Chapter One
Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps truth and fiction are not so disparate? Not so distinct from each other as to cause the one to be barred from being near to the other? Both are neither that elusive thing – that missing element needed to be fully transported to another realm of belief...Fact.
But then, isn't fact in itself only the perception of the audience it is played to? Flat Earthers' will continue to believe that the horizon falls away into nothingness. Faked moon landing in an American airbase hanger. Conspiracy theorists - that Elvis retired and returned 'Home'. For many, these are factual realities. That these occurred are never without doubt – despite proof, despite evidence, despite truth. Because belief...belief transcends the ordinary. Belief evokes an unnatural reaction within us all, and it flies against all hope of being proven. In kind.
It is much like the idea of time. Planes of existence, this present, now the past, soon to be the future of one of us. So many tangles. And each thread...Ah! Each thread...they can knot surprisingly easily.
I should know. I became caught in a skein so tightly, I never found my way out. I became embroidered into one of the most famous fictional narratives of all time. Became a caricature of myself and found the truest friend and sense of purpose which it has been my honour to know and to experience.
Let me enlighten you. Although I can deduce you may have gathered that this fiction, this telling may extend even your ability to believe the impossible. For what is impossible does not necessarily mean to say could never be. Or, to put it another way, improbable.
It began, oh so many years ago...maybe it was just yesterday. Another of those temporal anomalies. A glitch. A mistake. A stitch in time. I am a nurse. A nurse in the 21st Century. Yet I lived...I live in the 19th. It is surprisingly comfortable. Trappings free. I practice as freely as my gender will allow – and when I can't...Well, when I can't, I am able to be as productive as I can be. As you are aware. Yet unaware to the extent...
John Watson worked at Guy's. He had returned from the second Anglo-Afghan war, a campaign so similar in rationale to those we have fought since and before that when he talked of the politics I could gauge the turns and twists and flaws before he had even grasped the situation as he spoke. He was...broken; he was – is – the most placid and pragmatic creature to ever walk the earth. Solid, stoic and dependable. A dry wit and a sharp insight. He would be by all accounts, the most unremarkable of men in todays society. But it was not today. It was yesterday. And so he stood out. At least to me. And my sister. Oh yes, I didn't slip back alone. I didn't fall by myself. Others. There are others.
James.
By my last count, of course this is only a rough estimate, there are at least three openly honest time trippers. I use the term 'time tripper' for want of a better word. Imagine time as a ball of string - each strand is separate, yet touches others wrapped upon itself and from then each moment on the thread can jump where it is frayed. Does that make sense? A frayed edge, enough to cause a fall through space and time and possibility. It is lovely. It is wonderful. It is impossible to come back - as far as I know. So, I stated, James - of whom you are all acquainted - Moriarty; Marie, who you are also aware of but the details of her altered identity are as yet unknown to you and myself.
Suzanne.
The day was unremarkable - the circumstance as to how I arrived so mundane as to make it hardly worth entering but I will because of where and what the outcome happened to be. An unremarkable cool day in March, the Black Mountains of Wales clouded. Tips of the landscape wreathed in the washy colourless mist of late winter/early spring. I was holidaying on a whim from work.