The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There (short story)
The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There was an April Fools' Day short story written by Callum Phillpott, the start of the Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe series. It featured Jenny Everywhere in a supporting role and starred a newly-introduced open-source character in the Shifter's orbit, Jenny Over-There. It also featured minor appearances by multiple public-domain characters and introduced the Man in Grey.
In 2024, an updated version was published on the official Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe website, now featuring an original illustration by Aristide Twain.
Contents
Plot
Jenny Over-There is a girl who acquired the ability to innately know “where things are”, in any universe, due to a freak accident, and now works at the Multidimensional Finders Service, answering calls on the Red Interdimensional Telephone. One day, she goes to work after waking up from a pleasant dream where “she ran through a field [with] no phones in sight, (…) no one to bother her or ask her for directions”. The first caller of the day is a woman asking for help finding her keys; the still-sleepy Jenny hangs up again after telling her that they're inside her house, even though the woman asks for further clarification.
She then helps a Shakespearean character locate their King, gets a wrong-number call from an ominous Japanese ghost, and gets a call from a Dark Lord asking to know where Jenny Everywhere is, the one question which M.F.S. policy allows Jenny Over-There not to answer. Two hours into the day, she receives a visit in person from Doctor Omega, who dismantles her toaster just as her bread was almost toasted, apologetically taking it apart with a screwdriver to borrow the thermal reactor within it before leaving the way he came.
Over the following three hours, she locates the Holy Grail, Amelia Earhart (who turned out to have become Doctor Omega's companion), superspy Alan Douglas (on behalf of the shady character Dyatlov Kruchenkov), and a golden ticket for “a kid”. She also gets a call from “failed superhero” Dynamite Thor asking “where crime is”, which she is, at first, unable to answer due to the vagueness of the question. However, after an interlude trying and failing to get across to a Pantomimian that the villain he sought was “behind him”, she happens to get a call from a robber from the same universe as Dynamite Thor, and is thus able to solve two calls in one stroke.
Ten minutes after her workday officially ends, Jenny Over-There is about to go home when she gets yet another phone call asking for the location of Jenny Everywhere. Before she can give her customary answer, she is interrupted by a visit by Jenny Everywhere herself, in an incarnation whose voice she now awkwardly recognises as the same as that of the woman who had lost her keys and to whom Jenny O. was less than helpful that morning. The Shifter is, as it turns out, undercover at the “evil” delivery company Kablamazon, and is here to deliver a new toaster to the M.F.S. office to replace the one broken by Doctor Omega. Deciding to hang up the call about Jenny Everywhere unanswered, Jenny Over-There heads home.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- This story features an incarnation of Jenny described as having a red scarf, orange-tinted goggles, and “a face of genuine happiness”. She is currently infiltrating Kablamazon, and, as an employee thereof, wears a name tag.
Universes
- This story takes place in a single universe, although Jenny Over-There receives phone-calls and visitors from several other universes, the boundaries between which are not clear.
Other
- SatNavs sometimes pick up information from other universes, “which is why SatNavs sometimes tell you to drive off the road”.
Continuity
- Callum Phillpott soon wrote a second story about Jenny Over-There, the Man in Grey and the Multidimensional Finders Service, PROSE: Open Sourcing.
- Jenny would later reminisce about her earliest days at the M.F.S., when the break-room toaster was new and Dynamite Thor was not yet an intern, in PROSE: Annals of the Jen: One Year of Jenny Over-There.
- The 2024 reedit mentions O.M.S.C.F., an SCP Foundation-esque group which had been introduced in PROSE: The Adventures of Talbot Molossus, Interdimensional Dogtective.
- The theft of the office toaster by Doctor Omega “a few months back” is referenced in the 2024 reedit of PROSE: A Series of Queer Events.
Behind the scenes
Background
The “man in grey” is highly reminiscent of the “man in black” from Phillpott's earlier novel Cyber-Hunt, which was set in the Third Universe. This resemblance would be alluded to more directly in the Man's second appearance in PROSE: Open Sourcing.
The updated, illustrated version published on July 12th, 2024 expanded the wordcount by around five hundred words. The most significant of these edits are:
- Jenny Over-There's dream of freedom at the start is given a more detailed description.
- She is stated to hear a permanent electric hissing sound in her ear as a result of her condition.
- More detail is given on how Jenny discovered her powers; they first manifested without fanfare when she told a nurse where she'd lost her glasses. Their first publicly-noted manifestation came when she helped rescue a young boy who'd suffered an accident in the middle of a field with no witnesses. Thereafter, it is noted that several other parties took an interest in her before the Man in Grey, including Kablamazon affiliates, OMSCF, and her own grandmother whom she had hitherto believed to be dead.
- “The Man in Grey” is off-handedly confirmed to be the Man in Grey's actual, legal name.
- More emphasis is placed on the eldritch architecture of the M.F.S. office, with Jenny speculating that it might have been grown instead of built, musing that “sometimes, in her more Gilman-esque moods, she’d see patterns in the grey walls that reminded her of roots in a plant” (“Gilman-esque” being an allusion to The Yellow Wallpaper).
- Jenny's conversation with the Ring-esque ghost is significantly expanded, and now includes an explanation of how Jenny knows how to speak Japanese (or, rather, can convincingly fake it thanks to the SatNav software in her head). At the conclusion of the conversation, the ghost gives up on finding the person she was trying to haunt, and states that she's going to return to “her wishing well” to take a nap.
- The final line is changed from “She ended the call and left the MFS until the next workday, where stuff like this happened often” to “She ended the call and left the MFS… She'd be back there soon. Perhaps she’d always be there”, emphasising the story's status as the unlikely start of a longer run.
Additionally, the illustration included cameos by Lord Grallyx and Jenny Elsewhere, identified as such by the copyright blurb. Neither of them appeared in the story proper in either version, implicitly being additional callers to the M.F.S.; Elsewhere's appearance as such is a metafictional joke, as part of her gimmick is that she can never appear in-story directly.
Read online
The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There was originally released on Archive Of Our Own, where it is still available. The updated 2024 version is available on the official Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe website.
