Bat Country (short story)
Bat Country was a very short Jenny Everywhere short story written by Scott Sanford for Jenny Everywhere Day 2023. It featured Jenny encountering the picturesque 20th century counterculture celebrity Hunter S. Thompson, and was prefaced with a quote from the real Thomspon (“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.”). It was narrated in the first person by Jenny.
Contents
Plot
Somewhere in Las Vegas, Jenny Everywhere finds counterculturla icon Hunter S. Thompson lying on the floor of a men's restroom, babbling incoherently. As she tries to rouse him, he speaks gibberish to her — but strangely articulate gibberish, rather than the slurred mumblings of a man too high to speak. Suspecting something, she gets him to show her what he's taken: no ordinary drugs, but mushrooms which Jenny recognises as coming from Yuggoth in another dimension. Picking him off the floor, she resolves to get him to his room, and then get him to tell her exactly where he got the mushrooms once the effects fade.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- This story features a version of Jenny Everywhere confirmed on the table of contents of Scott Sanford's Jenny Everywhere stories to be distinct from the “Parallax” Jenny. As she serves as the first-person present-tense narrator, little is learned about her life and identity, but she seems to have a prior acquaintance with Hunter.
Universes
- This story takes place in an unidentified universe matching real-world history at least up until the late 20th century.
Other
- This Jenny's goggles seem to have an actual function, with her trying to look at the mushrooms through their lenses to try and glean something about them — although she is unable to get useful readings because “these shifted dimensions recently, probably no more than a few weeks ago”.
Behind the scenes
Background
When posting the story, Scott Sanford appended a foreword, reading simply “Happy Jenny Everywhere Day, everyone!”, as well as an afterword:
| Hunter S. Thompson, against all plausibility, was a real person. “One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production.” He inspired Doonesbury's Uncle Duke. |
| —Scott Sanford |
Read online
The story is available on the author's Dreamwidth website.
