Open Sourcing (short story)
Open Sourcing was a short story written by Callum Phillpott. The second in Phillpott's Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe series, it continued the story of their creations Jenny Over-There and the Man in Grey, and featured appearances by multiple other public-domain and open-source characters.
Contents
Plot
One morning, Jenny Over-There reports to the M.F.S. office for what she expected to be a routine day at the office, only to find her desk and the Red Interdimensional Telephone gone, and the Man in Grey waiting for her. He explains that normal operations of the Multidimensional Finders Service are suspended for the day so that Jenny can help him interview new candidates interested in joining the Service. As they settle in the interview room, the first candidate shows himself in the person of Dynamite Thor, but the Man in Grey rejects him on the basis that he was formerly copyrighted and he only wants candidates who are, in this metafictional sense, “open-source”.
The first serious candidate is a man made of metal called Metal O'Maniac, who casually confesses to having set his previous place of work on fire due to them not paying him enough, making both nervous. He is followed by the pair of best friends Talbot Molossus and the Hydrant; despite Talbot's urbane and professional demeanour, Jenny and the Man in Grey find it exceedingly difficult to take them seriously due to their looking respectively like a humanoid dog and a humanoid fire hydrant. An hour and a half in, a man who looks suspiciously like a version of Batman walks in, and ends up biting the Man in Grey on the shoulder when he accuses him of being Bruce Wayne rather than his actual identity of Wayne Bruce.
As the Man in Grey nurses his wound, he discusses the possibility of dropping some of the less promising names from the interview list. She persuades him to drop the surprisingly numerous “patriotic” heroes such as the Iron Lady, and also points out to him that a distressing number of names on the list are Nazi supervillains. Next up is Doctor Know-It-All, about whom they have concerns due to his fairly blatant resemblance to “the time-traveller guy”, but Know-It-All blackmails the Man in Grey into provisionally accepting him by pointing out his knowledge that the Man in Grey is himself suspiciously similar to someone else.
After finally interviewing a qualified candidate in the form of 0000-8888888, they are slated to meet with Captain Omega, but the real Captain Omega has been impersonated by Dynamite Thor, who isn't giving up. When the real Captain Omega bursts in to confront Thor, Thor throws a “smoke grenade” to escape stealthily, but the grenade turns out to actually just be an actual grenade. Although everyone makes it out alright (Captain Omega wears protective armour as part of his costume, the Man in Grey leapt out the window in time, and Jenny used the M.F.S. teleportation ray to transport herself to safety), this brings an end to the interviews for the day.
Eventually, the Man in Grey announces that he's settled on hiring Talbot, Fred, 0000-8888888, and Doctor Know — but also reveals to a disappointed Jenny that they are going to staff a new M.F.S. location in Scotland, not in the Welsh officer with her. However, after the new hires leave to party about their successful interviews, the Man in Grey asks Jenny what she would think of hiring an intern to help the Welsh office run more smoothly. She ends up recommending Dynamite Thor for the position, feeling bad for him. The next day, he starts work, bringing Jenny tea (albeit having made the kettle explode) while she's taking a call from a man trying to find a Mr Gatsby.
Worldbuilding
Universes
- This story takes place in the home universe of Jenny Over-There.
- Dynamite Thor was previously “bound to the Fox universe”.
Other
- The M.F.S. office is located “in the middle of Wales”.
- Jenny demands: “Where the Hell is my desk?”.
- The Man in Grey answers “the Great Higher-Ups”. He casually considers both himself and the Great Higher-Ups to be evil.
- The Man in Grey reads Necronomics for Dummies.
- Jenny Over-There was about to burn down the SatNav factory when it coincidentally exploded, giving her her special powers.
- Talbot is not from Earth, but has been living there for a while.
- Jenny Over-There thinks that the Hydrant sounds a little like Gilbert Gottfried.
- Doctor Know-It-All describes himself as “sorcerer supreme, mayor of Knowheresville, home of the finest knowers in the known knowing universe”.
- Jenny owns a teleportation ray.
- Multiple superhero teams rejected Dynamite Thor, including the Super Besties, even though the Besties allowed Stardust the Super-Wizard in.
Continuity
- This story acts as a sequel to the original Jenny Over-There story, PROSE: The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There.
- The teleportation ray was mentioned in PROSE: Family Business.
- Tetra-None Hepta-Oct would belatedly learn of Dynamite Thor's actual hiring in PROSE: Annals of the Jen: One Year of Jenny Over-There.
Behind the scenes
Background
In addition to the miscellaneous variants of the Paragraph required for the various open-source characters used, Callum Phillpott's author-notes read:
| A big thank you to the Public Domain Superheroes Wiki for making the finding of obscure Open Source characters way easier on my part. All characters mentioned can be found on there (except Batman, he's copyrighted). |
| —Callum Phillpott |
Read online
Open Sourcing was released on Archive Of Our Own, where it is still available.
