Watch the Skies (short story)
Watch the Skies was a Christmas-themed Jenny Everywhere short story written by Scott Sanford for Christmas 2022, with a short epilogue being added on January 6th, 2023. Though principally starring his usual version of Jenny, it also featured a surprise guest appearance by Jenny Cornelius, the 1960s English Jenny who had featured in Sanford's previous full-length Jenny Everywhere story.
Contents
Plot
At past one in the morning on the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, a sleeping Professor Awesome is woken up by Jenny, who talks him into joining her on the roof. After mulling it over for a moment, he agrees, and, quickly getting dressed in his day clothes — complete with labcoat and essential gadgetry — he follows her to the said roof, where she explains that she wants to watch “the flyover”. The Professor slowly realises that she means “the bringer of presents… the lurker at chimneys… the eater of a billion cookies”; Jenny, appearing to treat him as incontrovertibly real, advises him not to say the name out loud, though she tells him that she borrowed an “Amulet of Unheeding” from Steve and Thoth just in case. Before they can see anything, however, Jenny is hit in the face by a large snowball coming from nowhere in particular, and they are then knocked down by a sudden gust of wind. When they get up again, there are contrails suddenly criss-crossing the sky, as though hundreds of aircrafts — or just one moving extremely fast — had passed over the city in the blink of an eye. Melodramatically angry, Jenny waves a fist in the air and shouts up at the sky: “You just wait! I know who’s driving the fat man this year!” — but she gets no reply, and Eric calms her down by calling her attention to the two scarlet presents with their name on them that are suddenly lying on a parapet.
In another world, it's Epiphany in the 1960s, and Jenny Cornelius has seized the chance to take out Laura. Their date is interrupted by the appearance of the “Kim's friend” Jenny, who, without preamble, drops a handful of snow down her other self's back, giggling that “turnabout is fair play”. After a moment's confused flailing, Jenny Cornelius admits as much and pulls the other Jenny into a big hug. Laura is rather confused about all this, asking if the “other Jenny” is some kind of a relative, but her manners prevail upon her common sense and she asks the other Jenny if she wants to join their day out on the town.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- This story stars Scott Sanford's default Jenny. She is described as speaking in a “broad American accent”.
- This story also features an appearance Jenny Cornelius, as previously seen in cameo roles in PROSE: Paying It Forward and PROSE: Morning After, and at greater length in PROSE: The Folly of Men. It is established that Cornelius is physically identical to the “Kim's friend” Jenny, save for a longer haircut, different clothing style, and accent.
- Jenny comments: “I’ve been a kid for trillions of years across all the universes, and I’m not done with it yet. Which is good, because there’s still lots of me being born every day, but that’s not really a thing for most people.”.
Laura Drake
- This story features Jenny Cornelius's corresponding Laura Drake as previously seen in PROSE: The Folly of Men. She is shown not to have previously known about Cornelius's multidimensional nature.
Universes
- The main body of this story takes place in the default universe of Scott Sanford's Jenny Everywhere stories.
- The epilogue takes place in the native universe of Jenny Cornelius.
- Jenny notes that there are “worlds where it’s always winter but never Christmas”.
Other
- “Tommy Tutone's music” (an appropriate choice) blasts from Professor Awesome's phone to wake him, although it is not clear that this was his chosen alarm clock as oppose to something default Jenny somehow arranged.
- He carries a number of tools in his labcoat pockets on a regular basis. On impulse, he additionally grabs “both robo-spiders and the stochastic photon homogenizer” and adds them to the contents of his pockets before joining Jenny on the roof.
- The “parapet at the edge of the roof” where the presents are dropped is also “where a few of David Lowe's ham radio antennas [are] mounted”.
- Jenny recalls that “it wasn’t that long ago that people celebrated Twelfth Night with feasts and revels”. Laura states that other than Jenny, only “the God-botherers” remember this.
Continuity
- Jenny Cornelius was previously seen in PROSE: Paying It Forward and PROSE: Morning After in minor roles, then at greater length in PROSE: The Folly of Men, which established her home time and place and introduced her corresponding Laura Drake.
Behind the scenes
Background
When releasing the story, Scott Sanford appended the following commentary:
| Two questions remain unanswered: What did they get for Christmas? And was that really the fat man or are the Jennies just putting him on? Soundtrack: Many of you will already know of Heather Alexander's March of Cambreadth (and if not, set aside a few minutes to take in a rousing war song); after this story enjoy the Christmas remix December of Cambreadth. |
| —Scott Sanford |
Read online
The story is available on the author's Dreamwidth website.
