Family Business (short story)

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Family Business was a novella-length prose story in the The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids series, created by Aristide Twain for Jenny Everywhere Day 2022.

It featured a number of characters from the Jenny Everywhere recurring cast, with Lord Thymon the only major character in the plot to be peculiar to the Cupids series. It also featured the first use of Jenny Over-There outside of her creator's Nine-Two-Five Universe series, the first known use of the unrelated open-source character Pixie Pristine in the Jenny Everywhere mythos, and, most notably, introduced a new character in the form of Sophie Everytime, Jenny Everywhere's daughter.

Contents

Plot

Last night, after a “scenic jaunt” along the shore of the Chronon Sea and dinner for two in the Great Hall of Lord Thymon's house, Thymon's date with Jenny Everywhere ended, “to the surprise of all involved”, with them taking their ongoing romance to the bedroom. It is there that Jenny awakes the following morning, finding that Thymon has already vacated the bed. He soon comes to greet her, however, intent on announcing that he has made breakfast. They get to chatting, until Thymon suddenly realises that he's forgetting that he left the slices of toast on the fire. They are indeed burnt beyond salvation by the time the two make their way back to the kitchen, but they take it in good humour, putting two fresh slices of bread in the toaster and taking advantage of the time to get started on the dishes.

When Thymon returns to the toaster a second time with the intent of toasting up a second helping, however, he finds it gone from the counter, and, in its place, a strange young girl of six or seven. When they try to ask her what her name is, she replies not in words, but in a strange sign-language that Jenny finds herself understanding perfectly somehow, despite never having learned it. In this fashion, the girl informs them that she is neither deaf nor mute, strictly speaking, but “can't talk right now”. When she is convinced to show them what kind of “bad things” happen when she talks aloud, the single word which she utters — “Toaster” — comes out in an eldritch voice like Thymon's, releasing a wave of power which causes a horrible, eldritch parody of a toaster to materialise out of thin air in front of her.

Popping into the Infinite for a moment in order to have an adult-to-adult chat, Jenny and Thymon confirm their common snap-deduction that the girl is somehow their daughter from the future. Both are surprised that this was even biologically possible, but, although Thymon is initially concerned, Jenny assures him that she's happy to take this as it goes, even if she wishes she'd had more time to get used to the idea of having a child in this incarnation before it was sprung on her. Realising that, with this time-loop locked in, they only have to choose the name of their future daughter now in order to know what the name of the seven-year-old girl in their kitchen is, they trade a few ideas and land on the name of “Sophie Everytime”. They also decide to take advantage of the future Sophie's presence to introduce her in person to their respective friends and families.

They return to the physical world a moment after they left, with the girl enthusiastically confirming her identity as Sophie. Hugging her parents now that she can safely let them know who they are to her, she manages to focus her speech enough to call them “Jenny” and “Mum”, and “Daddy” and “Thymon”, aloud with “barely anything shifting on the astral plane”. She remains elusive about the circumstances of her jaunt backwards in time, but agrees to go on the “family outing”, though not before she has breakfast too.

Having agreed to alternate between friends and partners of Jenny's, and relatives of Thymon's, the three head off into the Multiverse. Their first stop is outer space in the 659433585786388480th Universe, where they meet Comet Theta, a sentient but otherwise astronomically-accurate comet. The meeting goes well, though everyone is surprised to see Sophie herself freezing time to allow them to talk to the perpetually-orbiting astral body, instead of Thymon doing it. Next up is Thymon's sibling Squire Psykha, the Embodiment of Thought, who is far less cordial, scolding their brother for having abandoned his duties as an Embodiment to go stay in the Cupid Homeworld, and further criticising his choice to “cavort with the flesh” and produce a hybrid offspring. In a spiteful rejection of any responsibility over or familial tie to the girl, Psykha uses their power as Embodiment of Thought to erase the gender-neutral word for aunt/uncle from the entire Multiverse, leaving Jenny and Thymon to trip confusedly over neologisms such as “pibling”. When Sophie tries to hug Psykha anyway and ends up bursting some of the bubbles making up the entity's physical manifestation, all three entities find themselves violently tossed out of Psykha's domain and back into the Void.

Next up, Sophie herself requests that they go see “Aunt Pixie”, who turns out to be exiled-fae-turned-pop-singer, and occasional girlfriend to Jenny, Pixie Pristine. Although she states that she recently lost her crystal ball, she still seems to have somehow expected Jenny to show up, and agrees to talk even though she is just preparing for a performance. After a pleasant chat in her magical, forest-like dressing room, they stay for the show. Leaving with the rest of the audience (among whom they notice many barely-disguised non-humans, as Pristine apparently greatly attracts that demographic by being a rare “out” magical being in a world where such beings mostly keep to themselves), they notice that Sophie is getting tired and decide to make Lady Spatium their last visit before returning to the house so that Sophie can have a full night's sleep.

As they shift, however, a mysterious force suddenly interferes, snatching them away from the Infinite and to a mysterious inky-black location where they find themselves spinning at high speed, Sophie soon torn away from her parents despite their best efforts to cling onto her, before falling down into an inky-black body of water below.

Jenny comes to some time later, being tended to by Thymon on the gray, sludgy shore of the black sea. Inland is a forest of dead, grey trees. Thymon explains that he has been trying to use his powers to transport themselves away without success, and Jenny similarly reports that her powers aren't working. She and Thymon set off into the forest to find Sophie, a highly depressing trek, although they soon manage to give themselves courage by humming some of Pristine's songs from the concert together. Eventually, they reach the first variation in the landscape: a signpost reading “DROP IN ANYTIME”, next to a deep black pit, “about as wide as Jenny [is] told”. Inside, they find none other than Jimmy Anytime, yet another time-shifter and a friend of Jenny's, who explains that he too was snagged mid-shift and ended up in the black ocean before swimming to shore and exploring the forest. As he explored, the pit simply opened up beneath his feet, and he's been in there ever since. Worryingly, he also felt the presence of the villainess who cloned him from Jimmy Wherever in the first place, and whom he mistakenly believed to be dead: Jenny's sister, Jenny Nowhere.

Indeed, Nowhere is currently in her throne room, irritated by Sophie, whom she's keeping in a literal cage hanging from the ceiling, and who uses her eldritch voice to play trivial pranks on her to show her disapproval of her current situation. However, her mood wickedly improves again as she charts Thymon, Jenny and Jimmy's course on one of the maps on her desk, noting that they'll soon be landing in “hot waters”. Indeed, the trio are still making their way through the wood, Jimmy's bad but heartening knock-knock jokes having replaced the singing as their means of keeping sane. However, they do eventually start to get thirsty. When Jenny bitterly snaps her fingers in mimicry of her normal solution to such a problem, which she does not expect to work here, a small pool of hot water begins to form at her feet. Although thoroughly confused, she repeats the action enough times that the three travellers soon find themselves standing next to a huge, boiling lake. Thymon uses his powers over time and, therefore, entropy to cool down the boiling water enough to hand glasses made of ice, and full of cold but liquid water, to the humans.

However, Jenny soon realises that the lake is boiling due to some source of heat submerged within it, and somewhat foolishly eggs it on until it reveals itself by throwing pellets of clay into the water. It turns out to be a gigantic, mechanical, lava-breathing dragon, identified as a “Lava Drake” by an inscription on its chest, just above a curious square panel. Thymon slows it down by creating more ice and throwing it at its maw, but it still manages to wound Jimmy with a stray pellet of lava, forcing Thymon to drop out of the fight to heal him. Soon enough, however, Jenny realises that this trial is a riddle just like “Drop In Anytime”, and figures out that she needs to add an “R” to the “LAVA” inscription to reveal the correct name: “Laura Drake”. With Jimmy providing a distraction, she manages to climb onto the robot and, hanging upside down, to scrawl the R in chalk. This instantly stops the beast's rampage and it collapses onto its back, the panel opening to reveal the actual Laura Drake, who's been chained to the machinery, her life-force used as a power source.

After they spontaneously kiss, Jenny releases Laura and they make their way back to the shore of the lake, where Laura forlornly explains that she build the mechanoid herself as her the "Mark I Draconic Exosuit”, hoping to create a new identity for herself as a proper supervillain under the name of Doctor Draconic. With Jenny gently mocking Laura for the transparency of the alias, they find Jimmy and Thymon again, finding them engaged in using their time-acceleration powers to fossilise some of the clay into rock; Thymon is creating containers in which to transport some water from the lake as they continue their journey, while Jimmy is attempting to create weapons, including literal “clay”mores. Introductions are made, with Thymon being slightly weirded out by Jenny's flirtation with Laura despite her villainy, and Laura being too eager to join in with Thymon and Jenny's relationship, including to help raise the baby, for Jenny's peace of mind given Laura's history with being unable to draw a line between loved ones and test subjects. When Jimmy asks her to elaborate on that statement, Jenny reveals, without further details, that Laura was responsible for the creation of Jenny Nowhere.

In the Castle of Nowhere at the centre of the island, Jenny Nowhere herself is still observing all this through a crystal ball, raging at the idea that she was “made” and adds that she “cannot be unmade”, cryptically adding that Sophie will find out the same soon enough.

Setting off once again, the now-four friends are startled by the appearance of a sign right in front of them, reading simply ‘OVER THERE’. After overthinking the riddle for a while, they realise it's literally pointed at someone in the distance who's been tied up and left hanging from a tree. Jenny Everywhere identifies her as Jenny Over-There of the Multidimensional Finders Service, who has the power to know where anything is. Over-There recounts that she got a call from a mysterious woman on the Red Interdimensional Telephone, asking for the location of Pixie Pristine's crystal ball before materialising herself through the phone connection and kidnapping Over-There. Jenny Over-There's powers are also blocked insofar as she can't perceive anything outside the island, but she can still feel the locations of everything and everyone on it, which allows her to inform the others that Sophie is in the Castle and to point them in the right direction.

A few hours later, they reach the Castle, which is made of silver and stands atop a black peak rising out of the gray clay. Over-There is able to confirm that Nowhere is inside, gathering a large amount of curious gems. After considering their options, they decide to side-step the matter of ascending it altogether; instead, Thymon uses his time-powers to accelerate the rock on which the Castle stands, eroding it to dust in a matter of minutes and thus bringing the castle down to ground level. Nowhere opens the gates, looking not so much wrathful as stroppy that all her work shifting a mountain in from another universe has gone to waste. She leads them into the Great Hall, where she has set up rows upon rows of Prisms. Before they rescuers can do anything to help Sophie, she uses her shifting abilities to make chains appear around them, and captures Thymon in a Prism.

Nowhere seems about to implement her evil plan already when Over-There, upset that Everywhere and Laura seem to know what she's alluding to when she doesn't, demands that Nowhere first explain exactly what's going on. Nowhere recounts how it all started in 1973 in the 38167th Universe, when Jenny Everton was entering her first year of college alongside her best friend Laura Phoebe Drake. Jenny developed a crush on Laura, and because of the interdimensional significance of the relationship between Jenny Everywhere and Laura Drake, this triggered an “interdimensional gizmo” Laura had been developing, the gizmotronic proton equalizer. In the following months, Jenny started to get visions of her other lives and occasional “shifting fits”, but couldn't quite get a handle on her powers. Intrigued, Laura built the Dimensional Consciousness Maximizer, a device which gave its user a mental connection to 999 of their closest counerparts in the Multiverse. This allowed Jenny to connect once and for all to the telepathic network of all Jennies, after which Laura decided to use it for herself.

Laura soon became addicted to borrowing knowledge from those 999 counterparts of hers, until Jenny grew concerned that the immoral worldview of some of the alternative Lauras she was communing with might be corrupting her. Since Laura wouldn't take her advice to be careful, Jenny got the idea to redirect her curiosity by suggesting that she try the machine on other people from their life, to see what they were like in other universes. The first people they persuaded to try it was Jenny's sister, not realising that she was fated to become this universe's Jenny Nowhere. In an instant, she was connected to “the miasma of all the Nowheres of all the worlds”, the power of Nowhere erasing her old identity, even physical records of her former name.

Jenny Everywhere breaks down crying at the reminder of the events, still blaming herself, but this only further angers Nowhere, who claims that despite their grief Jenny and her friends are all too ready to declare her a lost cause and move on without further self-examination, as it always is in every world. She reveals her plan by unveiling a machine similar to the D.C.M., visibly meant for Sophie: the Identity Dispersal System, which allows the user to connect not only to their own counterparts, but to anyone else's counterparts. Heedless of the paradox, she plans to artificially make Sophie one more incarnation of Jenny Nowhere, an act of greater magnitude yet for the fact that this Sophie is “the first Sophie Everytime of this epoch of the Omniverse”, her concept having yet to “take root into the hypercontinuum”; by making her a Nowhere at the source, she hopes to prevent any other versions of her from coming into existence except as Nowheres.

Nowhere activates the machine, causing a huge discharge of energy that runs through the pattern of Prisms on the floor and accidentally releases Thymon. With Nowhere and Sophie both momentarily knocked out by the aftereffects of the I.D.S., Thymon quickly frees Jenny, who, in turn, uses her shifting powers to release the others while Thymon goes over to Sophie. When she opens her eyes, however, she speaks in the voice of Jenny Nowhere, the possession having successfully gone through. But Nowhere's victory is short-lived as she realises she remembers Sophie's name, meaning the process didn't go the way she wanted it to. A gleeful Jenny Everywhere is the first to realise that this is because instead of being suppressed, Sophie's mind has transferred itself to Nowhere's body.

As Jenny explains to the aghast Nowhere: “My daughter? Erased? Oh, please. You may have lost yourself to the gestalt, and I’ll always be sorry for you. But you were a glob of teenage self-doubt in a hoodie long before you sat in that chair. And, I mean, look at you now. You’re a walking identity crisis. A measly thousand of you, up against one whole Sophie? Hardly a fair fight”. Nowhere-in-Sophie's-body breaks down crying, cradled by Sophie-in-Nowhere's-body, who gets her to agree to switch back by whispering something in her ear. After they switch back, Nowhere quickly leaves, gruffly admitting that Everywhere “win[s] this one”. Sophie explains that at some point in her past, knowing what she would need to do today, she went back in meta-time with Tiny Thymon's help and found out Nowhere's original name, which she does not disclose to her parents, reflecting that she deserves a personal secret.

The travellers briefly wonder how they'll get home now that Nowhere has vanished, but Sophie explains that she discovered, while connected to the Nowheres, that the reason the island cancels out all their powers is simply that it is itself an unconventional incarnation of Jenny Nowhere (hence why Over-There kept getting the reply that they were “nowhere” when she tried to use her powers to figure out where they all were). Thus, all they need to do is return to the shore, build a boat, and row out until they're far enough out of Nowhere's aura.

Eventually, Jenny, Thymon and Sophie make their way back to Thymon's house in the Homeworld. Thymon is displeased to see that, since Jenny Everywhere only shifted him in space and not time, he's missed a day of work at the Post Office, but Sophie solves the issue by using her own powers to shift him back to the morning. Deciding that she had best go home before the one-day-older Thymon imminently comes home from work, she says her goodbyes to her mother and vanishes back to the future. Jenny feels slightly forlorn for a few moments, though she is heartened by the knowledge that she'll see Sophie again soon enough; realising that her outfit is ruined, and, in particular, she still needs new shoes, soon sets her in mind of a whole new adventure as she sets out to catch up with an old Leprechaun acquaintance of hers and ask him for a new pair of magic shoes to replace the one she lost.

Worldbuilding

Jenny Everywhere

  • This story stars the default Jenny of The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, who originated in the 38167th Universe. She displays the ability to shift grime off some dirty cutlery directly, but the effort of precision takes a lot out of her and she soon reverts to doing dishes the normal way. Her backstory is expounded upon: her original name is established as “Jenny Everton”, and, like her corresponding Jenny Nowhere, she was an orphan. The two girls were inseparable by the time the Everton parents adopted them together. Nowhere shows the protagonists old photos, such as one of a beach day when Nowhere was twelve, where Everywhere appears as “a slightly shorter, squatter girl, a girl with short hair and dark brown skin, incongruously wearing a scarf to complement her dark green swimsuit”.

Sophie Everytime

  • She is described as looking “about six or seven years old, with warm brown skin (…) the same colour as Jenny’s”. Her “long, thick locks of navy-blue hair” resemble Thymon's tentacles and may in fact be prehensile; they match her eyes, which “weren’t quite glowing, but (…) were a blue that eyes should not be. Not sea-blue or steel-blue or sky-blue, but the bluest blue, an intense, darkly electric hue; Fremen blue”. She wears a “slightly-oversized green sweater”, blue-jean shorts that expose lightly-scraped knees, and “simple, sturdy sandals”.

Jenny Somewhere

Jenny Elsewhere

  • Jenny Elsewhere is, according to Jenny Everywhere, the nemesis of Jenny Somewhere, but upon thinking about it, Everywhere realises to her mild surprise and confusion that “[she] do[es]n't actually see her around so much, now you mention it. Huh.”.

Jenny Anywhere

Jimmy Wherever

  • A version of Jimmy Wherever existed in the 38167th Universe. Jenny Everywhere dated him for a time, or rather, believed she did. However, Jenny Nowhere created a clone of him with time-shifting powers — Jimmy Anytime — and then sent him backwards in time to disintegrate and impersonate Wherever just before Jenny started dating him, meeting Jenny had actually never dated the real Wherever at all.

Jimmy Anytime

  • The version of Jimmy Anytime native to the 38167th Universe is introduced, his backstory being described in the previous section. Even after realising his true nature and earning his freedom, he remains infatuated with Jenny Everywhere, who does not return the feelings due to the complicatedness involved in how they met. In additions to his time-shifting powers, his “engineered clone constitution” makes him more physically durable than a normal human. His natural hair colour is brown like Wherever's, but he dyes it platinum-blonde to assert his own identity. He identifies as bisexual and is physically described as “a broad-shouldered, white man with gray-blue eyes”, and his outfit, now torn and muddy, consists of “a dark gray T-shirt and a matching pair of of jeans”. Due to his time in the pit, by the time he meets up with the main characters, “his beard had grown out in its natural dark-brown colour”.

Jenny Nowhere

  • The version of Jenny Nowhere native to the 38167th Universe is introduced, serving as the main antagonist. She displays the ability to teleport through a telephone call. She is described as beautiful but eerie to look upon, her face looking almost mask-like. She is of somewhat underwhelmingly average height, with “smartly-combed” platinum-blond, waist-length hair, and wears “evil eyeliner” with a black leather outfit including a black cape. Her backstory is elaborated upon; like her corresponding Jenny Everywhere, she was an orphan, and the two girls were inseparable by the time the Everton parents adopted them together. She shows the protagonists old photos, such as one of a “bright summer's day”, depicting Nowhere as “a striking-looking twelve-year-old girl with long blonde hair, dressed all in white”. By 1973, when Jenny Everywhere was entering college, she was “practicing her piano-playing”, and also gradually “falling in love with a local boy”. According to Jenny Everywhere, Nowhere “[was] always smarter than [she] gave [her]self credit for”.
  • The story's main setting of Nowhere Island in the 9768761143th Universe is itself “an incarnation of Jenny Nowhere”; although “not completely sentient”, it’s “sort of… aware. It’s part of the mental network”.

Laura Drake

Jenny Over-There

Universes

Other

  • The story opens on the seventh date that has brought Jenny to the Cupid Homeworld to meet up with Lord Thymon. It is stated that “by now, multiple Departments of the C.I.I. followed the interdimensional love-birds’ every move whenever they met up in the Homeworld, trying to learn more about what love was actually supposed to be, anyway”.
  • Thymon is described as an “ancient god” and “Time-God”, as well as a “demon”. Pristine knows of him as “an elder god, (…) a ‘beyond mortal and immortal ken alike, unknowable guardian of the Outer Void’ kind of elder god”, also known as “He Whose Breath Consumes Eternity”.
  • Thymon has a great variety of Cupid Post Office hats, which are indistinguishable to the naked eye but have minute variations in molecular pattern that he can perceive. It is suggested that Jenny can also perceive them.
  • Thymon's nightmares usually destroy parts of the house every night, but “it all grows back”.
  • When Thymon suggests reversing time to undo the scorching of some overdone slices of toast, Jenny “mutter[s] something about chronitons giving her indigestion”.
  • Thymon mentions the Department of Plumbing.
  • Thymon offers Jenny light-blue star whale butter, which she recognises and appreciates. They also drink blue orange juice.
  • To eat his slice of toast, Thymon rends it into crumbs and then throws the crumbs, one by one, into the black void of his eye.
  • Jenny mentions that “fairies can’t really have kids with humans (…), that’s kinda why the whole changeling thing happens”.
  • When Sophie Everytime names her father as “ṯ̴̡̅͆H̸̗͎͊YM̵͔͌́͜o̷̦̎n̸̻̔́”, he is overjoyed that for once, someone “can actually pronounce it right”.
  • Jenny asks Pixie Pristine if she'd like to be Sophie's Fairy Godmother, which Pristine declines, preferring to stick with “Aunt”.
  • Called upon to create a distraction, Jimmy Anytime cartwheels while singing what appears to be the Doctor Who theme song, off-key.
  • Nowhere calls Sophie an “insufferable little imp”.
  • Laura “invented the one-woman Lauracopter”.
  • Jenny and Laura discuss the existence of versions of the Cinderella story featuring their counterparts.
  • Lord Thymon jokes about the possibility Jimmy having been stabbed by the signpost “like a rotisserie glapfnorg”.
  • Thymon displays the ability to make people levitate. He can fly, but as he explains, “an Embodiment in flight tends to invoke, uhm, a lot of… arcing lightning and things. Create some minor Rifts in its wake, even”.
  • When she demands that Nowhere explain her backstory, Jenny Over-There claims that “worldbuilding allusions to a vast unseen backstory are all very well in moderation”. This prompts Nowhere to interrupt her with “Leave the Fourth Wall alone, Red. Now is not the time or the place to weaken the structure of reality just for the hell of it”.

Continuity

Behind the scenes

Read online

This story is available online on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids website.

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