Past Prologue (short story)
Past Prologue was the 27th in the Timeline anthology series by Nicholas Ahlhelm and bore the heading 2002 – Jenny Everywhere; it's unclear at what point it became known as Past Prologue.
Contents
Plot
A girl named Jenny discovers some goggles and immediately decides she looks awesome. After buying them she and her friend Amber head out to a party; Jenny is cold but Amber has a scarf in her purse.
While waiting for their bus Jenny has a brief flash of another world’s events, but neither of them know what to make of it. They board the bus, gossip, and Jenny has another moment of seeing other events.
The party provides a welcome distraction but soon she encounters a very familiar woman with dyed purple hair who greets her and takes her outside – rather far outside, to an empty field in broad daylight. She quickly introduces herself as also being Jennifer Evers-Werth, “only most people know me as Jenny Everywhere.”
She quickly explains the broad strokes of being Jenny Everywhere, bringing her younger self up to speed on the reality of the multiverse.
The more experienced Jenny then departs, leaving her other self to discover her own adventures.
Universes
The story beings in the city of Springfield in an unnamed, apparently mundane universe. Jenny has visions of other worlds and is briefly taken to another dimension where she has an illuminating talk in an otherwise unremarkable field.
Continuity
The scarf she is given is white with red stripes at either end, a very common style for Jennies.
Read online
The original site is gone but the story is preserved.
