THE HERMETIC GARBAGE OF JENNY EVERYWHERE
Act I, part I
by Jeanne Morningstar
This is an ongoing story I've been posting on thejennyeverywhereproject.tumblr.com, writing an average of one segment
per day. (Which in practice varies a lot, but.) I’d been stalled on my writing for a while and I wanted to write a chaotic, improvisatory piece
where I’d be able to add a little bit to it every day. I decided a Jenny Everywhere story would be perfect for that.
I’ve made a lot of attempts to write Jenny Everywhere stories that
didn’t work out, including the attempted LNH crossover from ages ago,
but the new and extensive Jenny Everywhere wiki
(jennyeverywhere.fandom.com) and the recent small burst of activity this
Jenny Everywhere Day
(
https://www.jennyeverywhereday.com/tagged/2021/chrono) inspired me to
have another go at it. It’s worked out surprisingly well so far, easily
the longest piece I’ve ever written with the character.
A major catalyst for this piece was finally reading all of Michael
Moorcock’s Cornelius Quartet. This story involves much more in the way
of sexual content and incendiary politics than previous Jenny Everywhere stories of mine, in keeping with its inspirations, the
counterculture-inspired Barbelithic roots of the character, and the
general tenor of the historical period in which we are living.
This story involves a number of open source characters and ones from
public domain literature and Golden Age comics; all the attributions
will be gathered in the final post.
====
Josephus telleth us that the semblances of the islands changed
themselves by reason of the divers adventures that by the pleasure of
God befell therein... For, when they had entered into a forest or an
island where they had found any adventure, and they came there another
time, they found holds and castles and adventures of another kind, so
that their toils and travails might not weary them, and also for that
God would that the land should be conformed to the New Law.
--The High History of the Holy Graal, translated by Sebastian Evans
====
I
--and everything was falling apart around her. Shards of time-crystal,
pieces of the fundamental structure of the cosmos glittering like
shattered glass.
She had to pull herself together. Weave the cosmic tapestry back
aright--but every time she tried to pull a thread, it slipped through
her fingers.
Flashes of her lives and memories like fragments of dream vividly
remembered but never fully understood--rendezvouses under the moonlight
and summoning rituals; battles in the sky and card game duels. Through
all that glittering kaleidoscope of possible life, she must focus on
something. If she's everything, she can't be anything. Think, focus--
2021. Jenny rubs her eyes and looks at the google docs screen in front
of her. She knows that there's something important she has to do but
can't remember what...
II
She remembered--a long time ago, longer ago than it felt like it should be--sitting in front of a test and desperately grabbing for an answer,
then finding herself drifting off into some fantasy about the Three
Musketeers and Dracula. Back then, she really had believed she was some
kind of multiversal adventurer who existed and fought evil in every
universe, sharing the minds and memories of all her counterparts and
sometimes even shifting between worlds. She'd had elaborate fantasies
based on some weird mishmash of 60-80s British counterculture media
(Moorcock, Moore, Morrison and the rest) and half-digested occultism and quantum physics. Now she was a well adjusted adult, or at least could
pretend to be one; she'd left the whole elaborate fantasy life behind.
She slowly woke up as she drank the coffee and munched on her toast with
jam. She heard Laura stirring on the bed. This universe sucks, but at
least we're friends here, she thought, then violently shook her head,
clearing out the delusions.
"Heya," said Jenny, walking into their bedroom. "I'm going out to the
library in a bit."
"Don't forget to wear a mask," Laura muttered from the bed.
"Don't worry, I won't," said Jenny. She took the huge, bulky gas mask
off the wall and snapped it onto her head. She checked the weather on
her phone; the reality stability was 81%. Time to head out.
III
The sky was a dull staticy grey. Everything was vague and unfocused, too
hot and too loud. A screeching wind howled around that sounded weirdly
like the dialup noise; a world haunted by the wreckage of old
technology. Jenny tried not to take in the world around her as she
walked through it. She ignored all the other gas-masked figures trudging
down the sidewalk, the Chaos-touched homeless denizens huddled in the
streets and parking garages. To get through the daily order of her life,
she had to act like it all didn't exist.
Wasn't she supposed to save this world? Whatever happened to the
Shifter? She'd spent her life waiting for the moment when she'd become a
hero and it had never arrived. But of course, that had been just a dream.
IV
Jenny entered the library, which of course was bigger on the inside.
Keeping a lot of books in one place was dangerous in unstable reality conditions, so each room was bounded by a carefully maintained magic
circles painted in scarlet. The central area was empty, opening up to a
series of circular terraces rising above, and at the top was a dome
painted with the night sky with the zodiac constellations painted on it
in gold. The librarians shuffled by in their robes and blank white masks.
Activating a glyph on the floor by touching it with her foot and
speaking the right word, Jenny floated up to the second level, which
held the poetry section. She searched through the disparate crowd of
books to find the one she was looking for, the complete poems of Emily Dickinson. She'd owned a copy of this once but it had gotten lost when
she moved, or the last time reality fell apart.
Jenny sat down on a large armchair, closed her eyes and flipped through
the pages, feeling them flutter under her fingers. She liked to divine
the future by reading Dickinson's poems at random, eschewing more
traditional choices like the I Ching, the Bible or the poems of Vergil.
She knew, though, that she was looking for a particular poem, though she wouldn't know which one it was until she saw it. Peering through the
lens of the gas mask, she saw it:
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
Something about the words set off a deep resounding echo in her memory.
As she meditated on the words, imagining the house of Possibility, until
she almost felt that she was in another place...
But that feeling was gone as quickly as it had come. Jenny sighed and
put the book down on the armrest. That was when she realized she was no
longer alone.
V
A librarian stood in front of Jenny, deep in their velvet robes woven
with tapestry-like plant patterns in green and gold, their body
concealed beneath a white bodysuit of an unknown material, their face
hidden by a featureless mask of porcelain, the color of a bleached skull.
"Beware!" said the librarian. Its crackling voice seemed to be a
transmission from the distance.
"Huh?"
"Beware the hares of March." Its voice clicked and crackled. "Beware the
march of ideas. Beware of God. Follow the Red Lion. Solve et coagula."
"Okay?" said Jenny. The librarian tried to say something in return, but
it was lost in a storm of static, its voice becoming a thousand voices
speaking over each other. And then it was gone.
VI
Before Jenny could get her book checked out, the chaos alarm blared on. Everyone got off their sheets and rushed for cover. The shelves shook;
books were falling down from the sky like rain. Jenny found herself
borne on a wave of books, carried into a whirlpool of rustling pages.
The books swallowed her up.
---
Jenny was walking home to her apartment, the library books in her tote
bag. She'd picked up the collected poems of Emily Dickinson for herself,
and a book on time crystals for Laura. She'd also stopped by the bagel
place nearby to grab some bagels and cream cheese.
She knew there was something else important she had to do, but she
couldn't remember what.
VII
Jenny walked in and saw Laura lying dismally on the couch. She patted
her on the head, mussing her red hair. "How goes it?" she said.
"Life goes on, unfortunately," said Laura. "Did you get the book?"
"Sure did!" Jenny handed her the book on time crystals. "OK, so, what
exactly is a time crystal?"
"Well, you can find out by reading the book."
"OK, but explain it to me like I'm five."
"A crystal is a repeating lattice structure in space, and so a time
crystal is a repeated structure in time."
"Huh."
"It's very useful for quantum computing. Or will be, as soon as anyone
actually makes one."
"Ah, OK." Jenny kne