A Morning In (short story)

From Jenny Everywhere Wiki

A Morning In was a brief Jenny Everywhere short story written by Scott Sanford for Jenny Everywhere Day 2023, featuring his Jenny Cornelius and her matching Laura Drake.

Contents

Plot

Jenny Cornelius wakes up naked in her own bed, and, as she drifts back to consciousness and dimensionally orients herself, remembers that Laura Drake has just spent the night at Jenny's place for the first time. Laura woke up first and is already cooking breakfast; after “roll[ing] out of bed and f[i]nding a robe”, Jenny greets her happily. They get to breakfast, with Laura having fried some eggs to made a change from Jenny's usual of toast with Bovril or Marmite. After they're done eating, Jenny broaches the subject of the venue for their date tonight, suggesting the recently-opened restaurant on the top floor of the newly-built Post Office Tower. After Laura agrees, Jenny goes off to take a shower while Laura does the dishes. She is interrupted in this eminently practical activity by a phone call from the alien Misterions, announcing that they “have devised an elaborate and complicated plan that if not stopped will annoy and inconvenience [Jenny]”, but when Laura blankly replies that Jenny can't come to the phone right now, the extraterrestrials meekly hang up, promising to call again later.

Worldbuilding

Jenny Everywhere

Laura Drake

Universes

Other

  • In the universe Jenny dreamed about, Doctor Draconic took telepathic control of the Loch Ness Monster.
  • Laura Drake notes that if it were up to Jenny, she would only eat “toast and Bovril” for breakfast, rhetorically reminding Jenny that “we're done with rationing, you know”.
  • When Laura asks her what she wants to “do”, Jenny jokingly replies “David Bowie”, confirming Cornelius to be bisexual.
  • Due to her job, Laura is aware that there are “Sygons in the basement” of the Post Office Tower.

Continuity

Behind the scenes

Background

When posting the story, Scott Sanford appended a foreword:

August 13th is Jenny Everywhere Day! No adventure, no plot, just a few moments early in the morning with Jenny Cornelius and her Laura Drake.

For even sillier and even shorter micro-tales, see Origin of the Shifter and Superb Owl.
Scott Sanford

And an afterword:

As one might guess, Jenny Cornelius and her Laura Drake have appeared in other tales before this one.

Laura has also provided some tips for Employee Training, which you can read at the link.

Bovril and Marmite are British foods, though some might dispute that last word, both suitable for spreading on toast.

This is a busy era for the tower, even not counting the mentioned restaurant on top and visitors below; it’s also going to see both a malevolent telepathic computer and an extraterrestrial spaceship, in stories chronicled elsewhere.
Scott Sanford

In addition to these references, the Sygons obviously evoke the Doctor WhoZygons”, and the Misterions are obvious stand-in for the Mysterons of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons fame. Notably, although the Jenny Cornelius stories are no strangers to mashing up various elements of British pop culture into a single shared universe, the latter series was already established to share a universe with prime Doctor Who.

Read online

The story is available on the author's Dreamwidth website.