Timeless Passages (audio story)

 was the thirtieth Bernice Summerfield audio story released by Big Finish Productions. It was the second story of the seventh season.

Publisher's summary
For years the great Labyrinth of Kerykeion has been home to one of the largest libraries of human incunabula in the galaxy. Here, otherwise lost volumes are all carefully preserved.

From tomorrow, it's under new management.

Professor Bernice Summerfield is sent to acquire some of the rarest books for the Braxiatel Collection before the new corporate owners bulldoze their way in.

She's hoping for a quiet time searching the archives. Some chance. Soon she's investigating a horrible murder, and is caught up in a last-ditch scheme to save the entire library.

There's a vicious, insane killer cyborg on Benny's heels. And then ancient subterranean powers begin to stir...

Plot
With the largest private library of human publications outside of Earth due to be closed by its new owners, Benny is sent there by Bev to purchase as many items as possible for the Braxiatel Collection. She meets Sam Wolfe, a lawyer for OMD, the company which now owns the planet, as well as his infant daughter, Jean. They are welcomed to the Labyrinth of Kerykeion by the chief librarian, Archie Spool, who claims that Bev contacted the library despite Benny having been told that it was the other way round.

Spool shows the building to Benny and explains that its structure keeps decay at bay, ensuring that the books are not damages by the passage of time, and that this is why OMD have purchased the planet. She meets the librarian Hermione whilst looking through the rarest and most valuable books and asks Spool why he did not accept the Technocult's offer of copying the contents of the library, deducing that he wants Bev to purchase the entire planet and promising to ask her in the morning. Later, Benny is awoken from her sleep by a knock at her door and finds Jean crying in the corridor. She takes him to Sam's room and finds him cut into pieces.

Although Benny wants to investigate Sam's death, believing that OMD or the Technocult might be responsible, Spool puts her in charge of looking after Jean. Hermione arrives and leads her into the tunnels to the Eidolons, living statues to whom Benny hands over Jean for her protection at Hermione's request. The two of them then run from an assassin robot armed with numerous blades and are separated, with Benny running into Spool and learning that she has been gone for four days and that there is no librarian named Hermione. The robot catches up with Benny and attacks Spool, retreating when the Eidolons arrive and take the dying Spool away as he shouts to Benny that "the writing side wins history".

Benny finds Hermione, her memories hazy, at a pool with people using the library's properties to heal themselves, including Sam. When the robot arrives, Benny runs with Sam and learns that he brought Jean to the library because she has an illness in her bones which is slowly killing her and that he has transferred the planet to her and her descendants in perpetuity. Benny has worked out that the library is a time machine and warns Sam that he will die if he goes upstairs, but he goes so as to avoid damaging the timeline and is killed by the robot. The robot reveals that he is from the far future, hired by the descendants of OMD to kill Jean, and Benny destroys it with the Blinovitch Limitation Effect by throwing his own head from the future at him.

The Eidolons collect the remains of the robot and are told by Benny to ensure that the head is taken back to the beginning of the library to be used as a plant pot. She gets Hermione to knock on her past self's door to find Sam's body and says goodbye to Jean, who will go on to become Hermione and bring Benny to the library by writing to Bev. Benny and Hermione agree that the books that Bev has purchased will remain on permanent loan to the library and the adjudicators search for the robot, believing him to still be at large. Benny returns to the Collection, wanting to spend some time curled up with a good book.

Cast

 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Samuel Wolfe - Toby Longworth
 * Archibald Spool - Keith Drinkel
 * Hermione - Katarina Olsson

Crew

 * Cover Art - Adrian Salmon
 * Director - John Ainsworth
 * Executive Producer - Jason Haigh-Ellery
 * Music and Sound Design - Simon Robinson
 * Producer - Simon Guerrier
 * Writer - Daniel O'Mahony

Worldbuilding

 * Benny and Sam drink wine paid for by Bev.
 * Sam works for Omnispatial Mercantile Dynamics.
 * Benny leaves her diary at the spaceport.
 * Benny featured in several issues of Little Archaeologist.
 * Spool wonders if Jean is a paralegal.
 * Max works at the library.
 * The library's books include:
 * The Atrocity Exhibition, published by Doubleday and supposedly pulped.
 * The only known extant copy of Gay Bulgaria.
 * The Eigenblick Presidency, written by Robert Darlick.
 * Aristotle's Poetics Part III: Smokey is the Bandit.
 * Benny mentions the Library of Alexandria and the Splendid Biblio-Spiroplex of the Ten Billion Sapiens of Zumos Prime, which was accidentally inhaled by a space aardvark.
 * According to Benny, the Technocult could store the entirety of the library on the inside of a ball bearing.
 * Benny mentions Julie Andrews and Al Pacino.
 * Benny is a big fan of Occam's razor.
 * Benny believes that the robot's design looks Technocult or American Caliphate.
 * Benny mentions Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Red Riding Hood, Shock-Headed Peter and Chicken Little.

Continuity

 * Benny says that the Nazis did worse things than burn books. (PROSE: Just War, AUDIO: Just War)
 * Benny says that abandonment issues "can really poison the father-daughter relationship." (PROSE: Return of the Living Dad)
 * Hermione claims she the reason she doesn't want to hold Jean is because she's not good with babies, but actually it would cause the Blinovitch Limitation Effect. (TV: Day of the Daleks, Mawdryn Undead)