2609

2609 saw Professor Bernice Summerfield continue to have adventures working freelance accompanied by her son Peter Summerfield.

In the beginning of the year, a clone of Bernice was the President of Earth. (PROSE: Predating the Predators) She was assassinated by the end. (AUDIO: Secret Origins)

Events
In February, Bernice left Peter on Fomalhaut XI while she led an archaeological expedition to the Blood Citadel of Alukah for the Fomalhaut Museum of Forerunner Artefacts. She was accompanied by Mungo Cripps, Crayfish, Shabbir, Parvesh, and Davina. Upon entering the Blood Citadel, the expedition accidentally woke Olena, an ancient Alukahite vampire, and all save Summerfield were killed. Olena hypnotised Bernice and used her to escape Alukah. For the next four months, Olena masqueraded as Bernice's granddaughter "Elanore Summerfield" while slowly draining Bernice's life.

On 18 June, academics began gathering at the First Colonial University of Murigen for a conference on vampirology. Imogen Tantry, Antonio Finlay, and Luke Duke arrived on Murigen after a two week voyage from the St Francis Xavier University on Earth. Olena used Bernice Summerfield to get into the conference.

On 19 June, Emanuel Valeriani claimed to be a genuine vampire while delivering the inaugural talk of the conference.

On 20 June, Antonio Finlay gave a talk on the spiritual ontology of the undead and Bernice Summerfield gave a talk on her expedition to Alukah. During Bernice's talk, she temporarily broke her hypnotic conditioning and attempted to escape Olena.

On 21 June, Krisztina-Judit Németh gave a talk on the Haemovorax pathogen. By the night, Olena had infected most of the professors attending the conference. Bernice Summerfield, Imogen Tantry, and Lloyd Doihara prevented Olena from sending her new army of undead to infect the cosmos by killing them all. (PROSE: Predating the Predators)

Bernice attempted to apply for a position at the Depository, but by the time she arrived - on the day of Myrtle Bunnage's birthday - the facility no longer had the budget to hire new staff. However, before leaving Bernice discovered that the Depository was home to a handful of unique worm-like creatures that could recite any piece of prose they ate. While Benny ventured into the depths of the Depository to rescue the worms from cyanide gas being released in order to exterminate them, Peter confronted Bibliotaph Bunnage with a cooking robot named Mrs Tishpisti. It was discovered that Bunnage had released the worms into the Depository in an attempt to get more funding by making it appear the collection was in danger. The worms were given a safe home.

Shortly after the Depository debacle, Benny received a message from Bev Tarrant (AUDIO: The Diet of Worms) and Adrian Wall requesting for help in stealing a hard drive with a copy of Irving Braxiatel's mind from Vingus Bank. (AUDIO: Glory Days)