Kim (Parallax Universe)

Kim
Character Information
Species	Vampire (?)
Gender	Female
Residence	Unnamed universe
Behind the Scenes
First seen in	PROSE: Parallax
Also seen in	See list
Copyright	Scott Sanford (?)
Index	See category

Kim was Jenny Everywhere's roommate, and one of her closest friends, in one universe. Although she never referred to herself as one, she appeared to be a vampire.

Description

Physical appearance

David Lowe described Kim as “pretty”. (PROSE: Pit Stop) Jenny once indicated that if the two of them visited Barsoom, Kim could pass for a Thern. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Eye of Argon)

Personality

Kim was willful, proactive, and practical — as well as a loyal friend to Jenny, whose life she saved on several occasions; (PROSE: Parallax) she was matter-of-fact, perhaps even blasé, about the strange happenings which resulted from Jenny's multi-dimensional nature and in which she often found herself involved, including encounters with different incarnations of Jenny than the one she was used to. Her practicality could help Jenny focus. (PROSE: Pit Stop)

Despite her evident vampirism, she seemingly refused to refer to herself as one. (PROSE: Parallax)

Kim made comments to Eric implying that she was gay; (PROSE: Misunderstandings) indeed, she took a disparaging view of men, and would make joke at their expense even if they happened to be friends of hers. (PROSE: Parallax)

Powers & abilities

Kim was used to bare-handed fighting. Although she never called herself one, she had abilities consistent with being a vampire, including immunity to ordinary tranquiliser drugs, superhuman physical strength (sufficient to kill a dinosaur bare-handed), and even such powers as the ability to levitate (PROSE: Parallax) and to turn into a swarm of bats. (PROSE: Camera Shy) In trade-off, she had a weakness to sunlight; if exposed to direct, stark sunlight her skin would begin to burn within seconds. (PROSE: Parallax)

She possessed a mysterious ability to get through solid doors and to appear behind people without warnings, which Jenny did not fully understand; she confirmed to Jenny, at any rate, that it was not in any way comparable to Jenny's “dimensional shenanigans”, suggesting it was probably not mere teleportation. (PROSE: Fragment: The Summoning)

Kim had some knowledge of mathematics, feeling confident that he could help Eric learn “how to do exponents on the log scale” of a slide rule. (PROSE: Misunderstandings) She also had enough knowledge to “snicker” at the math-based April Fools' Day joke whereby the 10 on David Lowe's apartment door was replaced by an aleph-null. (PROSE: Morning After)

Biography

Origins

When David informed her that 50-year-old Morrie Greenberg had a romantic interest in her, Kim answered that he was “too young” for her. (PROSE: Pit Stop)

At some point, a “long time ago”, Kim lived together with many other women. She attempted to flirt with many of them, progressively learning that taboo aside, not all women were actually sexually interested in other women, in contrast to what she'd previously assumed. She learned to deal with rejection “gracefully”. (PROSE: Misunderstandings)

Meeting Jenny Nowhere

Kim once went out to a bar alongside Jenny and some of their friends. After Jenny began feeling nauseous, she accompanied Jenny to the bathroom, where they were confronted by Jenny Nowhere, whom this Jenny had never encountered in any form, and who was the one who'd slipped something in Jenny's beer. She revealed herself as originally a version of Jenny Everywhere who had become disconnected from the wider telepathic network. To Everywhere's horror, she viewed it as a liberation which she planned to “share” with her, willing or not.

However, Nowhere had not counted with Kim's special abilities, which meant her tranquiliser drug had no effect on Jenny's friend. Forced to flee through shifting, Nowhere was pursued by Everywhere through several landscapes (including in the air above a forest, in which location Kim's levitation abilities proved lucky). Realising sunlight was Kim's weakness and Kim was Jenny's, Nowhere shifted to the Giza desert at high noon, forcing Everywhere to shift Kim somewhere shady instead of continuing to try to capture Nowhere.

However, Nowhere did not keep the upper hand for long; foolishly choosing to pursue Everywhere in turn to the cool jungle she had chosen as the place to take Kim, she realised too late that it was a prehistoric jungle and was mauled to death by a dinosaur. Kim later examined her body, finding the surgical scar above her left ear which revealed she was not the original Jenny Nowhere. Shaken by these revelations, Jenny Everywhere and Kim agreed to go back home for another drink — with no music. (PROSE: Parallax)

Helping Ulysses Dumas

The year after they'd foiled the Vampire King together, Jenny and Kim received a call from Ulysses Dumas, a musician they'd saved from the King's dungeon; it transpired that he had ended up turning into a vampire himself following his ordeal, and he was worried about how this would impact his career, given that some types of camera could no longer pick him up. Jenny went to the first meeting alone, but set a second appointment with Dumas where she brought Kim, who suggested he wear full-body make-up as part of his stage persona. (PROSE: Camera Shy)

With Princess Genevieve

When Genevieve, Princess of Everywhere visited Jenny and Kim's apartment, it was Kim who answered the door, as her Jenny was taking a shower at the time. Unimpressed with the medieval, magical “Jenny”, she approached the situation with curt practicality, translating the Princess's talk of “waylaid dream spinners” into the realisation that she had left her interdimensional vehicle unattended in the nearby parking lot. Kim helped Professor Awesome repair the device, and, after Genevieve repaid him with a large gold coin, she offered to help Eric translate that gold into modern money and to take him to the hardware store so that he could spend these “wages” on new equipment and parts. She explained that she was already all set to sell some gold, as she had to make something of a chest of pirate gold Jenny had brought back from a recent adventure. Before they could do so, an Angel appeared with much fracas in the very same parking lot, heralding yet another crazy adventure. (PROSE: Pit Stop)

Advising Professor Awesome

One day, after Eric came home from school, he dropped in on Kim and Jenny, feeling down about a row he'd had with a girl in his class, Judy, which his mother was “being weird” about. Coming to the incorrect conclusion that Eric had taken a romantic interest in Judy and been disappointed, she tried to give him a rambling collection of dating advice, helped by Jenny. Eventually, the misunderstanding became clear, and a somewhat mortified Kim offered to move on to helping Eric with his homework. Eric was mildly reluctant to put in the work for his math homework, not seeing what the point of learning to use a side-rule was when he had four calculator apps on his phone, but he eventually agreed, especially asking Kim to help him understand “how to do exponents on the log scale”. (PROSE: Misunderstandings)

Incidents at home

At some point, Kim greatly enjoyed some Martian bread brought home from another universe by Jenny. A month later, when Jenny ran out of sourdough to make bread, Kim reminded her of this bread, spurring Jenny to attempt to shift back to that version of Mars to get some ingredients from there. However, Jenny ended up in the fantasy world of Ecord instead, and Kim saw her rematerialise a little while later in a skimpy barbarian outfit, holding out a sword. This prompted some casual banter between the two, with them getting on the subject of a shared wish to someday visit Barsoom. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Eye of Argon)

While trying to track down DVDs of Season 3 of an anime show about herself called Bugendai no Jenī no Itarutokoro, Jenny shifted to a nearby universe to attend the Jiujinshan anime con. However, she found that it was “being held up by some industry A.I.s on strike wanting better working conditions”. Somewhere along the way, she picked up a new sidekick in the form of a literal Internet Troll. Bringing him back with her, she hopped back to her home universe and apartment in order to pick up the Robot Toaster, intending to bring him back to the anime con, to have him infiltrate the A.I.s' cybernetic fortress, and then, once they accepted him, to have him act as a “spokes-robot” to permit fair negotiations between the A.I.s and humans. As she arrived, she and the Troll were greeted by a rather confused Kim, who watched as Jenny tapped into the computer skills of some of her close alternates and successfully tinkered with the Robot Toaster to bring it out of “pet” mode and into “cyber-intrusion” mode. (PROSE: I Found Him On The Internet)

The Staan worshippers affair

Jenny once found flyers advertising a night-time ritual to “SUMMUN STAAN”. Despite the incompetence implied by the typo-ridden flyer, Jenny resolved to observe the meeting from afar to ensure they did not stumble into successfully summoning anything truly dangerous. While making her way to the disused comic shop where the cultists had made their lair, Jenny bumped into Kim, who asked to know what she was up to, and ended up helping her break in. All their worries proved to be for naught: although the cultists succeeded in summoning the object of their worship, it was not Satan, as they'd mistakenly assumed, but the harmless Stan. (PROSE: Fragment: The Summoning)

Behind the scenes

The implications in Parallax and Camera Shy point to Kim being some form of vampire, but this is purposefully left ambiguous. On the topic of Kim's potential vampirism, Sanford later commented on the Jenny Everywhere Discord:

And yet she never says the V word. No doubt there's a story there. [But] I think Kim is over-exposed in Jenny's circle of friends and shouldn't be front & center in anything else for a while. A quote did come to me a while back, which she may never say in a story: “I lived a very conventional life once. Then I had an appointment in Samara and realized I could take the scenic route home.” Or if she was feeling more blunt, “a rare condition; symptoms include nocturnal insomnia, changes in appetite, and a propensity to Cotard’s Delusion”.

—Scott Sanford

In 2022, Aristide Twain created a visualisation of Kim, which to date remains her only depiction in visual media. She was depicted with facial features based on 1970s horror actress Ingrid Pitt, best known for portraying lesbian vampire Carmilla in the 1970 Hammer film The Vampire Lovers.

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  Aristide Twain's artwork of Kim.