ve got movies from other dimensions he hasn’t seen yet. I’ve got two Octobriana movies on DVD, he’d like those, either the Barbara Mattel one or the Pamela Anderson one. But maybe not those, they both have a lot of nudity. Maybe a monster movie? Do you think he’d like Godzilla versus Mecha-Jesus?”
“I have so many reservations about that one.” Kim rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, the engineering on Mecha-Jesus is pretty dodgy.”
“That wasn’t one of them, but that too. He’s a mad scientist, he’d care about that.”
“I don’t think he’d appreciate anything that could be thought childish, otherwise I’d invite him over to watch It’s Walpurgisnacht, Charlie Braun. I like it, but Eric might think he has to be too mature.”
Kim might have made a movie suggestion of her own, but then the landline phone rang and she reached over to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Kim!”, said a perky voice on the other end. “I don’t like to jump ahead but would you write down the time right now? I’ll explain the whole thing, I promise, but right now timing is kind of delicate.”
“Write down the time?”, she repeated.
“Yeah, just write down the time on something you can give me later. It’s going to be important.”
Jenny, having heard Kim’s half of this, twisted in her chair to check the time.
“Yes, I can write down the current time,” Kim said, catching Jenny’s eye.
Jenny shrugged and rolled out of her chair, hurrying into the kitchen. Very quickly she came back with a piece of note paper with the current time written on it and handed it to Kim.
“Okay, I’ve got the time,” Kim told the caller. “Now what?”
“Oh, thank you! Now we’ve closed the causality loop and I’ll know when I need to call you.” The caller sounded relieved. “It’s all a lot easier now. You’ve fixed the time this happens, so it can happen when it should.”
“I’m sorry, who are you?”
“I’m the one you’re going to meet,” the caller told her. “Now that it’s finally now I can say hello. Hold on a second.”
The caller hung up.
“What the hell was that about?”, Kim wondered, the phone still in her hand.
“Whoa.” Jenny turned to look at the apartment door, suddenly attentive, even as Kim even moved to hang up the phone. “Someone just shifted in, really close. They might be one of me, it felt really familiar.”
“They’re coming up the stairs,” Kim said, rising to her feet. “I can hear them.”
That someone knocked at the door surprised neither of them; Kim was first to the door. She opened it and discovered a familiar looking blue haired teenage girl outside.
“Hi, Kim! It’s so great to meet you for the first time!” Their visitor grinned. Up close she had bright blue eyes that didn’t quite match the color of her hair and which stood out against her dark skin. She was definitely the girl Kim had seen at a distance with Eric. “I’m Sophie, I know you don’t know that yet, but it’s all going to work out in the end.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Sophie – but what’s this all about?”, Kim asked. “And how did you know to call us?”
“We’re making our own history,” Sophie told her. “I’m going to get the note from you and that will tell me when I called you and when we met.”
“But we didn’t write down anything until after you called,” Jenny objected.
“Uh, yeah.” Sophie grinned and shrugged. She told Jenny, “You shift between worlds. Me, I can shift between times. It’s really handy but it can make things complicated too.”
“You’re a time traveler?”, Kim asked, torn between rational skepticism and years of living with Jenny Everywhere’s absurdities.
“Oh, yeah. Right now, too; I normally live a few years in your future, but there’s stuff going on now and, uh, I’m going to be visiting once in a while.” She smiled shyly and added, “Don’t ask me anything about this world’s future, okay?”
“That might be hard,” Kim observed, half to herself.
“Yeah, fair enough. But untrained people can mess up things if they get careless with time travel and I don’t know if there’s anyone inside this universe even watching for that.” Sophie’s eyes sparkled briefly, as if reflecting an unseen light.
“Paradoxes and such?”
“Stuff like that, yeah, and I really don’t want to break the universe. If I did my dad would make me fix it. Speaking of paradoxes, you do have the time I’m supposed to call you, right?”
“Yes, right here.”
Kim showed her the note Jenny had just written and Sophie nodded, feeling around in a pocket of her hoodie until she pulled out a similar piece of paper.
“Trade you.” Sophie offered the one she had and they made the swap.
Kim looked at the slightly more worn paper she’d received and recognized Jenny’s scrawled handwriting. “This is… the note I just gave you.”
“Yep!”, Sophie agreed, putting the just written note into her pocket. “Now I’ve got the time I should call you, and later me can tell earlier me.”
“You really do time travel. Cool,” Jenny said, watching the exchange from behind Kim.
“Oh, yeah, it really is. But you’re a Jenny Everywhere, you already know about shifting, and that there are whole universes full of cool stuff.”
“Yeah – but come on in and sit down; now that you’re here and now, I’ve got so many questions and I’m sure Kim does too…”
They did this, settling into comfortable places in the living room.
“So you’re traveling back into the past, you said,” Kim remarked curiously. “But if you can do that, why come here? Eric is a fine young man, but you must have plenty of boys your own age at home–”
Sophie cut her off with a loud laugh.
“No! No, not really.” Sophie said. “There aren’t a whole lot of boys at home, no...”
“You had to come here?,” Jenny asked. “I mean, now?”
“I don’t have to come to here and now. I’m here and now because this is where Eric is living.”
“Oh, you really do like him.” Kim smiled.
“That’s sweet,” Jenny said.
“No, no– Um…” Sophie looked embarrassed and rubbed her cheek; a stray lock of her hair wrapped itself around her fingers. “Look, I can’t be here all the time, okay? I can drop in once in a while, and see him, and try to keep synchronized so we keep meeting when we’re about the same age – but I don’t live in this time, or even this universe."
Jenny nodded sympathetically; she was naturally suited to understanding having friends in other universes.
“Besides, Eric has a life here, with normal human people, and I don’t want to mess that up – and yes I do know he’s living downstairs from a Jenny Everywhere so there’s only so much ‘normal’ around here anyway. But I’d like to just be around now and then, you know?” Sophie brushed her hair back into place, where it stayed only a moment before wandering loose again.
“I think I hear what you’re saying,” Kim said diplomatically.
“But now that I think of it… Keep an eye on him when I’m not here, okay?” Sophie shrugged, her hair gently moving around on its own. She gestured vaguely. “He’s a nice boy, he should have whatever regular teenagers get around here. And if girls start noticing him, regular human girls, make sure they’re nice ones? Who are, um…”
“Worthy,” Kim said sympathetically. “That’s the word you were looking for, isn’t it? You want Eric to have a girl worthy of him.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Jenny said. “You don’t want him with just anyone.”
“Maybe?” Sophie agreed shyly.
“That sounds right. I don’t remember seeing you with him before but you look really familiar. It’s probably echoes from other mes,” Jenny said, looking at her curiously. “Kim was saying that she thought Eric had found a girlfriend.”
“I can’t be– I mean, he, I…” Sophie fidgeted on the couch. “I can’t! I can’t be his steady girlfriend or anything. I just, um...”
“Think he is a nice boy,” Kim repeated back.
“Yes?”
“I think he’s a nice boy too,” she assured the teen. “You could do a lot worse than young Eric.”
“EEEeeee!!!!” Jenny’s sudden squeal was nearly supersonic; the other two looked over to see her grinning in delight. She cried, “Sophie!”
Jenny abruptly leapt up and over to the couch where Sophie sat, flinging her arms around Sophie and squeezing hard. Sophie hugged back.
“What– Oh, you remembered her,” Kim realized.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod… Yes, of course!”, Jenny enthused.
“I knew you would eventually,” Sophie told her happily.
“You’re so big!” Jenny pulled back and marveled at the teenager. “I remember you as a baby!”
“You should, I used to be a baby.”
“You look great as a teenager! And you’re here! Oh, hey, introductions. Sophie, this is Kim Daugherty, my very best friend in this universe. Kim, this is Sophie Everytime, my daughter!”
“Hi, Kim! Again.”
“Your daughter? You have not had time – oh, right.” Kim nodded in understanding.
“Right, yeah, not this me, another me. That me lives in another universe.”
“I can see how that would be confusing,” Kim allowed.
“Plenty of mes have had kids, but I don’t expect them to be showing up here,” Jenny told her, and then gasped, “Oh!”
Jenny stopped, suddenly astonished by something, and stared off into the distance.
“What is it?”, Kim asked.
“Oh, wow…”, Jenny breathed softly. “I… Wow…”
“You remembered some more from the you that’s my mum?”, Sophie guessed.
“I just remembered your father,” Jenny said, distantly. “I, I did not know about your father until a moment ago.”
“Is there something we need to know about her father?” Kim asked.
“Um, no? Not immediately?” Jenny told her unconvincingly. “It’s just, um, complicated?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Sophie agreed.
“It sounds as if her father is important.”
“Oh, yes,” Jenny said, still focused on something in another universe. “Very important. But it’s not anything we need to care about over here.”
“Well, not as important as he used to be. He’s retired,” Sophie said with a smile. “My cousin Tiny took over his old job.”
“That’s still pretty darned important,” Jenny said distractedly.
“I definitely sense a story there,” Kim observed.
“Oh yeah, but it’s not one we need to get into right now,” Jenny said. “And I probably shouldn’t think about him too much...”
“You shouldn’t?”, Sophie asked curiously.
“Everything this me knows about your dad is what she gets from your mom,” Jenny reminded her with a smile. “And you know your mom’s not an unbiased witness.”
“She wouldn’t be, you know?” Sophie shrugged.
“She’s not…” Jenny looked a little embarrassed, visibly blushing. “Your mother is a very, very lucky woman… In ways I shouldn’t talk to her kid about but um...”
“That’s an adorable expression, Jenny,” Kim told her, wearing an amused look of her own.
“Sophie’s father is very talented,” Jenny said softly, blushing. “He is caring and… and gifted.”
“Oh, is he? Good for that you, I’d say.” Kim smiled knowingly.
“Yeah, that me is happily satisfied. But, oh wow. Sophie, I hope your dad isn’t coming over to visit. Your dad is... a lot to deal with.”
“He’d probably attract attention, yeah,” she agreed.
“And, wow, your dad is… is your dad. Wow.” Jenny asked, “Sophie… have you told Eric?”
“Not yet.” She shifted her weight nervously on the couch. Untouched, her hair rippled as if she was underwater.
“I’m kind of working up to it. I’ve already told him my mum is one of you and he took it pretty well. I mean, he was surprised for a moment and then he was all oh yeah, of course, that makes sense. He’s a smart boy.” Sophie smiled. “I’m going to have to tell him but I figured I’d let him get used to the easy part before trying to explain dad’s family.”
Jenny nodded her agreement.
“Being the daughter of another universe’s Jenny Everywhere is the easy part?” Kim said. “Your father must be really something.”
“Oh, he is,” Sophie assured her. “But it doesn’t have to be a big deal here; I don’t think he’s going to visit this universe much.”
Jenny leaned over and hugged Sophie again.
“Look, Sophie, I know you’ve got a whole universe full of stuff going on at home – but you’re welcome any time you want to pop over to visit us here.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Jenny giggled and quipped, “Drop by any time, Everytime.”
Later, after their guest had departed, Kim remarked, “Well. I wasn’t expecting that.”
She stood up and went into the kitchen, and Jenny could hear her moving around.
Kim soon reappeared with a beer and a bottle of wine. She set the beer down in front of Jenny without asking and sat down herself.
As Kim puttered, Jenny ran off at the mouth. “Wow… I didn’t expect anything like that tonight. I’d be surprised enough if Eric were interested in any girls. But Sophie, wow. What am I supposed to think about Eric hanging around with my daughter? They’re both too young for this, aren’t they?”
“Apparently not,” Kim said thoughtfully, smelling her wine. “I don’t know if either of them would say as much but they seem to like each other.”
Jenny giggled. “Yeah. At least Sophie does; we’re still going to have to find out what Eric will tell us. Think we should try the movie night thing?”
“It’s worth a try,” Kim agreed. “I don’t care what we watch but I like the idea of having some reason to bring him around.”
“We have music and movies he can’t get anywhere else in this universe, and he’s not very musical,” Jenny observed.
“I know. Once I mentioned teaching him to play the piano, and he wasn’t interested, but he did go on about inventing a piano playing machine for a while. I think he was a little disappointed to hear that had been done in the 19th century.”
Jenny giggled a little at that.
“But count me in for a movie. You brought home Andy Hardy’s Time Machine the other day and I’ve been wanting an excuse to watch it ever since – not that I expect Eric to know about Andy Hardy movies.”
“Me, too. I’d have to warn him that I’m in it.”
“You are?”, Kim asked.
“Yeah, one of me plays the Princess of Mars. I wanted to see it too; this me wants to see how it holds up on this side of the screen. Now that you mention it, I think that’s the one we should show him, too. It gives us an excuse to talk about time travel, and that leads to talking about Sophie.”
“Clever,” Kim complimented. She let that sit a moment and added, “I think there are things about Sophie you haven’t talked about.”
“Uh, yeah… I’m not sure what I could say that, though.”
“If she’s going to be around, I think I’d like to know.”
“Would you? I mean, once you know...
“She seems like a nice girl, I don’t think it could be that bad.”
“No, no, it’s not bad…” Jenny trailed off uncertainly.
Kim watched her for a few heartbeats. She sipped her wine, considering her options. Then she asked, “What’s her mother like?”
“She’s me,” Jenny said instantly. “Only, a different me, like Princess Genevieve.”
“With the raccoons? I remember her.”
“Yeah.”
Jenny fell silent a while.
Kim sipped her wine again, thinking, and observed, “And you don’t want to talk about her father.”
“Um. No, not really. Time is… a big deal. She gets it from him. And… wow. Seeing my daughter was great. I’m really excited to have Sophie here.” Jenny laughed a little to herself.
She took a deep breath and admitted, “I’m also really not comfortable to have Sophie here.”
“Oh?” Kim looked curious.
“I’m pretty sure she comes from a universe that’s… I don’t know how to say it… louder than ours.” Jenny took a drink of her beer, gesturing vaguely with her other hand, and continued, “I mean, just think about the two of us, and most of the other people in the building, and half the people we know – and despite all of that, we’re still living in a pretty normal universe, you know?”
“You’re overlooking the industrial revolution?”
“For now, yeah; it’s not the machines, it’s the people. A lot of us keep our heads down and don’t make a big deal about some things, because if we don’t, well…”
“I know. I’ve had the what-if debate before,” Kim said. “It’s one of those that comes up occasionally, year after year, among some people.”
“Oh, yeah, I expect you talked this to death before you met me.”
“And then some. Before I met you, before the computers, before the steam engines, before the new world…” She waved off the details.
“Um, yeah.”
“So in Sophie’s world more people have come out of the closet?”, Kim asked.
“Among other things. Her parents… they live in their own little world. I’m pretty sure it’s not that weird for the person on the street, in the world where her mother was born, but that me, um. She’s got her own life full of gods and monsters and robots – and it’s a lot. Sophie’s fine, she’s a great kid, but I don’t think Eric is ready for what could come along with her.”
“Hm, yes. That’s not even the first time I’ve heard someone say that about a prospective pairing.”
“I think it’ll be okay if she just comes here?”, Jenny tried to tell herself. “As long as she doesn’t bring Eric back to her world...”
“I won’t pretend I don’t have concerns,” Kim said. “But in at least one way I’m not as worried as I would be if if some other girl were coming around.”
“No?”
“She is a time traveler. If this were fated to end badly, she could have told her earlier self about it.”
“Oh! That’s a good point.” Jenny nodded, then smiled. She lifted her beer. “Here’s to foreknowledge.”
Note: Since someone will be wondering, yes, this was foretold by prophecy. In The Reviews are In by Lupan Evezan, Sophie told her mother, “You and Kim and Eric from a few worlds over send their best wishes for all this, by the way.” Since Sophie knew these people, they had to meet eventually – it was only a matter of time.
Per the Interdimensional Movie Database: Andy Hardy’s Time Machine (MGM, 1947, 1h48m) starring Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy, Lewis Stone as Judge Hardy, Hepzibah Higgins as Ticklepuss the Cavewoman, and Jennifer Reeve-Whery as Princess Della of Mars.
< See all of Scott Sanford’s Jenny Everywhere stories >
< Back to Jenny Everywhere Day >
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.
This Jenny and her friend Kim first appeared in the story Parallax.
Sophie Everytime first appeared in Family Business and met Eric in an arc called the Sophiad.
An epilogue was added for Valentine's Day 2025 as a thematically appropriate interlude; see also the Relationship Questions asked that day.
As Foretold by Prophecy
by Scott Sanford; 13 August 2024
It was past two in the morning when Jenny Everywhere returned home. Some people would have been surprised to find anyone else awake at that hour – but Jenny knew her roommate much too well for that.
“Welcome home, Jenny,” Kim said. “Did you have a good night out?”
“Yes, and productive!”, Jenny enthused as she stowed away her coat in the closet. “I got to hear the Crash Blossoms do songs off of their Garden Path album, then I ran over to the Swan Dive and caught the last half of MILFshake’s gig. It was great.”
“It sounds like it! But I’m glad you’re back for another reason, too.” Kim shifted nervously and told her, “I think there’s a situation going on that you should know about.”
“Ooh,” Jenny said, suddenly attentive and refocused on Kim. “How serious is it? Like, on a scale from alien invasion to Professor Awesome discovering girls?”
Kim blinked and did not answer for a moment.
“I did not see that coming. Did you already know? Also, which end of that scale is supposed to be the bad one?”
“It doesn’t matter. But wait, it’s really aliens?”
“No, no, girls. One girl. I think Eric has found himself a young lady.”
“You mean, Eric? And a girl his age? A girl and Eric?” Jenny sat down heavily and said, “I don’t think I’m ready for that. Is he ready for that? I don’t think I am.”
“We might have to be. I’ve spotted him a few times out on the street with a blue haired girl about his age and I don’t think she lives around here.”
“He was asking me about a blue haired girl a while back,” Jenny recalled. “I guess he found her.”
“So it would seem, yes. You haven’t seen her yet?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Jenny shook her head.
“I’m sure you would have noticed her if you’d seen her with Eric. And I don’t remember seeing her around without Eric, which makes me think she’s coming to see him.”
“We should figure out some way to talk to him and find out what he’s willing to tell us. Maybe we could invite him over for a movie night…”
“That could work. He’s a teenage boy, we could offer to show him some explosion movies.”
“Oh, yeah, action movies, that’s a good idea; I’ve got movies from other dimensions he hasn’t seen yet. I’ve got two Octobriana movies on DVD, he’d like those, either the Barbara Mattel one or the Pamela Anderson one. But maybe not those, they both have a lot of nudity. Maybe a monster movie? Do you think he’d like Godzilla versus Mecha-Jesus?”
“I have so many reservations about that one.” Kim rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, the engineering on Mecha-Jesus is pretty dodgy.”
“That wasn’t one of them, but that too. He’s a mad scientist, he’d care about that.”
“I don’t think he’d appreciate anything that could be thought childish, otherwise I’d invite him over to watch It’s Walpurgisnacht, Charlie Braun. I like it, but Eric might think he has to be too mature.”
Kim might have made a movie suggestion of her own, but then the landline phone rang and she reached over to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Kim!”, said a perky voice on the other end. “I don’t like to jump ahead but would you write down the time right now? I’ll explain the whole thing, I promise, but right now timing is kind of delicate.”
“Write down the time?”, she repeated.
“Yeah, just write down the time on something you can give me later. It’s going to be important.”
Jenny, having heard Kim’s half of this, twisted in her chair to check the time.
“Yes, I can write down the current time,” Kim said, catching Jenny’s eye.
Jenny shrugged and rolled out of her chair, hurrying into the kitchen. Very quickly she came back with a piece of note paper with the current time written on it and handed it to Kim.
“Okay, I’ve got the time,” Kim told the caller. “Now what?”
“Oh, thank you! Now we’ve closed the causality loop and I’ll know when I need to call you.” The caller sounded relieved. “It’s all a lot easier now. You’ve fixed the time this happens, so it can happen when it should.”
“I’m sorry, who are you?”
“I’m the one you’re going to meet,” the caller told her. “Now that it’s finally now I can say hello. Hold on a second.”
The caller hung up.
“What the hell was that about?”, Kim wondered, the phone still in her hand.
“Whoa.” Jenny turned to look at the apartment door, suddenly attentive, even as Kim even moved to hang up the phone. “Someone just shifted in, really close. They might be one of me, it felt really familiar.”
“They’re coming up the stairs,” Kim said, rising to her feet. “I can hear them.”
That someone knocked at the door surprised neither of them; Kim was first to the door. She opened it and discovered a familiar looking blue haired teenage girl outside.
“Hi, Kim! It’s so great to meet you for the first time!” Their visitor grinned. Up close she had bright blue eyes that didn’t quite match the color of her hair and which stood out against her dark skin. She was definitely the girl Kim had seen at a distance with Eric. “I’m Sophie, I know you don’t know that yet, but it’s all going to work out in the end.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Sophie – but what’s this all about?”, Kim asked. “And how did you know to call us?”
“We’re making our own history,” Sophie told her. “I’m going to get the note from you and that will tell me when I called you and when we met.”
“But we didn’t write down anything until after you called,” Jenny objected.
“Uh, yeah.” Sophie grinned and shrugged. She told Jenny, “You shift between worlds. Me, I can shift between times. It’s really handy but it can make things complicated too.”
“You’re a time traveler?”, Kim asked, torn between rational skepticism and years of living with Jenny Everywhere’s absurdities.
“Oh, yeah. Right now, too; I normally live a few years in your future, but there’s stuff going on now and, uh, I’m going to be visiting once in a while.” She smiled shyly and added, “Don’t ask me anything about this world’s future, okay?”
“That might be hard,” Kim observed, half to herself.
“Yeah, fair enough. But untrained people can mess up things if they get careless with time travel and I don’t know if there’s anyone inside this universe even watching for that.” Sophie’s eyes sparkled briefly, as if reflecting an unseen light.
“Paradoxes and such?”
“Stuff like that, yeah, and I really don’t want to break the universe. If I did my dad would make me fix it. Speaking of paradoxes, you do have the time I’m supposed to call you, right?”
“Yes, right here.”
Kim showed her the note Jenny had just written and Sophie nodded, feeling around in a pocket of her hoodie until she pulled out a similar piece of paper.
“Trade you.” Sophie offered the one she had and they made the swap.
Kim looked at the slightly more worn paper she’d received and recognized Jenny’s scrawled handwriting. “This is… the note I just gave you.”
“Yep!”, Sophie agreed, putting the just written note into her pocket. “Now I’ve got the time I should call you, and later me can tell earlier me.”
“You really do time travel. Cool,” Jenny said, watching the exchange from behind Kim.
“Oh, yeah, it really is. But you’re a Jenny Everywhere, you already know about shifting, and that there are whole universes full of cool stuff.”
“Yeah – but come on in and sit down; now that you’re here and now, I’ve got so many questions and I’m sure Kim does too…”
They did this, settling into comfortable places in the living room.
“So you’re traveling back into the past, you said,” Kim remarked curiously. “But if you can do that, why come here? Eric is a fine young man, but you must have plenty of boys your own age at home–”
Sophie cut her off with a loud laugh.
“No! No, not really.” Sophie said. “There aren’t a whole lot of boys at home, no...”
“You had to come here?,” Jenny asked. “I mean, now?”
“I don’t have to come to here and now. I’m here and now because this is where Eric is living.”
“Oh, you really do like him.” Kim smiled.
“That’s sweet,” Jenny said.
“No, no– Um…” Sophie looked embarrassed and rubbed her cheek; a stray lock of her hair wrapped itself around her fingers. “Look, I can’t be here all the time, okay? I can drop in once in a while, and see him, and try to keep synchronized so we keep meeting when we’re about the same age – but I don’t live in this time, or even this universe."
Jenny nodded sympathetically; she was naturally suited to understanding having friends in other universes.
“Besides, Eric has a life here, with normal human people, and I don’t want to mess that up – and yes I do know he’s living downstairs from a Jenny Everywhere so there’s only so much ‘normal’ around here anyway. But I’d like to just be around now and then, you know?” Sophie brushed her hair back into place, where it stayed only a moment before wandering loose again.
“I think I hear what you’re saying,” Kim said diplomatically.
“But now that I think of it… Keep an eye on him when I’m not here, okay?” Sophie shrugged, her hair gently moving around on its own. She gestured vaguely. “He’s a nice boy, he should have whatever regular teenagers get around here. And if girls start noticing him, regular human girls, make sure they’re nice ones? Who are, um…”
“Worthy,” Kim said sympathetically. “That’s the word you were looking for, isn’t it? You want Eric to have a girl worthy of him.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Jenny said. “You don’t want him with just anyone.”
“Maybe?” Sophie agreed shyly.
“That sounds right. I don’t remember seeing you with him before but you look really familiar. It’s probably echoes from other mes,” Jenny said, looking at her curiously. “Kim was saying that she thought Eric had found a girlfriend.”
“I can’t be– I mean, he, I…” Sophie fidgeted on the couch. “I can’t! I can’t be his steady girlfriend or anything. I just, um...”
“Think he is a nice boy,” Kim repeated back.
“Yes?”
“I think he’s a nice boy too,” she assured the teen. “You could do a lot worse than young Eric.”
“EEEeeee!!!!” Jenny’s sudden squeal was nearly supersonic; the other two looked over to see her grinning in delight. She cried, “Sophie!”
Jenny abruptly leapt up and over to the couch where Sophie sat, flinging her arms around Sophie and squeezing hard. Sophie hugged back.
“What– Oh, you remembered her,” Kim realized.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod… Yes, of course!”, Jenny enthused.
“I knew you would eventually,” Sophie told her happily.
“You’re so big!” Jenny pulled back and marveled at the teenager. “I remember you as a baby!”
“You should, I used to be a baby.”
“You look great as a teenager! And you’re here! Oh, hey, introductions. Sophie, this is Kim Daugherty, my very best friend in this universe. Kim, this is Sophie Everytime, my daughter!”
“Hi, Kim! Again.”
“Your daughter? You have not had time – oh, right.” Kim nodded in understanding.
“Right, yeah, not this me, another me. That me lives in another universe.”
“I can see how that would be confusing,” Kim allowed.
“Plenty of mes have had kids, but I don’t expect them to be showing up here,” Jenny told her, and then gasped, “Oh!”
Jenny stopped, suddenly astonished by something, and stared off into the distance.
“What is it?”, Kim asked.
“Oh, wow…”, Jenny breathed softly. “I… Wow…”
“You remembered some more from the you that’s my mum?”, Sophie guessed.
“I just remembered your father,” Jenny said, distantly. “I, I did not know about your father until a moment ago.”
“Is there something we need to know about her father?” Kim asked.
“Um, no? Not immediately?” Jenny told her unconvincingly. “It’s just, um, complicated?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Sophie agreed.
“It sounds as if her father is important.”
“Oh, yes,” Jenny said, still focused on something in another universe. “Very important. But it’s not anything we need to care about over here.”
“Well, not as important as he used to be. He’s retired,” Sophie said with a smile. “My cousin Tiny took over his old job.”
“That’s still pretty darned important,” Jenny said distractedly.
“I definitely sense a story there,” Kim observed.
“Oh yeah, but it’s not one we need to get into right now,” Jenny said. “And I probably shouldn’t think about him too much...”
“You shouldn’t?”, Sophie asked curiously.
“Everything this me knows about your dad is what she gets from your mom,” Jenny reminded her with a smile. “And you know your mom’s not an unbiased witness.”
“She wouldn’t be, you know?” Sophie shrugged.
“She’s not…” Jenny looked a little embarrassed, visibly blushing. “Your mother is a very, very lucky woman… In ways I shouldn’t talk to her kid about but um...”
“That’s an adorable expression, Jenny,” Kim told her, wearing an amused look of her own.
“Sophie’s father is very talented,” Jenny said softly, blushing. “He is caring and… and gifted.”
“Oh, is he? Good for that you, I’d say.” Kim smiled knowingly.
“Yeah, that me is happily satisfied. But, oh wow. Sophie, I hope your dad isn’t coming over to visit. Your dad is... a lot to deal with.”
“He’d probably attract attention, yeah,” she agreed.
“And, wow, your dad is… is your dad. Wow.” Jenny asked, “Sophie… have you told Eric?”
“Not yet.” She shifted her weight nervously on the couch. Untouched, her hair rippled as if she was underwater.
“I’m kind of working up to it. I’ve already told him my mum is one of you and he took it pretty well. I mean, he was surprised for a moment and then he was all oh yeah, of course, that makes sense. He’s a smart boy.” Sophie smiled. “I’m going to have to tell him but I figured I’d let him get used to the easy part before trying to explain dad’s family.”
Jenny nodded her agreement.
“Being the daughter of another universe’s Jenny Everywhere is the easy part?” Kim said. “Your father must be really something.”
“Oh, he is,” Sophie assured her. “But it doesn’t have to be a big deal here; I don’t think he’s going to visit this universe much.”
Jenny leaned over and hugged Sophie again.
“Look, Sophie, I know you’ve got a whole universe full of stuff going on at home – but you’re welcome any time you want to pop over to visit us here.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Jenny giggled and quipped, “Drop by any time, Everytime.”
Epilogue
Later, after their guest had departed, Kim remarked, “Well. I wasn’t expecting that.”
She stood up and went into the kitchen, and Jenny could hear her moving around.
Kim soon reappeared with a beer and a bottle of wine. She set the beer down in front of Jenny without asking and sat down herself.
As Kim puttered, Jenny ran off at the mouth. “Wow… I didn’t expect anything like that tonight. I’d be surprised enough if Eric were interested in any girls. But Sophie, wow. What am I supposed to think about Eric hanging around with my daughter? They’re both too young for this, aren’t they?”
“Apparently not,” Kim said thoughtfully, smelling her wine. “I don’t know if either of them would say as much but they seem to like each other.”
Jenny giggled. “Yeah. At least Sophie does; we’re still going to have to find out what Eric will tell us. Think we should try the movie night thing?”
“It’s worth a try,” Kim agreed. “I don’t care what we watch but I like the idea of having some reason to bring him around.”
“We have music and movies he can’t get anywhere else in this universe, and he’s not very musical,” Jenny observed.
“I know. Once I mentioned teaching him to play the piano, and he wasn’t interested, but he did go on about inventing a piano playing machine for a while. I think he was a little disappointed to hear that had been done in the 19th century.”
Jenny giggled a little at that.
“But count me in for a movie. You brought home Andy Hardy’s Time Machine the other day and I’ve been wanting an excuse to watch it ever since – not that I expect Eric to know about Andy Hardy movies.”
“Me, too. I’d have to warn him that I’m in it.”
“You are?”, Kim asked.
“Yeah, one of me plays the Princess of Mars. I wanted to see it too; this me wants to see how it holds up on this side of the screen. Now that you mention it, I think that’s the one we should show him, too. It gives us an excuse to talk about time travel, and that leads to talking about Sophie.”
“Clever,” Kim complimented. She let that sit a moment and added, “I think there are things about Sophie you haven’t talked about.”
“Uh, yeah… I’m not sure what I could say that, though.”
“If she’s going to be around, I think I’d like to know.”
“Would you? I mean, once you know...
“She seems like a nice girl, I don’t think it could be that bad.”
“No, no, it’s not bad…” Jenny trailed off uncertainly.
Kim watched her for a few heartbeats. She sipped her wine, considering her options. Then she asked, “What’s her mother like?”
“She’s me,” Jenny said instantly. “Only, a different me, like Princess Genevieve.”
“With the raccoons? I remember her.”
“Yeah.”
Jenny fell silent a while.
Kim sipped her wine again, thinking, and observed, “And you don’t want to talk about her father.”
“Um. No, not really. Time is… a big deal. She gets it from him. And… wow. Seeing my daughter was great. I’m really excited to have Sophie here.” Jenny laughed a little to herself.
She took a deep breath and admitted, “I’m also really not comfortable to have Sophie here.”
“Oh?” Kim looked curious.
“I’m pretty sure she comes from a universe that’s… I don’t know how to say it… louder than ours.” Jenny took a drink of her beer, gesturing vaguely with her other hand, and continued, “I mean, just think about the two of us, and most of the other people in the building, and half the people we know – and despite all of that, we’re still living in a pretty normal universe, you know?”
“You’re overlooking the industrial revolution?”
“For now, yeah; it’s not the machines, it’s the people. A lot of us keep our heads down and don’t make a big deal about some things, because if we don’t, well…”
“I know. I’ve had the what-if debate before,” Kim said. “It’s one of those that comes up occasionally, year after year, among some people.”
“Oh, yeah, I expect you talked this to death before you met me.”
“And then some. Before I met you, before the computers, before the steam engines, before the new world…” She waved off the details.
“Um, yeah.”
“So in Sophie’s world more people have come out of the closet?”, Kim asked.
“Among other things. Her parents… they live in their own little world. I’m pretty sure it’s not that weird for the person on the street, in the world where her mother was born, but that me, um. She’s got her own life full of gods and monsters and robots – and it’s a lot. Sophie’s fine, she’s a great kid, but I don’t think Eric is ready for what could come along with her.”
“Hm, yes. That’s not even the first time I’ve heard someone say that about a prospective pairing.”
“I think it’ll be okay if she just comes here?”, Jenny tried to tell herself. “As long as she doesn’t bring Eric back to her world...”
“I won’t pretend I don’t have concerns,” Kim said. “But in at least one way I’m not as worried as I would be if if some other girl were coming around.”
“No?”
“She is a time traveler. If this were fated to end badly, she could have told her earlier self about it.”
“Oh! That’s a good point.” Jenny nodded, then smiled. She lifted her beer. “Here’s to foreknowledge.”
Note: Since someone will be wondering, yes, this was foretold by prophecy. In The Reviews are In by Lupan Evezan, Sophie told her mother, “You and Kim and Eric from a few worlds over send their best wishes for all this, by the way.” Since Sophie knew these people, they had to meet eventually – it was only a matter of time.
Per the Interdimensional Movie Database: Andy Hardy’s Time Machine (MGM, 1947, 1h48m) starring Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy, Lewis Stone as Judge Hardy, Hepzibah Higgins as Ticklepuss the Cavewoman, and Jennifer Reeve-Whery as Princess Della of Mars.
The character of Sophie Everytime, created by Aristide Twain, is available for use by anyone. All rights reversed.
