Ficlet: Jane Doe

[estepheia]

Here's another little fic. Nothing great. The idea popped into my head and wouldn't go away, so now I've exorcised it and can move on.

TITLE: Jane Doe
PAIRING: none, this is about... Jane Doe
RATING: G
GENRE: Flashfic
SPOILERS: Well, sort of for AtS. It won't make much sense if you haven't seen "Shiny Happy People"
SUMMARY: A ficlet in the vein of 'something that never happened to'


Jane Doe

Hi, I’m Jane Doe, but you probably knew that already from your files. You’re new here, right? I’ve never seen you before.

Oh, I already told your predecessor. I don’t remember. But Jane isn’t such a bad name, is it? I mean, if you don’t like it, you can give me another one. I don’t mind, as long as everybody’s happy.

It’s alright, I guess. Sometimes the priests call me a stupid cow, but that’s okay. Cause I am. No, it’s true. But they give me candy, which is kinda nice, even though it tastes bitter, but I eat it anyway, because it would be rude not to. The walls are soft, which is nice too I guess, unless you want to write on them – not that I’m allowed to have pens or anything. But soft is good if you need something to lean against. I’m really not complaining.

You’re asking me all those questions, right? Is it okay if I ask you one as well?

Thanks. I was wondering, do you know what a taco is? I was wondering if this world has them, because you see, I haven’t had any, not in the 2342 days I’ve been here. Every seven days there’s a blob of food on my tray that looks, smells and tastes almost like mashed potatoes and every fourteen days there’s green jelly-o but never any tacos.

No. I mean, yes, I remember liking tacos, but that’s not it. I have to know so I can go home.

Oh, I can explain. You see, I’m working on this equation– which is kind of tricky without anything to write on, but I have a good memory and besides, it’s not like I have anything better to do. Have you ever head it said that the world is so small, you can reach anyone through a short chain of people? You know someone who knows someone who then knows someone else and that way a person can reach any other person …. And now I’m kind of thinking that the six degrees of separation maybe apply to worlds as well.

I have this theory that there’s an infinite number of worlds, all separated not by space - because that’s really a fallacy, I can write down the equation if you like - but separated by all kinds of differences, like the color of the sky, the number of suns, that kind of thing. And I figured some will have tacos, and others won’t. My home world used to have them.

See, to travel from world to world you just add and subtract details. So, if this world doesn’t have tacos, I have to include that in my spell, right?

Oh, I know for a fact that this is not my home world. Okay, the people here, at least the ones I’ve met so far, they don’t have horns or green skin, so ‘here’ must be closer to home than that other place, right? But it’s not home. We never had a wonderful god like Jasmine at home, I remember that much.

Thank you. Thank you so much. You’ll see, soon I’ll go home.

(525 words)


Also check out this interesting project: Small World Research. Amazing what one can find with a little help from google.

It seems that Microsoft Word counts words differently than other programs. When I uploaded my flashfic Hope to ffnet, that site maintained that the story has 950something words, but MS Word maintains it's 1000. Darn!

It's been said before but I'll say it again. The whole flashfic-a-thon was a roaring success. Such great quality. So much talent. I'm really quite amazed.

Comments

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Poor Fred. I could see this. It was great.

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

Hey, Lesley, did you notice? You're the first to comment. Again. Thanks, dear. :-)

[paratti.livejournal.com]

De nada. One of the advantages of being on the same side of the pond, and similar timezones, I get to go first. I like being first, just like I liked this fic.

[jennyo.livejournal.com]

aw. Poor Fred!