B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (230 page)

2593 (Wednesday, 8th May) - The Dying Days
 [846]

Benny Summerfield was offered the chair of archaeology at St Oscar’s University on Dellah. She received the job offer in 1997 despite never actually applying for the position. The eighth Doctor dropped her off, and they enjoyed a fond farewell. He also gifted her with Wolsey the TARDIS cat.

The People’s supercomputer God had brainwashed Benny into joining the St. Oscar’s staff, preparing her for the coming day when she would help to free the conceptual entity MEPHISTO.
 [847]

The Black Guardian transported the con man and art dealer Menlove Stokes to Dellah from the far distant future. Stokes became a Professor of Applied Arts at St Oscar’s.
 [848]

2593 - Benny: Oh No It Isn’t!
 [849]

Benny, in her post as the Edward Watkinson Professor of Archaeology at St. Oscar’s, accompanied a team of academics to the quarantined planet of Perfecton. The missile containing the encoded remains of Perfecton civilisation struck Benny’s ship, the
Winton
, and impacted with Professor Archduke’s thesis on obscure theatrical forms. The missile’s quantum fluctuations manifested aspects of Archduke’s thesis, and so Benny’s team and some Grel - information monarchs / pirates with squiddy faces - found themselves in a world governed by pantomime. Benny passed as a young man named Dick Whittington, and her cat Wolsey temporarily became a talking biped. She ended the scenario, and her team escaped as Perfecton’s sun went nova. Archduke acquired the data module containing the Perfecton culture.

The Knights of Jeneve captured Chris Cwej and put him in suspended animation.
 [850]

The Irving Braxiatel who was flung through the Time Vortex during his struggle with Lord Burner arrived on Dellah. He met Benny just once
 [851]
, realised that she was familiar with an alternate version of himself, and avoided contacting her until 2616.
 [852]

2593 - Benny: Dragons’ Wrath
 [853]

Irving Braxiatel was presently the head of the St. Oscar’s Theatrology Department, and - from his perspective - met Bernice Summerfield for the first time. The warlord Romolo Nusek sought to further his power by proving that his ancestor, Hugo Gamaliel, once held a colony on Stanturus Three. Benny used the low-grade nuclear device hidden in the prized Gamaliel Dragon to obliterate the power-mad Nusek and his castle.

2593 - Benny: Beyond the Sun
 [854]

The Sunless conquered the planet Ursu, and returned the Blooms stolen from them to their homeworld. Benny - with some help from her ex-husband Jason Kane, who approached her at a dig on Apollox 4 - deduced that the Blooms were a stellar manipulator. After being given the right keys - a particular brother and sister the Blooms had spawned - it generated enough energy to revitalise the Sunless’ star.

2593 - Benny: Ship of Fools

Earth’s seas were now a thick black sludge. The famed thief Cat’s Paw stole an Olabrian joy-luck crystal from Marcus Krytell, one of the richest men in the sector. With the Olabrians prone to committing mass murder to recover their crystals, Krytell asked Bernice to handle the ransom exchange on the maiden voyage of the
Titanian Queen
, a luxury liner. Benny unmasked Cat’s Paw as Isabel Blaine, a construct of the Catan Nebula. The
Titanian Queen
was destroyed when its artificial intelligence went mad, but Benny and Cat’s Paw saved the passengers. In retribution for Krytell’s crimes, Cat’s Paw returned the joy-luck crystal to him - but also informed the authorities of its location, causing Olabrian battle cruisers to swoop down on his location.
 [855]

On Boxing Day, 2593, Benny won a bet on Fat Lightning, odds 8-1, at the annual St. Oscar’s slug-racing championships. She celebrated by “not getting absolutely bladdered”.
 [856]

2594 (January) - Benny: Down
 [857]

Tyler’s Folly declared independence from Earth, and the Republican Security Force responded by staging a military coup, declaring the colony there a police state. Benny’s actions helped the conceptual entity MEPHISTO to emerge, but prevented it from remaking reality in its image. MEPHISTO’s philosophy of pain amidst a utopia aided the further development of the People of the Worldsphere.

2594 (January) - Benny: Deadfall
 [858]

The Knights of Jeneve searched for descendants of their founder, Vazlov Baygent, hoping to host his preserved memories in one of them. Chris Cwej - identified as one of Baygent’s descendants - and Jason Kane thwarted the Knights’ efforts to find a Baygent-host aboard the
KayBee 2
, a prison ship.

2594 - Benny: Ghost Devices

The supercomputer God asked Benny to join an archaeological expedition to Canopus IV, where she found the Spire built by the long-dead Vo’lach race. Benny caused two Vo’lach Planetcracker missiles to travel into the past and damage the Spire. As God intended, this averted the paradox pertaining to the Spire’s nature, saving billions of lives.

2594 - Benny: Mean Streets
 [859]

Benny and Chris Cwej went to the planet Megerra and exposed The Project - an illicit undertaking by DevCorps to create genetically engineered miners with enhanced stamina. DevCorps was bankrupted. The Combine was currently the biggest crime syndicate in the galaxy.

2594 - Benny: Tempest

Benny gave a lecture to the archaeological society on the colony world of Tempest, then left for the spaceport aboard the
Polar Express
monorail. The business tycoon Nathan Costermann embarked on a murder and insurance scam involving the Drell Imnulate - an artifact of the Drell religion. After Benny exposed his plans, Costermann fell to his death.

2594 - Benny: Walking to Babylon
 [860]

!Ci!ci-tel and WiRgo!xu believed that the People of the Worldsphere had become complacent, and tried to goad the People and the Time Lords into war by establishing a treaty-violating time corridor to ancient Babylon. Benny went into the past and stopped the rogues, removing the need for God to destroy the time-corridor - and Babylon - with a singularity bomb.

2594 - Benny: Oblivion

The sentient spaceship
Schirron Dream
sought help from its old friends - Benny, Jason Kane, Chris Cwej and the late Roz Forrester, the last of whom the ship brought through time as a 20-year-old - after disruptions in space-time made its crew go missing. The wealthy Randolph Bane had found the Egg, an artifact in the Shadow Depository, and hoped to gain immortality from it even if the universe consequently perished. Bane and his rival, Simon Deed, were time-looped. Roz destroyed the Egg, but its final burst of power erased her memories of these events. The
Schirron Dream
crew was located, and Roz was sent back to her native time.
 [861]

2594 - Benny: The Medusa Effect

The
Medusa
had now been adrift for two decades, and Benny joined an expedition to recover it. She and Braxiatel learned that the Advanced Research Department at St. Oscar’s had been complicit in the deaths of the
Medusa
crew, but remained silent in exchange for a confession from Taffeta Graize, the main culprit. A synthoid containing the dead crew’s memories killed Graize.

2594 - Benny: Dry Pilgrimage

Genetic engineering had now eliminated all major human cancers and blood disorders. Cigarettes contained no harmful substances, but very few people still smoked. Chateau Yquatine was in production.
 [862]

Saraani pilgrims fled an atheist revolution on their homeworld, and sought to establish themselves on an island on Dellah. Benny joined the Saraani aboard the cruise ship
Lady of Lorelei
as they searched for a suitable locale. Czaritza Violaine, the exiled leader of Visphok, cut a deal with some of the Saraani: they would use their mind-transference abilities (part of their reproductive cycle) to shift the minds of Violaine’s aged veterans into weaponised bioconstructs, in exchange for Violaine liberating Saraanis. The agreement went south, and Violaine was killed.

In 2594, the fox-like Valethske searched for their former gods, the Khorlthochloi, and fought with the Sontarans. The Earth Empire had colonised the Thynemnus system, and a mass immigration led to tensions. The planet Korsair was established to settle disputes. The Valethske attacked one of the new colonies, overwhelming the Korsairs and capturing colonists for their larder.
 [863]

On Ordifica, Fitz was initiated into Faction Paradox around 2594. Laura Tobin, who would become the Doctor’s companion Compassion, was sent to Ordifica the same year.
 [864]

2595 - Benny: The Sword of Forever
 [865]

Armstrong City was a settlement in the Sea of Tranquillity on the moon.

Marillian, unofficially the third-richest man in the world, now owned London and Greenwich. Benny encountered Marillian while investigating the journal of Guillaume de Beaujeu, and platonically married him to get a childbirth license - a pre-requirement for her accessing the texts within the British Library. Marillian assisted Benny in recovering the finger of John the Baptist from Castle Arginy, and what they believed was the skull of Christ from a Templar museum in Paris. He then made off with both items.

Benny realised that four items associated with Christ - the Spear of Longinus that pierced Christ’s side, Christ’s Crown of Thorns, the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant - could be combined to form the Sword of Forever: a device capable of creating entire worlds and timelines. Marillian’s master, Gebmoses III, died while trying to use the Sword to retroactively create a master race cloned from Christ’s skull.

Evidence suggested that Benny had died using the Sword - which was intended for use by a higher power, and would kill any human who operated it - to recreate Earth’s timeline after its destruction. She dutifully welcomed God into her heart and died to activate the Sword. Earth’s timeline was reinstated, and Benny was restored to life in a new body.

St. Oscar’s University Press published Benny’s
An Eye for Wisdom: Repetitive Poems of the Early Ikkaban Period
in 2595.
 [866]
Bev Tarrant, a skilled thief from the future, found herself in the year 2595.
 [867]

c 2595 - Benny: Buried Treasures: “Making Myths”
 [868]

Benny and her friend Keri, a Pakhar journalist, visited the declining tourist planet Shangri-La; Benny claimed to have discovered the famed Mud Fields of Agrivan there. A video of Keri running atop a giant cart wheel motivated thousands of Pakhar to make bookings to Shangri-La, reviving the planet’s economy.

c 2595 - Benny: Buried Treasures: “Closure”

On the planet Panyos, the despotic regime led by Ulrich Hescarti ended when he was shot in the back by one of his own people. After witnessing the horrors of Hescarti’s ethnic cleansing programme, Benny used her time ring to travel back and change his personal history.

2595 - Benny: Another Girl, Another Planet

Archaeologist Lizbeth Fugard researched the heritage of the colony planet Dimetos by studying the industrial sites established there by Eurogen Butler. Bantu Cooperative, a weapons manufacturer, sabotaged Fugard’s operations to conceal how many installations had been built atop Eurogen nuclear reactors and disused mine workings, hoping to curry favour with the Dimetos administration. Benny stymied Bantu by destroying their largest research facility, but obliterated the biggest Dimetan archaeological site in the process.

The only surviving Dimetan, Csoker, killed himself rather than endure as the last of his race. Fugard became a professor of sidereal mythology at Youkali University.
 [869]

2595 (21st June) - Benny: Beige Planet Mars
 [870]

On Mars, human slaves were illegal, but vat-grown clone slaves were permitted. “Spartan” was slang for a staunchly homosexual soldier who detested weakness in either gender.

Jason Kane had embarked on a lucrative career writing semi-autobiographical xenoporn novels; his first book,
Nights of the Perfumed Tentacle
, sold twelve million copies. Bernice’s
Down Amongst the Dead Men
was in its sixth printing. Benny was attending an academic conference that celebrated the five-hundredth anniversary of Mars’ terraforming and had a passionate reunion with Jason Kane - who, unknown to her, was in a relationship with the organiser of the event, the Pakhar named Professor Megali Scoblow. Benny failed to prepare her paper for the conference and instead gave a stream-of-consciousness delivery - in which she accidently exposed fellow academic Elizabeth Trinity as the notorious war criminal Tellassar.