Paying It Forward (novel)
Paying It Forward was a Jenny Everywhere webnovel serialised weekly. The work of by Scott Sanford, its first chapter was released for Jenny Everywhere Day in 2021. Notably, Part 4 incorporated “The Freeing of Genie Everywhere”, previously released by Sanford as a standalone short story.
Contents
Plot
Part 1
Shortly after her defeat of Professor Awesome, Jenny Everywhere leaves her apartment to shift to the Temple of the Oracle Cha Ni. After exchanging a few wise words with the elderly visionary, Cha-Ni guesses that Jenny is here because she wants to help other versions of her whose lives are not as easy as hers. Cha-Ni agrees and gives her a list.
Part 2
Arriving in another universe, Jenny meets up with a Jenny who is a stunt aeroplane pilot flying an Everywhere Explorer biplane — or, rather, who had been flying it until a malfunction downed her in the middle of a deserted steppe. Thanks to Cha Ni's list, the second Jenny brought the pilot Jenny precisely the part she needed to repair her aeroplane. With it back in order, the pilot Jenny offers to fly her counterpart to her next destination.
Part 3
After the other Jenny drops her off in the Everywhere Explorer, Jenny finds herself looking over an African veldt. She is soon joined by Janni, She Who Walks in Every Place, her counterpart in this universe — an Amazon on a quest. She explains that she seeks “wisdom of the tiger, a wheel of numbers, and an owl made of lightning”. Jenny realises that the “wheel of numbers” must be an E6B flight computer, a pilot's tool that includes a circular slide rule - a wheel of numbers that lets the user do math.
As a gift freely given would not be a fitting prize for a quest, the two Jennies agree on a wager (with Janni offering her spear, the very weapon which slew “Jamek Tagilono, the Nameless Lurker in Shadows”, as the counter-prize). They decide on am-wrestling as the nature of the challenge, with Janni easily beating the modern, city-dwelling Jenny. The latter then leaves, wishing Janni good luck on her two other challenges (with the two of them agreeing that it would not do for all three of Janni's adventures on this quest to involve the help of an echo of herself, though for a single one of the three it is a welcome addition to the story).
Part 4
Dressed in a black niqab, Jenny, in yet another universe, infiltrates a museum where a number of ancient bottles are kept. One has a sign in Arabic noting that it is said to somehow contain “a genie in every place” — or, rather, “Genie Everywhere”. Breaking the glass case with a hammer, Jenny frees her djinn counterpart by pulling off the stopper of her bottle; she barely has time to give the slowly-recoalescing cloud of smoke a thumbs' up before making her escape as alarms blare.
Later, in a different universe, Jenny climbs the stone wall of a medieval castle until she reaches an arrow slit through which she is able to converse with “Genevieve, Princess of Everywhere”, who is apparently under imminent threat from a Baron. Jenny hands Genevieve a loaded gun through the arrow slit before sneaking off again.
Part 5
Jenny next ends up in a more mundane universe in a very familiar-feeling seaside town, just in time to hear the first cries of a fire having broken out. Trying to make her way through the crowd, she attempts to pass the fire extinguisher Cha Ni told her to bring onto the right person without being seen by people familiar with the local Jenny, so as not to “make things awkward” for her other self. She is less than successful at this, however, with a tall one directly noticing her through the commotion and a bald man (who already seemed to find something odd about her) directly seeing her shift away as she leaves, to her abashment.
Part 6
Jenny joins a number of her other incarnations in another universe to spook a sandy-haired man who apparently did a great, if unspecified, wrong to some other Jenny. The story's main Jenny plays her small part as, while walking down the street, the man finds that everyone around him — from the biker to even the shih tzu dog — is a version of Jenny. The “helpful” Jenny and “shifh tzu” Jenny soon climb onto the “biker” Jenny's motorcycle and they give chase to their quarry all the way to Elysium Park, where he comes across the local Jenny Everywhere, much to his surprise. Realising everyone in the park is also Jenny, he is appropriately cowed as the local Jenny chews him out. With their work done, the biker Jenny tells the “helpful” Jenny that there's going to be an afterparty and invites her along.
Part 7
Jenny indeed joins the afterparty. After listening to other Jennies' guesses as to what precisely the sandy-haired man had done, she tries to get close to Jerry, but finds many other Jennies vying for his attention, with the shih tzu eventually winning out (by virtue of being a cute dog). She has a quiet, ponderous moment wondering how other people would see this gathering of versions of herselves, before deciding that, actually, if they don't see this peaceful gathering of (outwardly) highly different people as a good thing, it's their loss.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- The story's main Jenny is the version previously seen in Parallax and Camera Shy.
- It is suggested that the oracle Cha Ni is also a version of the Shifter. She described as “about [Jenny's] height, with long silver hair”, wearing “a layered white robe and, of course, a long stole and a blindfold over her eyes”.
- One of the other Jennies she meets is a stunt pilot dressed in the classic 1920s aviatrix outfit, who flies an Everywhere Explorer.
- One universe's version of the Shifter is known as Janni, She Who Walks In Every Place. She is described as “a dark amazon”, taller and fitter than the story's main Jenny. She wears light clothing including “a headband with two round amulets”. Her shifting powers are somewhat unique; she travels around huge distances along a beam of glowing, rainbow light which, once she has reached her destination, shrinks down, allowing her to drape it over her shoulders — thus making it her version of the scarf.
- In another universe, Jenny is a genie.
- In another universe, Jenny is a medieval princess called Genevieve who styles herself the “Princess of Everywhere”. She occasionally has “prophetic dreams”, implicitly nuggets of information or messages from her other selves, but does not seem fully aware of her true nature.
- One universe's Jenny wears “a jacket with a furrier collar than [the story's main Jenny would] choose”. She is friends with a “butch chick” and a very tall man. (The implication is that this is the Jenny from COMIC: Name's Not Down and Damn Fine Hostile Takeover.)
- One universe's Jenny lives in New Guernsey and is the one to call down retribution on the sandy-haired man.
- Present at the “scaring the sandy-haired man” free-for-all and at the afterparty are the “biker” Jenny, a shih tzu Jenny who wears a short pink scarf, the “ninja” Jenny, the “barbarian” Jenny, a “priest” Jenny, a Jenny wearing “a silver jumpsuit with a blinking LED scarf”, and a handsome male incarnation called Jerry.
Universes
- The story's main Jenny lives in one universe. She visits another one which is home to the Temple of the Oracle, and the universes of the various Jennies mentioned in the previous section of this article.
Other
- Jenny once saved “her world's computer inter-network” in something to which she refers as “the Eye of Tripoli thing” and got banned from Shangri-La for “putting the ram in the Rama Llama’s ding-dong”. She insists that she only had good intentions.
Continuity
- This Jenny lives in apartment 8 with the number on the door sideways, calling back to the door in COMIC: Infinity Apartment.
- A Jenny with silver hair and a blindfold, thus fitting the description of Cha Ni, previously appeared in PROSE: Second Date as one of the patrons of “the Restaurant”, as did the “biker Jenny”.
- The “ninja” Jenny also appeared in PROSE: Second Date, after having first been mentioned, alongside the “barbarian” Jenny (who also appears in Paying It Forward), in COMIC: Beauty as a Beast.
- Cha Ni reminds Jenny of how she “fought [her] mirror self to her death”, referring this Jenny's first encounter with a Jenny Nowhere, in PROSE: Parallax, as well as of her saving the Internet from the Eye of Tripoli, something mentioned as a recent achievement of Jenny's in PROSE: Camera Shy)
- One of the items sought after by Janni is “an owl made of lightning”, an allusion to Lightning Made of Owls, a webcomic with which Jenny Everywhere previously crossed over in COMIC: Jenny Everywhere in Lightning Made of Owls.
- One of the universes visited by Jenny appears to be the world of COMIC: Name's Not Down and Damn Fine Hostile Takeover. However, due to licensing issues, no proper names are used to identify the seaside town or the two friends of Jenny's seen (whose depictions match Bradley and Clea). Earlier in 2021, Lupan Evezan's The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere had similarly given a “lawyer-friendly” cameo to Right-On By The Sea.
- One of the refreshments at the party in the last chapter were Stewardess® Fruit Pies, which had previously been seen in PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Lord of Hell.
- Davar Smith is mentioned, in reference to COMIC: Say the Word.
- Genevieve, Princess of Everywhere later reappeared in PROSE: Pit Stop.
- PROSE: Morning After took place directly after the events of this story. It also contained a few direct nods to it beyond the general links between the two premises, including Jenny reminding Eric of the trouble he got in with the de-pants-icator, and giving more detail on her adventure in Shangri-La.
Behind the scenes
Read online
The story is available on the author's website. After he finished serialising it, Sanford also posted an Author's Commentary.
