The Absquatulation of Jenny Everywhere (short story)
The Absquatulation of Jenny Everywhere was a Jenny Everywhere short story written by Scott Sanford in 2022. In addition to being part of his bespoke Jenny Everywhere continuity, it also tied in with Lupan Evezan's 2021 Jenny Everywhere Day story, PROSE: The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere.
Contents
Plot
A frantic Eric knocks at the door of David Lowe's apartment in the middle of the day. The boy explains that Jenny Everywhere hasn't been seen for days and that, wanting to check on her, he made his way into her and Kim's apartment only to find Kim lying on her bed, apparently lifeless. A sanguine David follows Eric back to the other apartment. Agreeing that Jenny's absence is an emergency worth taking special measures for, David gropes around the edge of the large mirror mounted on Kim's wall until he finds a secret compartment, containing a sealed bottle of blood. He gently drips it into Kim's mouth, and she wakes with a start; for a few moment she lashes out at him, feral and animalistic, before getting over the shock and slowly regaining her composure.
She is startled that David used the special bottle behind the mirror — a dose of Jenny's own blood, as it turns out — to wake her up instead of the regular stuff she stores in the fridge. More daunting, however, is the fact that in contrast to the previous occasion where she drank some of Jenny's blood, her abilities are not currently allowing her to sense any of the infinity of other Jennies to whom she should now be temporarily connected. Walking over to the kitchen through the living room, they find Eric and the Robot Toaster, with the boy being overjoyed to find Kim well again.
This relief is short-lived when Kim suddenly seizes up and falls over, but she quickly explains that it is merely from surprise: she is feeling the infinity of Jennies popping back into existence — including “their” Jenny, who reappears in mid-air over the coffee-table. After confirming that she's in the right universe and catching up on what happened in her absence, she explains her occasional temporary disappearances from the Multiverse, meant to resynchronise the connections between all Jennies whenever they get too “clogged up” or “tangled” over millions of years. Though Eric is bemused at the idea that Jenny can essentially be “turned off and on again”, all voice their gladness that Jenny is once more “everywhere”.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- The Jenny featured in this story is the default incarnation of Scott Sanford's Jenny Everywhere stories.
- It is shown that consuming Jenny's blood allows Kim to temporarily gain her abilities.
- Jenny explains her cyclical disappearance and reappearance from the Multiverse: “There’s normally supposed to be a Jenny Everywhere in every universe, more or less, but it’s not that simple in practice. If nothing else we keep moving around. So every once in a while, after thousands or millions of years of shifting, the connections between my selves get… confused? Clogged up? Whatever. So we all get pulled out of reality to re-synchronize with ourselves.”
Universes
- The story takes place in the default universe of Scott Sanford's Jenny Everywhere stories.
Other
- David Lowe is busy penning a mezuzot when Eric interrupts him, revealing his occupation as a sofer.
- When Kim wakes up with a start, her nails develop into claws and she lets out an animalistic hiss.
- Jenny has told Kim about “a few back doors out of the universe, just in case”, although she stresses that “it's not like running out to the supermarket”.
- David refers to Jenny's shifting abilities as the kefizat haderech. Kim mishears this as “the Kwisatz Haderach”, a title associated with Paul Atreides (whom David doesn't know).
Continuity
- The Robot Toaster built by Professor Awesome was previously seen in PROSE: Paying It Forward and PROSE: I Found Him On The Internet.
- The story happens concurrently with PROSE: The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere.
Behind the scenes
Background
The story's release on Dreamwidth in 2022 was preceded with a foreworded:
| One night I got the image of David having to wake Kim the hard way and one thing led to another. Most Jenny Everywhere stories have no particular time or place for their setting; this one does and readers may figure it out before it’s spelled out in the afterword. |
| —Scott Sanford |
The afterword in question read:
| One night I got the image of David having to wake up Kim the hard way and one thing led to another… Kim’s excursion into Everywhere was a lot more dramatic in my head than the version that made it into the story. Poor Kim has a trying day in this one; she’s opened someone else’s inner eye, seen the fnords – and it’s Jennies all the way down. (Anyone want to tackle a psychological study of a Jenny just waking up to who she is? I’d enjoy reading such a thing.) Most Jenny Everywhere stories happen at no particular time and, often, no particular place. This one is set during one specific event, as many readers will have spotted while reading. Believe it or not I had this title in my head as far back as 2008. As I said on the Discord channel after Jenny Everywhere Day 2021, I couldn’t make it work back then. Now my Jenny has a larger supporting cast. Because I know people are wondering, to absquatulate is 19th century slang for departing, intentionally and with connotations of abruptness; it can also include absconding with something. (Meriam-Webster, Wictionary) David’s claim of being perfectly normal may seem a little dubious now. Is it normal not to have read Dune? Kim has. What he actually said was “kefitzat haderech,” literally “contraction of the road,” a term for miraculous travel. |
| —Scott Sanford |
Read online
The story is available on the author's Dreamwidth website.
