Jenny I've Got Your Number

That night, my father is away doing his work, while my mother is asleep early. I spend some time working, locking myself in my room like a 19th century poet. My rote work is exhausting after the sense of true insight I skirted earlier. Yet there is something relaxing, almost meditative about it. I also try and read some of our assignment for English, so I can stay caught up, futile as it may be. My earlier defeat stings. The problem is that I cannot concentrate on the task before me--my mind is always reaching forward into something else. Reading the Middle English is like marching through sludge, yet something about the tale of the three greedy fools who sought Death and found what they sought, and the undying wanderer who beat his stick on the earth, demanding freedom from this world, stirs and troubles me.

I go to sleep with numbers and pilgrims dancing through my mind. The hypocritical lesson of the Pardoner--radix malorum est cupiditas. A radix in mathematics is the number a system of counting is measured by--so the radix of our normal counting system is ten; the radix of binary is two. The root of evils is greed--desire. Or--the system of the counting of evils is measured by desire. Because I desire, I count the evils in my empty prison of a life. I do not desire gold alone, but the infinite, though I want control--I want power--I want freedom. I think of the numbers, dancing and rearranging in my mind; I turn them over and examine them like jewels, like buried treasure. 142,857. Hartnell Baker Troughton McGann Davison McCoy. 285,714. 428, 571. Each of these numbers reflect digits of 1/7. I think of seven as the number of divine perfection--the Real McCoy--and what it might mean to divide that--whether that is a representation of our material world. 142,857 is the first cyclic number in base ten--death and birth and death--the pardon cannot see the pardoner. Ideas pass through my mind, sharp yet incoherent, increasingly hard to put into words. And then

I feel myself moving through a space that is not space,

and I wake up on a bus.

It's not unlike the Greyhound we took on my family vacation of last year--my family is well off enough to survive without undue pressure, but only just. It is loud, sweaty and cramped. I wonder if I am dreaming but I have never felt this groggy in a dream before. And then I open my eyes

And I see vastness--a bus bigger than a cathedral. Surrounding me are strange creatures of all kinds. A crumbling mummy, a mer-yeti in a fish tank, a young man dressed like a Victorian poet with no shadow, a purple toaster headed gorilla...

And beside me, a girl around the same age as me. She is snoring like a chainsaw. I nudge her, trying to wake me up. She opens her bright eyes of deep brown and looks at me closely and curiously. She is Asian, I think, fairly dark-skinned, fat, bright blue lipstick, dressed in the sort of brown leather jacket an old-fashioned adventurer would wear. She wears a sort of flight helmet on her head--so she's either a pilot or a "steampunk" of some sort.

When she sees me, she meets me with a luminous smile, like an old friend. I've never met this woman, and I've never had any friends. "Hi, Laura!" she says, and waves. "Good to see you!"

I practially jump out of my skin. I'd become dissatisfied with the name "Holly" and started thinking of myself as "Laura." But I've never mentioned this to anyone before.

"How do you know me?" I blurt out.

"Well, uh... It's complicated." She giggles. Like so many things about her, I should find it irritating, but I don't. "I've never met this you, but I have met you. Well, this me has never met any you. But I still remember it."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"Well. OK, I should introduce myself. I'm Jenny." She extends her hand to me and I take it. Her grip is warm and firm. I think of the Tommy Tutone song--wonder if there's any special properties to the number 8675309. My memory of old XKCDs reveals it is--it's a twin prime.

"Hey there." Jenny waves her hand in front of my face. I blink. "You're zoning out there."

"Oh. I--I'm sorry."

"Nah, it's OK." She pats me on the shoulder. I smile nervously. I am used neither to giving nor receiving affection. "I love how much you think about things. What were you thinking about?"

"Er, numbers."

"Oh yeah! I love math. I'll bet I could tell you a lot of fascinating stuff about math, but I'm kind of in the middle of explaining things. Sorry, my mind moves on a lot of different tracks at once too."

"All right, then explain."

"OK. So first of all, parallel universes are real, but you've probably figured that out now. Second... So a lot of people are reflected across different realities. I can actually link up with the memories of all my analogs from those worlds."

My jaw drops, as I imagine just how much of a life she must have lived, how many things she must have seen and known. What she says is absurd, but she says it with such conviction I can scarcely question her, and of course, I'm here, and I really want to believe her with all my heart. She nods, as if she can see those thoughts in my mind--apparently, I'm well known enough to her that she can read all my reactions. This is a strange, intriguing and uncomfortable feeling.

"Oh, here's my card," Jenny adds. She hands me a business card with a rocketship emblazoned on it. It says:

Jenny Everywhere: Freelance Adventurer, Cause and Solution of Trouble. Righting Wrongs a Specialty.

Below it there's a paragraph in small type that reads:

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.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, so I tuck the card into my pocket. "All right then. Where are we, and where are we going?"

"We're on a Greyhound of Tindalos--the premier long-range interdimensional bus service in the multiverse. And we're going to Kan-Tavari--the World of the Storytellers--for the Feast of Shaharzad."

1. "And what's the Feast of Shaharzad?" I ask.

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