The Light that Never Dies (short story)

The Light that Never Dies was the third story in the Bernice Summerfield anthology Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries. It was written by Eddie Robson.

Plot
Bored, Benny contacts Braxiatel and agrees to help him catalogue the Braxiatel Collection's film library. After a while, she gets tired and decides to watch a documentary on the 22nd century rebellion on Delcanto which she had always wanted to see. In the documentary, three alien ambassadors are executed by the rebels and Benny notices that one of the ambassadors seems to be looking right at her.

Benny replays the video twice and notices minor differences in the ambassador's behaviour and that he seems to be begging her to stop. She shows the documentary to Braxiatel, who pauses it during the ambassador's execution and watches him moving in pain whilst everything else is frozen. After a brief disagreement about Braxiatel's rationality and disbelief in ghosts, they learn from the Anthropology department database that the ambassador is likely a Brv'cllnz, one of an advanced race of energy beings who never developed image technology as it can trap them.

Benny and Braxiatel watch the documentary again and pause it just before the execution. The ambassador identifies himself as Mrrct'llz and asks them to get rid of the film to release him from his agony. They cut the execution scene out and burn it outside the Mansionhouse in a stone dish, with Braxiatel promising to find any other copies and to check the rest of the film library to make sure that it has not happened to anybody else.

Characters

 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Irving Braxiatel
 * Mrrct'llz

Continuity

 * Benny still has the original of . It was a gift from the Martian invaders in The Dying Days.
 * Living beings trapped in celluloid — albeit more sinister ones — were featured in From Out of the Rain.