JE: The Jenny Everywhere Museum TEB [corrected repost]
From
Jeanne Morningstar@21:1/5 to
All on Fri Nov 12 20:25:45 2021
I had accidentally published this before I had finished writing the introduction. Please disregard the previous post. It's been a long week, OK.
THE JENNY EVERYWHERE MUSEUM
By Jeanne Morningstar
Originally published 2011-2014
This is a collection of stories I wrote in the early 2010s, which lay
the groundwork for what I'm doing right now in The Hermetic Garbage of
Jenny Everywhere, which I'll shortly begin posting here. These stories
were posted on ficly, a now defunct collaborative writing site (itself a successor to an earlier site, ficlets) where people could write
short-short stories with a maximum 1024 characters, and allowed people
to write prequels and sequels to each other's stories. There were a
number of different challenges and collaborative proejcts, such as the
"Strange and Wonderful House" of which the Jenny Everywhere Museum was origiinally part. (Anything that doesn't makes sense there is probably a reference to recurring ideas/memes from that site, unless it isn't.)
Here I'm bringing together all the Jenny Everywhere vignettes I wrote
for that site, or at least the ones I still think are pretty good. Most
of them were written in 2011 and 2012, around the time I came back to
RACC for good, and a farewell piece from 2014 written when ficly shut
down. They're not arranged in the order of original publication, but
rather an order that feels thematically fitting.
I of course failed in the big creative project I set out for myself,
writing a set of Jenny Everywhere stories one day of every month. But I
came up with a lot of good and useful ideas along the way. I wanted to
develop more relationships for Jenny and explore how she perceived the
world, what it really means to be aware of all your lives across the multiverse. It's here I really start sketching out the relationship
between Jenny and Laura Drake, which is a central part of my take on the character. Over the years I've really struggled to convey what mattered
to me about the character, the potential I saw in her, but even if I
didn't inspire a huge new wave of creativity like I'd hoped, all that
writing over the years has added up to one of the longest, best and most developed stories I've written today, one that I actually seem likely to finish. I look a lot more kindly on all my weird old experiments now
because of that.
====
The Jenny Everywhere Museum
[June 7th, 2011]
This wing of the Infinite House was given by the Architect to Jenny
Everywhere to store mementos from her adventures and dangerous
artifacts. Only counterparts of Jenny and those they have chosen may
enter it.
Known contents include:
Statues of friends, companions and family of Jenny from throughout the
worlds.
Three perpetual motion machines.
A copy of the Voynich Manuscript with annotations written in a
completely different alien language from the manuscript itself, neither
of which are used in any known world.
A miniature city preserved from a dead world.
A key to the gate of Eromreven.
A battlesuit from the Third War of Ascension on Earth-33.
A portrait of Jenny painted by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 19th century on Earth-274 (where he is a vampire).
A floating pirate ship.
A maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
A zoo with various endangered species including unicorns, vegetable
lambs and giant balloon animals.
A lock of red hair.
The skull of an Elder God.
[REDACTED]
=====
Alone in the Wasteland
[June 15th, 2012]
As a child she used to look out the window late at night and watch the
stars, imagining herself among them. When she’d grown up she’d found a proper job (as a mining engineer) and become boring (apart from a brief
and disastrous stint in a punk band) but never quite gave up on that
dream. And now she was here, stranded alone in the grey wastes of an
alien world, far from home.
She hoped the base would notice she’d been cut off but knew they
wouldn’t care. She was good at her job but not indispensable. Saving her while the solar flare was on would be harder than finding someone to
replace her.
Except she wasn’t alone There was something coming her way: a strange
black thing with many eyes. There was something oddly familiar about it.
Then she remembered that she hadn’t just seen this thing before, she
knew what it was like to see the world through those eyes. And then she remembered something else, something too big and strange to put into
words, and wondered why she suddenly felt naked without goggles.
=====
Somewhere
[June 5th, 2011]
Somewhere I’m showing you another world for the first time. You can’t believe that I can really shift. I ask you to close your eyes, hold you
tight, and shift into another world. You open your eyes. At first you’re terrified but then you laugh. Your smile is the most beautiful thing
I’ve ever seen.
Somewhere we’re together in the park with our family. I’m playing tag
with our youngest daughter, running through the trees. You shake your
head and wonder when I’ll grow up.
Somewhere I watch as you kiss her beneath the moonlight. I tell myself
you’re happy with her and that’s what matters as I hold back my tears.
Somewhere the sky is burning and you lie dead at my feet. Even after
everything you’ve done I wish there could have been another way.
Somewhere I see you for the first time across the crowded room. You’re
the only one in this awful party who looks as uncomfortable as I am.
Ducking through the crowd, I flash my most charming smile at you and try
to forget all the reflections of you and me.
====
The First Voyage
[June 5th, 2012]
Laura was sitting alone in the bathroom, wishing desperately the party
would end and she could go home. Where was Jenny? Probably talking
someone’s ear off about physics. They’d have to find a designated
driver, because there was no way she was even remotely sober.
Jenny staggered into the bathroom, a somewhat unnerving grin on her
face. “Hey Laura, want to see something cool?”
“I suppose so?”
“I’m really a Shifter.”
“Er…what?”
“No, really! I have all the memories of all the other mes in all the
other worlds, and I can also jump between them. Like this. Hold on
tight!” Jenny had always made up these strange stories since they were
in high school, and Laura knew the best thing to do was play along.
Jenny grabbed her by the hand, and then she felt the world lurch around
her. She caught a brief glimpse of a clear night sky with two moons, and
then they fell to the floor in the bathroom. What just happened? Laura
hadn’t drunk anything…
Jenny groaned, clutching her head. “I’m never doing that again…”
====
Nowhere
[June 6th, 2012]
It was too late. However fast he ran, he couldn’t escape her. He heard
her footsteps behind him, coming closer every second, swift but
methodical. She grabbed his arm with a grip hard as steel and he felt
his legs collapse under him as he hit the pavement.
He’d only caught glimpses of her before but now he could see her
clearly. She was a statuesque blonde woman dressed in an elegant black
suit. She wore a polished black gas mask, which reflected the city
around her. The moonlight cast long shadows of the dumpsters and
scattered trash in the alley, but she herself had no shadow.
“What do you want?” he spat.
“You’re one of her friends, aren’t you?” Her voice was flat, distorted, emotionless.
“You mean Jenny Everywhere? Yeah, and I’m proud of it.” He sighed inwardly. It was always about her, wasn’t it?
“I’ll let you live, for now. Tell her I’m back. Tell her it’s her turn now.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I have no name. I lost it a long time ago. But some call me Jenny Nowhere.”
====
Showdown in the End Times
[June 2nd, 2012]
The octopus-headed man looked at her with its large, inky black
pupil-less eyes. It held a gun in every single one of its tentacles. “Do
you truly think you can defeat me, mortal?”
Jenny Everywhere smiled. “Absolutely.” She cocked her gun and
straightened her goggles. “Or are you scared?”
“I am beyond fear now.”
They stood alone in the desert beneath the weird, jagged rock formation
that loomed through the night. The crimson-robed man raised his staff. “Draw!” he said.
The Cthulhu Kid fired all of his guns at once. Jenny dodged the bullets
and fired at the creature, aiming straight at its head. It hit its mark, bursting through the back and spattering oozy black blood over the
desert sands.
Jenny holstered her gun and bent down before the creature. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s too late.” It laughed harshly. “The Old Ones are coming. The stars
are right. Look up.”
She looked up in the sky and saw that the stars had taken the shape of a
vast, alien creature. She looked it in the eye and stuck out her tongue.
====
The Seven Against Oblivion
[July 22nd, 2011]
“They said I was the world’s greatest hero. I had no idea how little
that meant until I left my world behind. We came together from countless
worlds to fight it. But we lost and everything was torn apart. Somehow I survived and wound up here, in this weird pseudo-universe made of bits
and pieces of destroyed worlds. I was the only one. You led us into
battle and promised us we could destroy it, and you lied. You had
millions of heroes then, and now all you have is a spy, an
archaeologist, a bounty hunter, a teenage wizard, and a vampire. Why
should I trust you again?”
Jenny Everywhere’s eyes were full of tears, but her gaze was still fixed
and determined. “You’re right. I did fail you. Every time it’s
manifested I’ve tried to stop it and failed. But that means I know every single way that doesn’t work. All I have to do is keep trying something different, and someday I’ll come up with one that does. And one day
someone, somewhere will be able to stop it. Maybe it’ll be us. Now who
wants to hear the plan?”
====
The Grey Stone
[June 9th, 2012]
She walked alone into the dim cave. It was filled with a crowd of people standing statue-still, looks of blank apathy frozen on their faces. An
immense grey stone that seemed heavier than the world squatted in the
heart of the room.
Each step into the cave was more and more tiring. She felt a crushing
weight pressing in on her from all sides. She wanted to scream but
couldn’t move her lips. All she could do is press onward, step by
painful step.
She felt she could hear the stone speak to her. [What’s the point? Great heroes from many worlds came here, hoping to defeat me. They stand here
neither living nor dead. What makes you think you’re any different? And
even if you win, that’s just one little victory. There’s so much evil in the many worlds, and there’s so little you can do about it. Your work
can never be complete.]
Its words seemed painfully true. But she struggled in her heart to find
an answer, and thought: *I reject your reality and stubstitue my own!*
A small crack began to appear in the stone.
====
Memento Mori
[June 16th, 2012]
“It’s too late,” said Death.
“No it isn’t,” answered Jenny.
====
The Fall of the Strange and Wonderful House
[September 10th, 2014]
And so it was over: all the artifacts had been auctioned off, the ghosts
had all found other places to haunt, the alchemists had moved their
Great Work elsewhere, and the only two people were left. One was a
dragon and the other was Jenny Everywhere.
“It’s strange,” said Jenny, “I haven’t been to this House in ages and I’ll still miss it.”
Then a bolt of lightning shot down from the lead-colored sky and struck
the House. A blue flame roared up and consumed the House’s vast bulk. In
a moment it was a ruin, its remains crumbling into the Tarn.
“So it goes,” said the dragon after a long silence. “All things must
have their time. I trust you have taken everything you need?”
“Yeah. Just came back for one last thing.” With a flourish of her hand
and a wide grin, Jenny revealed a tiny House the size of a Christmas
ornament. “It’s a House seed. I’m sure I’ll find some use for it.” She
tucked it into her capacious pocket.
And so they walked off elsewhere, leaving behind the silent shore of the
Tarn.
====
These stories were originally published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with
only one condition: This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, that others might use this property as they
wish. All rights reversed.
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