Of Romeos and Juliets (short story)

From Jenny Everywhere Wiki

Incident Report C179B — Of Romeos and Juliets was a Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids short story written by Hector Fenwick and edited by Aristide Twain. Serving as a humorous epilogue to PROSE: The Labors of Juliet, it was the first Incident Report as well as the first of Fenwick's three guest turns on the series.

Contents

Plot

The newly-established presence of the Sisters of Juliet in the Cupid Homeworld causes widespread chaos — not just because of the sudden increase in population, and by such a surfeit of Mark IIs, but because of one of the original Juliet-178's peculiarities: supposedly being in a romantic relationship with Romeo-1020. With all the Sisters having Juliet's personality and memories, they demand Romeo's attention each to herself. After going on the same date three hundred times over, a substantially-fed-up Romeo is easily persuaded by the Cupid Parliament to break up with Juliet(s).

The Sisters don't take this well and a fight breaks out, bad enough to lower the total number of functioning Juliets from 1618 to 1576. In desperation, the Parliament exile all the Juliets save for the original to an asteroid in Dimension 1579 alongside Romeo as well as a randomly-picked Cupid overseer, a certain Sigmund-1028. Tensions on the asteroid remain high, but Sigmund makes the best of the situation by using the large population of identical individuals as a sample base that let him pioneer the science of Cupid psychology, founding the Department of Psychology. Over the subsequent months, supervisors keep quitting, joining the ranks of the said Department once they return to the Homeworld, while the chaos on the asteroid shows no sign of abating.

Worldbuilding

Universes

Other

Continuity

Behind the scenes

Read online

The story can be read for free on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids website.