The Disappearance of Toby Jones

 

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Author's Notes - Florence Amelia Newman

Hello dear reader, and receive a generous supply of my genuine apologies because I am really coming from an ocean of ignorance on what or how I should write here having never been a fan of autobiographies. Yet here I am about to start writing one.

I guess introductions must come first. My name is Florence Amelia Newman, and every word I write down are words that may seem fictitious to such an extent that you have probably found this in the fiction shelf of the bookshop. And dependent upon the year from which you are reading these words, you may not believe one single word. And that is fine. As a famous wise man once said - 'we are all stories in the end.'

On the other hand, you may be reading this in a time period where these books will be your history. And I can assure you, despite what you may have been told - every single word is the truth. Well, nearly every word as there are some events that I inevitably did not witness, but I will give you my word that they are true. I can prove it, but this is not the place. What I am trying to say is I may have missed out a spoken word or three, but the gist of what is said and done is true.

I have just made myself another pot of tea, and as I sat back down at the typewriter - I came to the realisation you may never have heard of me. And there in its innocent essence, is the challenge I have in writing this series of autobiographies is because you see, I am a time traveller and as a time traveller, things do not happen in the order everyone expects.And worse still, some people change events to suit their desires.

If you visit my grave in say 2022, you will discover that because I lived between 1990 and 2020 - I therefore died at the age of thirty. Dig a little deeper, and you will realise I am an orphan. This was a fact I have always known since I can remember due to my black skin, whilst my adoptive parents were white. I always knew who my biological parents are because you see, my adoptive parents were my biological parents' brothers and sister-in-law. I am the only child of William and Ruth Newman - Ruth was a second generation descendant from the West Indies whilst William was an Englishman who saw past her skin colour. And as for my adoptive parents, Colin and Anne Newman, I too was also their only child. This was an incredibly isolating experience. I knew from whom I came from, I could listen to countless stories from relatives and I could even trace my mother back through her ancestors back to Jamaica and my father to London. But I could never explain where I came from. I hope this makes sense.

And to make things even worse, at school I had a very unusual and unique personality, which due to the homogenised nature of school, meant I had very few friends. Things did not start well because since I was six years old, I have refused to use apostrophisations because I believed the two words were having an affair - the exception being when an apostrophe is used to demonstrate a possessive. Here I will write 'you're' when other people used them, but I never use them in everyday life.

Then I became a time traveller and that makes me even more unusual. Eventually I will explain how I will die, my adventures on Venus, Mars and further into the wilderness of space. The order in which I will write may confuse you, but I have decided to write my tales in a linear chronological perspective. I will not write about my childhood because although they were happy and painful at the same time, but it belongs to me. It made me who I am, and I feel extremely protective of it.

So now I have to welcome you to my life. This first book is about how I came across time travel, met Temporal Agent Sara Alejandra Zubani, Amanda Watson and Matthew Morgan - and most importantly, became intertwined with the extraordinary life of Dr Toby Finlay Jones.

Sit down, make a cup of tea, and well - enjoy dearest reader.

Florence Amelia Newman

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Part One

The Introductions

 

"In this time period, there were many people introduced to time travel who refused to believe in its possibility. Florence Newman was not one of those people."

Altair Betelguese

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Chapter 1 - Welcome to St Andrews

Location: St Andrews, Scotland, Thursday 11th October 2007

As I progressed through secondary school, I found it natural to get caught up with the complete void of responsibility and to ignore the possibility of real life. The first time I remember the reality of real life trying to gain my attention, came when I started to pick my universities. Having grown up there, I decided to remain within Scotland but the process of university applications I found ridiculously tedious. I quickly honed onto three institutions: Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews. I would explain how I picked these three, but I can no longer find those several pros/cons lists I had made.

I had narrowed it down to three universities because as you will be aware if you have gone through the process (or maybe this is particular to my secondary school), you are only allowed to go to three university open days - unless of course you can go to a fourth during half-term, or you pull a 'sickie'. And on these open days, the universities allow you to visit their faculties and professors in a seductive process to make you join them. They put on long boring talks where several people will basically try and claim their city or town is literally the greatest place in the universe, and that the whole of the universe has been trying to copy them but they failed miserably. And I think this attempted seduction completely misses the mark, because what matters as just like falling in love with a person, is that initial meeting with the place.

St Andrews is a former Royal Burgh in the beautiful county of Fife, and if you are aware of the town, it will most likely be for one of three reasons. One, the Raisin weekend tradition where the students have two parties that are hosted by their academic parent which culminates with a giant shaving foam fight on the Monday morning. Two, the fact Prince William and Kate Middleton graduated there, and afterwards whenever they did something interesting the media seemed to descend upon the town, as if the students and staff possessed an unique insight into the minds of British Royalty. Three, fiddlesticks on toast, I forgot golf. That shows how much I care about a sport where you hit a ball before having to walk a couple of hundred yards to hit it again. Glorified walking and worse still you do not get to walk anywhere interesting. And why do sports still refuse to use the darn logical metric system? Yes, St Andrews has the famous 'Old Course' which has a bridge on the 18th hole. But the fourth, and what I meant to be the third reason, Chariots of Fire. That famous scene of the motion picture set to that intoxicating and iconic theme music was filmed on St Andrews' beautiful West Sands Beach. Oh, and of course, reason five but that is what this autobiography is about. But back to Chariots of Fire to tie this diversion up in an attractive knot, it was this beach that helped make me decide to go to St Andrews.

Well there is only a minuscule of truth in that the choice had been basically made at the discovery of the tea house called 'The Tea Portal', but I will describe this place in significantly great detail at the suitable moment. But I make the claim about the beach, because the beach was the setting of where my life made a large turn without me noticing as I sipped on my Earl Grey Tea. It is amazing to think that sometimes the actions that have the greatest impact on your life are the moments of inaction. I have already mentioned dear reader, that I did not have many friends at school, but one of those friends sat down next to me. His name was James Williams, a person that I had sat next to in a couple of classes. One of his earliest things he told me was to complain about the amount of times he had heard he was 'the ultimate present', simply because he had been born on Christmas Day. I think, in fact, he said that before telling me his name. That might have been a warning.

We soon discovered, as you do, that we had things in common: Doctor Who, books, music, films etcetera, etcetera. I think I would call him funny and interesting, but I would never go further than that. Now this is where I confirm one of those ghastly rumours, that I am what you might call asexual. And although I lack the primal desire for sex, I still crave romantic companionship. Someone once told me that this meant I was an asexual heteroromatic, but I despise those types of labels for their lack of creativity. But whilst I never thought of him sexually, I do not think I ever thought of him romantically, even then. James is tall, around 180 cm with very shortly cut brown hair. He has uninviting pale blue eyes, and he had by perchance discovered a taste for brightly coloured shirts. Trying to describe him here is challenging because - well no, this is not the right place.

But the real reason why we became friends was because whilst I was at school, I was an outcast. There is an old phrase 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.' If there has ever been a more misguided phrase told to children, I would like to hear it. Breaking bones of course hurt, but it is obvious something has happened to you - you get a plaster cast and well everyone is utterly sympathetic to you. Words have the power to cut you deep in a way that means no one sees the damage, people then blame you and worse still, these scars can become the foundation of your personality. This is what happened to me during secondary school, and I lost the self-confidence to enforce myself onto the world. You slowly reign things back that are important to you, until you are the shell of yourself.

Until you meet someone who accepts you for all those flaws because they come accompanied with your positives. 

My apologies for this rather circumvented approach, I think if I ever give this to an editor they will probably retire. Anyway, back to sitting on a bench looking out on West Sands Beach. James sat down next to me.

"What you thinking?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"Ha! If there is one thing I know about you, it's that you are never lost for words or absent of thoughts. Just hope those words come out in the right order, haha."

"Words in the right order, truth do not tell us sometimes."

“Oh, getting philosophical now? Soaking in the academia, enhancing those grey cells?"

Disappointingly, he had missed my terrible Yoda impression.

"You sound like a real ignoramus. However, apart from my continuous completely irrational abibliophobia, do you really want to know what I am thinking about?

"That is sort of like why, I asked the damn question."

"Right now, I am looking out at this gorgeous stretch of sandy beach that seems to be endless in its beauty, and imagining waking up on a cold damp dreary December morning and having a pre-lecture walk along the beach."

"Does that make you happy?"

"I am actually not quite sure, sorry. It is rather like sifting through your dreams for grains of reality."

I drank my tea, and allowed the delicate lemon after-taste to dominate my thoughts for a while.

"Do you mind if I ask you, something - something personal Flo?"

"On the condition that you call me Florence. You know I hate Flo." I shuddered as I said 'Flo'.

"Are you interested in girls? I mean, like sexually?"

"Why do you ask?"

"It's just like, you're a friend, a great friend at. And well, y'know, like I have never, y'know, seen you show an interest in guys, y'know, like sexually." He refused to even look at my shadow.

"I, I just do not know to be perfectly honest. I do not think so. Everything I have ever read, watched or heard about love talks about butterflies, and I have not experienced those said creatures."

Another pause.

"Why do you ask?" I began speaking, and then continued spurred on by silence. "Actually, why exactly are you friends with me? Surely it would be better for you to defenestrate our friendship?"

He seemed to think far too long over my question, to the extent that by the time he had grabbed my hand, I had begun to walk away.

“It's like music. You know the chart toppers, the ones that everyone sings on these reality shows. But once you listen to them, yes they are catchy, but they are dull. They go in one ear, and then out the other. And then you get the less successful albums and singers, but their songs stay with you. The lyrics feel tattooed permanently onto your mind, and it changes the way you view life. You Florence, are the latter.”

“So – are you saying I am your favourite record?”

“I guess so, I'm not really, like that good at this sort of a thing.”

“You are a lot better than you imagine.”

Dear reader, writing this I am aware of my extreme stupidity. I now realise that this was James' way of asking me out in the most roundabout manner possible. So when I kissed him on the cheek, it was not because of who he was, but what he had said. That he had said something so kind. Stupid ignorant idiot.

Once he could look at me, he said, "Just think, once you live here, you can finally be with people like yourself and be you."

Final warning sign that I completely ignored. And with that, we finished our hot drinks.

I want to use the rest of this chapter just to explain why I chose St Andrews. It was not because it was posh or elitist as I do not feel I am either, and in fact it was because of that elitism that I had ignored the Oxbridge universities. I am well aware that the quotient of elitism is seen from the eye of the beholder, so I may be completely misguided on both counts. And dear reader, please do not count this as another example of my ignorance. I was well aware that there was an upper-class nature to the institution, after all, the second-in-line to the British throne studied there. As you may gather, I never quite looked at my life as a story of reality, but rather an ongoing story itself. St Andrews is a picturesque town, with gorgeous Gothic architecture and it felt like the perfect setting for a new chapter. 

My experiences of Glasgow, rightly or wrongly and most likely incredibly wrongly, involved constant fear. In fact, when I travelled to Glasgow after graduation, it would prove this assumption would be as completely invalid as the idea the Earth is flat. But I believed this idea because I was frightened about leaving home, despite not having the happiest of childhoods. After all, it is like that moment when you are riding a bike, and an adult is pushing the bike and then he is not - then you realise. You either fall flat on your face, or you carry on. The seconds where both are a possibility is terrifying.

And Edinburgh was too near my home, it was like the back of my hand. It felt far too near and too equivalent to that classic 'going home to wash your clothes' scenario. I wanted an experience where it felt new and exciting, and St Andrews was just that.

We then walked along a road called The Scores until we reached the halls of accommodation called St Salvator's Hall. The outside was this beautiful Gothic building with battlements and a flagpole, and there was a gorgeous oak door beckoning the students in. Adjacent to the building was a beautiful lawn with a couple of trees, but mainly full of half-naked students drawn outside on a rare Scottish sunny day like magpies looking for silver.

James finally said something again. "The dining hall is meant to be like the Great Hall from Harry Potter."

Living in a Hogwartian environment, what else could you ask for in a story? Well, there was something else, and soon I found it.

 

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Chapter 2 - Freshers' Week

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Chapter 3 - A Curious Introduction

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Chapter 4 - Time Travel

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Chapter 5 - Sara Zubani and The Temporal Intelligence Service

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Chapter 6 - Invitation by Post

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Chapter 7 - Enter Mikel Doyle

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Chapter 8 - Doyle Questions Florence

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Chapter 9 - The Tea Portal

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Chapter 10 - Olivia

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Chapter 11 - A Temporal Twist

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Chapter 12 - Dr Alicia Stone

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Chapter 13 - The Bullet Casing

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Chapter 14 - The Lawyer and The Showdown

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Chapter 15 - The Safehouse

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Chapter 16 - My Stupidity

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Chapter 17 - Where Imagination Begins

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Chapter 18 - Olivia and Gabrielle

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Chapter 19 - Robert Mann

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Chapter 20 - The Heartbreak of Toby Jones

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Chapter 21 - Ceres

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Chapter 22 - The Wandering Planet

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Editor's Notes - Altair Betelguese

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~

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