Please Retain Your Ticket for the Cloakroom (audio story)
Please Retain Your Ticket for the Cloakroom was the second story in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield audio anthology The Eternity Club 2, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Tim Foley and featured Lisa Bowerman as Bernice Summerfield.
Publisher's summary
A threat emerges from deep inside the hidden depths of the Eternity Club. Professor Summerfield and Secretary Pym must voyage into the unknown.
Plot
Handed a ticket for the cloakroom, Benny asks Secretary Pym where the cloakroom is and is instead told to leave the matter and hand the ticket to one of the clockwork butlers. Only once she promises total secrecy does he agree to take her there, donning hard hats and taking torches; the cloakroom is one of the asteroid's hollows, as large as a hangar, and holds antique vestments dating back to its earliest members. Following an incident involving an incorrectly stored terraforming globe brought by explorer Demington Smoot, a section of the floor collapsed and many of the earliest items were lost to the caverns below, but Benny is more than willing to descend to find what she is looking for and they descend using rope. However, they find the cavern empty and Pym admits that the clockwork butlers failed to return upon coming to salvage what they could.
Benny leads Pym down the cavern and come across primitive cave paintings of a gathering of hunters, which Pym says is impossible as the asteroid had no indigenous life. This excites Benny, who finally states that the ticket was given to her by Grizella, and she discovers further pictograms ahead before returning for Pym, who has disappeared. After being attacked herself, she wakes up tied back-to-back with Pym and explains that she believes they have been kidnapped by life-forms created thanks to Smoot's terraforming globe. Pym disputes this and notices when Benny claims that she was given the ticket by 312, making her realise that she has no memory of who actually gave it to her. As she tries to remember, the attackers return; they are the missing coats and seem to have formulated a religion which dictates that Benny and Pym are to be sacrificed to a geothermal vent.
Benny and Pym flee and climb a ladder to a locked hatch which Benny opens using the ticket number on the keypad. However, Pym notices that the ticket is blank and Benny realises that it is psychic paper, given to her by somebody to lead her to the caverns. They reach a construction hub beneath the Eternity Club and Benny suggests using its controls to jettison the coats out of the asteroid. As she investigates, she discovers that a huge amount of energy is being used as a psychic dampener for reasons that Pym refuses to elaborate upon but which she believes could be responsible for her not remembering how she came to be at the club. The coats attack and Benny uses her torch to set them afire whilst she and Pym flee, but its cries make her feel guilty for doing this and she uses the dampener to sedate them long enough for her and Pym to leave their territory.
Upon returning to the club, Benny goes to visit the Oldest, whom Pym claims has been at the club for 2,000 years, but the Nurse uses a power to affect her memory and get her to leave. The Oldest calls out to Benny as she leaves, but the Nurse hushes her and rhetorically asks if she knows what mercy is when she asks the Nurse to show her some.
Cast
- Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
- Secretary Pym - Nickolas Grace
- The Oldest - Niamh Cusack
- The Nurse - Dianne Pilkington
Worldbuilding
- The cloakroom's contents include:
- Demington Smoot claimed to have wrestled with Death.
- Benny has heard rumours of what Grizella does with her knitting needles and does not want to let her down as a result.
- Benny wonders if she was given the ticket by 312, the Contessa or Altazar.
Notes
- Please Retain Your Ticket for the Cloakroom was recorded at the Soundhouse on 4 October 2023.
Continuity
to be added
External links
- Official Please Retain Your Ticket for the Cloakroom page at bigfinish.com
Footnotes
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