Annals of the Jen: One Year of Jenny Over-There (novel)

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Annals of the Jen: One Year of Jenny Over-There was a story written by Callum Phillpott. It was the eighth in Phillpott's Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe series, and released on April Fools' Day 2023, not so much celebrating the holiday itself as the one-year anniversary of the series, which had begun on April 1st, 2022 with The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There. In recognition of this, it broke new grounds for the series as its first multi-chapter endeavour, being described in the official summary as a linked “mini-anthology”, though prior entries had reached comparable wordcounts. The title was a reference to Robert H. Barlow's Annals of the Jinns, an H. P. Lovecraft-adjacent short story anthology.

Contents

Plot

Chapter 1: Wakey Wakey

Jenny Over-There wakes up an hour before her alarm clock goes off, from a rather pleasant dream of being lost in the woods unable to find her way home, i.e. of having lost her cumbersome powers. Going over the events of the recent past in her mind in an effort to pinpoint the last time she had that dream, she is startled and annoyed to realise that she has now been working for the Multidimensional Finders Service for a full year, even though she never meant for it to become permanent and doesn't even fully understand the Service's business model. She is downright hyperventilating, contemplating the possibility that she'll be doing this for her entire life, when the “high-pitched whine” of her alarm clock finally informs her that it is actually time to get dressed and go to work now.

Chapter 2: Peter Thor's Day Off - Part 1

Taking advantage of a self-granted “day off”, Peter “Dynamite” Thor is “patrolling” Knighton in full superhero regalia, seen off by his somewhat concerned girlfriend Glenda. After they part, he phones the Multidimensional Finders Service as a caller to try and locate crimes for him to stop. Instead of “Jen-dog”, he ends up reaching Tetra of the Scottish Division, who is fairly startled to realise “Big Mig” actually hired Thor even after he “bombed the office”. After realising that the ever-oblivious Thor would be entirely likely to throw lit sticks of dynamite even at the pettiest of criminals in an effort to stop them, Tetra and “Doc” decide to report that “there aren’t any crimes today actually, none at all on Earth or any other planet, bye”, before hanging up to leave Peter feeling rather existential.

Chapter 3: The Birthday Toaster

A normal day of work at the Multidimensional Finders Service ensues for Jenny Over-There, the most noteworthy caller of which is some version of Doctor Watson asking after the current location of Sherlock Holmes. In the breakroom, she contemplates the toaster, realising that this is technically its birthday. She is interrupted in her break by the Man in Grey, who, after she informs him that Dynamite Thor is unavailable, asks her to help him review an apology email he is attempting to send to Ozma to convince her to unban him from Oz — this being, to the Man in Grey's mild embarrassment, how Jenny learns about him currently dating Professor Wogglebug. After reading over what the Man in Grey has written, she finds it to be a droning, impersonal corporate-apology sort of email admitting to no actual wrongdoing, and tries to make the Man in Grey realise that he must actually apologise. The conversation is ultimately cut short when he receives an email from Ozma herself, who explains that, at the request of Professor Wogglebug, she has agreed to shift his status to only provisionally banished, and set a trial date for him. Taking advantage of the Man in Grey's subsequent good mood, Jenny gets him to give her the rest of the day off, claiming that it's her birthday.

Notes

As an “interesting note” on this part of the story, the author relates how Arcbeatle Press “got their hands on an unseen Sherlock Holmes manuscript from, like, 1903” about a month after the author wrote the part about Jenny getting a call from Sherlock Holmes, and was startled to see that the other half of the conversation apparently appeared in one of the stories in the book, complete with an appearance by the Man in Grey by name. The writer is further baffled when, trying to calm down from an impending mental breakdown about their lack of originality, they “do what [they] normally do and listen to the music of the English 2-Tone revival band ‘The Specials’”, and, getting to the song Man at C&A, find that “the Man in Grey is there too”. Left questioning their reality, the writer starts to wonder if they're a psychic, if “this is a situation similar to the classic Morely Roberts story The Anticipator”, or if they can “sue Arcbeatle”.

Chapter 4: First-Class Delivery

Last week, Kablamazon implemented a new policy as a response to complaints of low morale in their many factories across the UK: the installation of ominous black monoliths called Therapy Prisms, in which employees can come at their leisure to take a break from the alienation of their daily work to instead suffer the alienation of sitting in a confined, pitch-black space with a blinking red sign asking ‘ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?’. This proves to be their undoing as the version of Jenny Everywhere who became a Kablamazon employee some time ago in an effort to find a way to bring the evil company down from the inside uses the Prism as a hiding place to “get around the guards brutally forcing the workers out of the warehouse once their shift changed”. This factory is the very one in which the CEO's office is located, and Jenny finally makes her way there, armed with a discharged ray-gun for purely intimidation purposes. Grallyx begins to gloat about knowing that Jenny wouldn't dare the trigger regardless, but Jenny anti-climactically takes him out by surprise by bonking him on the head with the grip of the ray-gun. Recalling that there's a bounty on Grallyx among Doctor Omega's people, she decides to take him there, wrapping him in a very large cardboard box for transfer as the liberated workers burst out into triumphant song around her.

Chapter 5: Peter Thor's Day Off - Part 2

Back in the park, Peter Thor is still moping about the apparent lack of crime for him to fight. Actual superhero Lady Satan runs into hm and tries to comfort him until she realises how destructive his brand of crime-fighting really is, whereupon she convinces him that the lack of crime must be down to him successfully intimidating all would-be-criminals into refraining. After further reassuring him that the cops won't resent him for making their job pointless, she flies off, leaving him considerably cheered up as he sits down on a bench and allows himself to relax.

Chapter 6: Tetra-None Hepta-Oct and Doctor Know-It-All Talk it Out

As the Multidimensional Finders Service Scottish Division experiences a dry spell in calls, Tetra-None Hepta-Oct idly scans her immediate future and foresees that she is to have a conversation with Doctor Know, a destiny she goes over to fulfill without much enthusiasm. As they awkwardlybegin their small talk, the Doctor tries to “talk culture” by asking Tetra about her people's past as creations of the Guardians of Time. This prompts him to boast that, human though he is, he is “something of a Guardian of Time himself” — or, rather, powerful enough that he could be counted as one of them if they were willing to accept new members, which they aren't. This gets him onto the topic of the Great Higher-Ups, who did ask him to join them a century ago, though he declined because he “do[es]n't care about corporations” and “didn’t want it to interfere with [his] teaching job at the Royal College of Oz, or [his] Mayoral responsibilities in Knowheresville, or [his] dedication to the knitting club”.

This prompts Tetra to ask a question she's actually curious about — why the Doctor even agreed to work for the M.F.S. in the first place. Just as he's beginning to outline his answer, after all, he receives a call for his son — namely Professor Wogglebug, whom he “created” by magically enlarging and gene-splicing an ordinary wogglebug during his time as Professor Nowitall in Oz, during the reign of Pastoria. He is comically disturbed when the Professor springs onto him the news that he is now dating the Man in Grey, otherwise known as Doctor Know's boss, prompting him to hang up with a quick excuse and stomp off to process this, vanishing in “a puff of purple smoke”. In his absence, Tetra decides to sneakily make use of his computer to try out the video game Doctor Know was playing when Tetra called on him.

Chapter 7: Interlude from 925-B

Meanwhile, in a neighbouring universe, a “Jenny Over-There” who was born as Jenny Mason is spending a typically miserable day working for the Man in Gray's Monouniversal Finders Service. The Man in Gray makes a brief appearance in person, chiding Jenny for editorialising when she fails to answer one call with a simple set of coordinates — though he is intrigued when she explains that she tried to warn the caller against to the stated location because in additional to the neutral coordinates, her powers themselves gave her a strong sense that a powerful evil was buried there. The Man tries to have the intern get her a coffee, but, being a neurotic Christian, she is disturbed as per usual by this very different M.F.S.'s “intern named Thor”, who is not Peter Thor but Grant Farrel, or rather, Grant Farrel's body as possessed by the malevolent spirit of the actual god Thor. When she voices her sentiments to the Man in Gray, he tersely replies that “it’s good for business to have a brute on standby. One who is willing to kill without question”, and declares her coffee break already over, reactivating the telephone.

Chapter 8: Happy Birthday, Jenny Over-There!

Midway through a call from some individual angrily demanded to know the location of “the head of Dibbsy”, by which they clarify that they mean the actual severed, cryo-frozen head of Wilt Dibbsy rather than the current CEO of the company, Jenny is called into his office by the Man in Grey. To her surprise, this is not for any worrisome reason but because the Man in Grey, having bought her claim that it's her birthday hook, line, and sinker, has thrown together an emergency surprise party, complete with a very grey cake which turns out to be reasonably tasty. Eating it alone (as the ever-awkward Man in Grey excused himself, admitting that he doesn't like cake), she reflects on the past year again, finding that on the whole, she would rather continue working for the M.F.S. than not, and she's simply been tired lately. Emboldened, she brings this up with the Man in Grey, who agrees to renegotiate her working hours with only a modicum of reluctance.

And so they both went back into his office to talk business, setting in motion a substantial change to Jenny’s work schedule that will likely never impact any of the stories told here, but it’s nice to know about.
—Chapter 8


Worldbuilding

Jenny Everywhere

Lord Grallyx

  • The 925th Universe's Lord Grallyx turns out to be the CEO of Kablamazon. He has the typical “jagged, alligator-like face” and is described as being “dressed in his usual attire: a green business suit, a fluffy red and white cape, and a giant golden crown”.

Jenny Over-There

Universes

Other

  • Dynamite Thor used to be the CEO of the Peter Thor Mining Company.
  • The Man in Grey is described as “skeletal”. He is uncertain that the language he ordinary speaks with Jenny Over-There is actually English until she confirms it.
  • Jenny Over-There was very fond of Sherlock Holmes books when she was a child.
  • Jenny once took a Culinary Arts class, but failed it.
  • Ozma describes the Wogglebug's verbosity as typical of someone “homeschooled by Professor Now-it-all”.
  • The CEO of Kablamazon believes his company to be “one of the biggest companies in the multiverse”. It is later described as “a multiversal dropshipping eCommerce website”.
  • The adventures with which Jenny Everywhere got side-tracked during the months she spent meaning to get around to bringing down Kablamazon included “the time she stole the Holy Dog Bowl from the Werewolf Priests of Mars, or that time she saved Doctor Omega from the Space Romans, or even that time she tried to have a conversation with Grant Farrel”, the latter being a so-called superhero apparently possessed by the vengeful spirit of the god Thor.
  • Peter Thor's accent is distinctly American, though there is a hint of Welsh in the way he pronounces his “O”s.
  • Stardust the Super-Wizard was fired from the Super Besties Justice Squad some months ago.
  • Tetra-None Hepta-Oct is described as “an entity formerly in charge of keeping Time itself together”.
  • Doctor Know's creation of Professor Wogglebug occurred during “a rather stagnant era in Oz history, back when the Emerald City was simply “the Central City” and the golden roads were just a dream in the head of Monarch Pastoria”. Doctor Know wore glasses at that time.
  • Gayelette held the title of Northern Cardinal when Doctor Know first hatched his plan to create a replacement teacher to allow him to quit his Royal College of Oz teaching job. Over the following decades of work Doctor Know dedicated to creating Professor Wogglebug, it is mentioned that Oz “still showed no signs of changing besides a couple of the Cardinal Witches being swapped out”.
  • Before settling on altering a wogglebug, Doctor Know considered “tak[ing] a note from Frankenstein and tailor-making his man”.
  • Professor Wogglebug compares his flavour of orientation (asexual but unbothered by form or gender in objects of romantic attraction) as being “a similar manner to the Tin Man who rules over the Winkies”.
  • Doctor Know hopes that Wogglebug hasn't ventured out into any alternative versions of Oz because he “still ha[s]n’t taught [him] why he should stay away from Russian Oz”.
  • In Universe 925-B, Thor calls himself a “dread warrior of Asgard”.
  • Before being taken in by her arbitrary lie, the Man in Grey believed Jenny Over-There's birthday to be in May.

Continuity

Behind the scenes

Background

In addition to the metafictional Chapter 3 note documented above, Callum Phillpott posted multiple pieces of short author's notes on various chapters of the story. Chapter 1's read:

"That weird business with Jenny Everywhere and her blue noodle boyfriend (good for them)" is in reference to the story "Family Business" by Aristide Twain https://thecrewofthecoppercoloredcupids.wordpress.com/2022/08/13/family-business/
"That whole legal thing with Kyujudo" is in reference to "Who Laws the Lawyers" by Delilah H. Smith https://archiveofourown.org/works/45499189
The rest of them are all references to previous stories that did happen and can be read.
—Callum Phillpott

Chapter 6's were embedded with the Paragraphs relevant to that chapter:

The character of Doctor Know is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Doctor Know, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.
Tetra-None Hepta-Oct and Professor H.M. Wogglebug T.E. are both in the public domain in one way or another.
You may remember a couple of others in the Scottish Division that I've neglected to mention - rest assured that that's only because I couldn't be bothered to paste in their paragraphs too.
Now, I didn't plan to have Doctor Know and Professor Wogglebug know each other - far from it. Even when, a couple of stories ago, Doctor Know briefly alluded to knowing Ozma, I didn't plan on this connection because why would I? However, when reading Marvelous Land of Oz, I noticed that the person who accidentally created Professor Wogglebug (Professor Nowitall) basically had the same name as Doctor Know… and, well, the awful realisation wrote itself.
—Callum Phillpott

Chapter 8's ended with:

And so we complete an entire year of me not acknowledging that "MFS" is also a fairly common internet abbreviation of a rude word that Oedipus would find relatable.
I'd like to say a quick word of thanks to anyone who has read this far. I know I've made a bit of a fuss about how this whole series was unplanned, but really I wouldn't have it any other way. This series is a mess, but I like writing in it, and I'm glad that at least a couple of people ended up as the audience.
—Callum Phillpott

Though not mentioned in the author's not, the alternative Jenny Over-There's backstory is a parody of the events of Stephen King's Carrie.

Read online

Annals of the Jen: One Year of Jenny Over-There was released on Archive Of Our Own, where it is still available.

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