I am sorry, I think I went a bit mad there. I’ve calmed down a bit now, and I think my terrible depression has passed – for the time being at least. Reading back what I’ve been writing for the last few weeks, I feel ashamed. Ranting and raving isn’t going to get me home, nor is the pathetic blubbering I started to indulge in. This was intended to be a report of what I found and where I’ve been, in the hope that the team might be able to recover me. The sort of thing I’ve been writing recently is no use to anyone, so I’ve just gone back and wiped everything, from the time I first started to feel insane – or trapped, or whatever the mood was.

Right, so where were we? Two months ago, it seems.

Well, briefly, as you may guess, I was found out, trying to impersonate a priest. My Latin wasn’t up to it, nor was my history – and in particular my history of this world. I fell down trying to impress a local law officer (?Sheriff/bailiff – not quite sure of his title) by talking about a trip to Rome, and meeting the Pope.

It seems the Pope isn’t in Rome – hasn’t been there for centuries! The capital of the Church is in Constantinople. My memory of church history in the early centuries is a bit hazy, but I suspect the East/West split between the church never took place here. So I wasn’t trying to impersonate a Roman Catholic, but an Orthodox priest. I guess, now, far too late, that that is what Samuel meant, when he asked if I was from Nople – not the name of a local lord, but Constantinople.

Anyway, caught out, I went on the run. In a densely wooded area, that wasn’t too hard, except for the problem of getting food. I survived, although I started to despair, thinking that I’d never get home. That’s when the madness set in.

I really can’t describe what the last couple of months have been like. Anyway, I woke up a couple of days ago, to discover that another sending has brought me here.

It’s summer. I’ve got work, harvesting in the fields, which provides food, somewhere to sleep, and a few pennies to my name. I can at least get my breath here. I feel reasonably safe.

I’ll try to write some more in the next few days. I need to get some sleep now – harvesting here means 12-14 hours labouring in the fields.

I've been on the run for the last couple of weeks, which is why I haven't posted anything. I think I'm safe at the moment, but I'm tired and hungry.

I need a good few night's sleep, without constantly being on the alert for hunters, and a few square meals. Then, maybe, I'll feel up to explaining everything that's gone on.

In the meantime, I'm just posting this in case anyone from the team has found this site yet - just to let you know that I'm still alive. Bring me home guys.

OK, so I’ve been mistaken for a priest, and like a fool I went along with it –and now of course, it’s too late to back out. In a way I’m not too worried:

First, I may not be here that long – I almost expect to be sent somewhere else within a month or so.

Second, I think I can fool them – my Dad was a clergyman, which isn’t the same, I realise as being a priest here, but I have some idea of how to comport myself in a priestly way, and some idea about worship – even if I don’t actually believe any of it myself.

I’m not sure of the date (the locals here wouldn’t have any concept, I don’t think – and how do you bring it up, anyway?) but I assume we’re in the 10^th – 12^th centuries (but that’s a wild guess) – anyway, before the Reformation, so this is a Roman Catholic church, and everything is in Latin. That plays to my advantage, because I can say things in church which the locals won’t understand. I have to be a bit careful, obviously, because even if they don’t speak Latin, some words would be familiar. That’s where the internet has been so useful, as I’ve managed to get Latin services there. There aren’t any books here – not even a Bible – but fortunately I’ve got the wristpad, so I’ve just downloaded the words I need, and scroll through them as the service progresses. Well, it’s worked OK so far.

My major concern, obviously, is meeting another priest, or even a member of the nobility, who’ll know what I’m saying, and will, I suspect, see through me pretty fast. I suspect that imitating a priest – particularly leading eucharists – is probably heresy. And they burn heretics here, don’t they?

Still, at the moment I’ve got a roof over my head, and food in my belly (it’s staying down now, fortunately) so I’m just going to keep going as I am, at least until I get a better plan.

I haven’t been able to write anything here for a while because I’ve been ill – terrible stomach pains, vomiting etc. I think it was probably food poisoning. Things were OK while I was in the wilds, cooking for myself. Since I’ve been here though, I’ve been having to eat with the villagers – or eat the food they bring me – and their standards of hygiene just aren’t up to 21^st-century standards. But why should they be? They’ve never heard of bacterium.

Anyway, I’m feeling a little bit better now, and hopefully my system will get used to the bugs. At least I can boil my water before I drink it, and try to ensure anything I eat is cooked right through.

I’m still weak, and very tired, so I’m not going to try writing for too long. I thought I ought to explain what my position here is. Samuel, who is the verger, or churchwarden, or whatever the title is (he’s never actually said it, and assumes I know) had taken one look at me, and my obviously different clothing, and had assumed I was the new priest. By the time I realised what had happened, it was a bit late to try to track back and explain.

Anyway, it means I’ve got a house, and some respect here, and people excuse my strange accent and the problems I have understanding what they’re saying, because they assume I’m a foreigner. Oh yes, and they feed me too.

I’ll explain what I’m doing about trying to fulfil a priestly role when I next get the energy to write.

I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get back to finish off my last posting for a while, but writing with a wristpad is time-consuming and tiring, particularly when you’re trying to transcribe a conversation at the same time. In fact, I’ve decided not to write down the conversation verbatim, as most of it is still unintelligible to me. I could try to put down phonetically what I think I heard, but it won’t make any sense, so instead, here’s the gist of what went on:

The chap coming to meet me (I’ve now found he’s called Samuel) greeted me in what was clearly English, but with a very strong accent, and some words are so strange that I just can’t make sense of them at all. It may be the accent, or it may be that these are just words that don’t appear in modern English.

Anyway, it was obvious that he was saying hello, so I said ‘hello’ back. He stopped, and took a good look at me – mind you, I was doing the same to him. Clearly, my accent marks me out as a stranger, as indeed, does my clothing – army fatigues, even after having been worn continuously for several weeks, are obviously of a completely different order of quality to what he was wearing, and a type of material I guess he’d never seen (probably no-one on this planet will have come across synthetic fibres).

If this is, as I suspect, a feudal society, then I obviously have class. And although I haven’t been able to have a bath for some time, he looked (and smelt) as if he’d never seen a bath in his entire life, so hygiene wasn’t a problem.

He spoke at length. I got very little, but consoled myself that at least I was recording him. I did reply to what I could understand, and also asked him to speak slower, for what it was worth.

One phrase I did manage to get pretty clearly was, “You’ll be from Nople then?” I still have no idea who Nople is, but as it seemed clear at the time that he was sure that’s who’d sent me there, I did agree. It seemed to satisfy him, anyway.

He took me into the church, and showed me round, obviously expecting me to be interested. I tried to look and sound intelligent – fortunately having done an archaeology course, and having a father who’s a clergyman (even if not a priest in this sort of church) being in a medieval building like this didn’t throw me too much.

On replaying our conversation later, he was obviously a caretaker (verger?) for the church, and he wanted to point out all the important features of the building, including all the minutiae, even down to the cupboard where the candles were stored.

He then took me outside, to a small house behind the church itself, and showed me in. After a short monologue, of which I understood not a single word, he left me there. Playing back his words, I finally realised that he had been telling me this was my house. Clearly there has been some confusion here. He was obviously expecting someone, sent by this chap Nople, and thought I was his man. Oh well, I thought, at least I’d got a roof over my head.

Things became a little more clear the next morning – but I think that will have to wait until I can find time to do some more typing. My life is a little busy at the moment, what with the work I’m expected to do, and the research I’m doing on the internet, trying to work out how to do it. More next time.

Well, it’s happened again. At first, I wasn’t sure. I woke up in a heavily forested area, but my shelter was missing. When I got to the top of a slight hill, and climbed a tree, I found the terrain was similar to where I’d been, but slightly flatter. I wonder if the ‘wormhole’ on every version of Earth still goes between the location of the sites of the camp in rural Norfolk and Mercury House, and I’m bouncing back and forwards between the two ends – possibly because the team are still sending.

Anyway, the other thing I could see from the tree was smoke, rising from several different points, which told me, if I hadn’t already guessed, that I was on yet another version of Earth. I took a bearing on the closest column of smoke, and set out to investigate.

After about a mile, I came across a track, heading roughly in the direction I wanted. It was certainly going to be easier taking it than forcing my way through virgin forest, and it was presumably going towards human habitation, so it took to the track.

Eventually I came to a clearing, on top of a bluff, overlooking a river, and there was a small church. I’m looking at it now: it’s mainly built of flints, but with some other stone making up the corners and doorway. It has a round tower – someone told me once that there are several like this in Norfolk – their argument was that you can’t make corners with flint, the local building material, so they made their towers round. That makes some sense, until you realise that the rest of the church has square corners – by using stone blocks. So if the builders wanted to make the tower square they could have. To me it feels more like a defensive feature – good all-round observation, and firing slits to cover the approaches. Not that the current building would be much use, defensively, with the large side windows, but they are in aisles which I think are later. The original nave is quite narrow, and I just have the feel this place was built partly with defence in mind.

But I’m not trying to write an archaeological/architectural report. This is a sit rep, so, back to what happened a couple of days ago:

Before I reached the church, a man came out of it. He was dressed in fairly coarse woollen garments – a brown tunic-type top, and green trousers/leggings. Clearly I wasn’t back to the 21st Century – unless he was taking part in a medieval reconstruction.

The voice recorder function of my wristpad is still working, so I activated it – which means that I have a verbatim record of our conversation – which is a good thing, as I didn’t understand much of it at the time, and still don’t get most of it. He was speaking English though, albeit with a very strong accent – not unlike a modern Norfolk brogue.

The light’s fading now, and it’s quite hard work typing at length on a wristpad, so I’m going to shut down now, but will try to post again soon.

This, by the way, is a picture I took of the church yesterday.

Well, I’ve got the main timbers up, in a fairly round shape. There’s plenty of ivy and creepers of various kinds, so I’ve managed to make enough reasonable substitutes for rope to hold it all together. I’m hoping once I’ve threaded smaller poles between the main uprights, the tension will help to hold it all together, and make the whole thing more rigid.

It’s good to be doing something physical, and constructive. Trouble is I have to keep breaking off to check my traps, because I haven’t got any way of keeping food fresh. I suppose once I get the house finished, and a fire burning all the time, I can try smoking meat. I’ll need to find some way of storing material – particularly for the winter.

It would be good to get some salt too – if I were near the sea, I’d boil salt water, but there’s no sign of a coast from the top of the biggest hill around – but if I am somewhere near Norwich then I’d guess the sea must be twenty or thirty miles away. Once I get myself established here, then maybe an expedition will be in order. The compass in my wristpad is still working, even if the sat nav isn’t, so I’m confident I should be able to find my way back, despite the visibility problems caused by the trees and the dense undergrowth.

Anyway, all that’s for the future. Let's get the roundhouse finished first.

Well, it looks as if I’m going to be here for a very long time, so I’m starting to try to improve my conditions. The lean-to shelter I’ve built is OK, but I really want something more substantial, particularly before the winter arrives (at the moment it feels like late spring/early summer here – I know the internet is telling me it’s March [on one version of Earth, where it's 05] while my calendar says it’s July [on my Earth, in 08] – but from the height of the sun, and the warmth, I’d guess it's somewhere between the two - maybe May). I’ve been racking my brain to remember all the bits and pieces I learned on the archaeology course, because I’m pretty well back to stone age conditions here.

I’ve decided to try to build a roundhouse. There’s plenty of timber, but without an axe I’m pretty well limited to dead branches, or saplings I can break down. Still, I’ve built up quite a collection of timber now. There’s enough open grass for me to cut turfs for walls, and I’ve even found plenty of stone (mostly flint). Actually the flint may be a godsend – I’ve been trying to get a spark using a steel edge on my penknife, and a bit of flint. I think when my matches run out, I’ll be able to get a fire going. Of course, if I can build a decent weatherproof hut, then I’ll try to keep the fire burning all the time. And with flint I can make arrowheads and maybe even an axe.

I’ve only got two complaints really. The first is lack of company. I really, really want someone to talk to. At least the internet does convince me that there are people around. I’ve started reading blogs, just so that I get a feel for human life and reality - even if that is on an Earth that's subtly different to mine.

My other main problem is food – there’s enough of it, particularly if you like meat – but there’s just no variety. I keep hoping I’ll find some vegetables growing as the summer comes along – but did vegetables grow wild in prehistoric times? Otherwise, there must be some berries, nuts and even edible roots somewhere. I think after the roundhouse is finished, I’m going to have to go off on an expedition, to look for some other source of food. If I find some seeds, the area I’ve stripped of turfs might make a garden.

‘The process didn't work perfectly for them.’ I can’t believe I wrote that. Of course it didn’t work perfectly for them. Inanimate objects they had on them were chopped up, distorted or missing – so come on, they probably didn’t survive the process. Mind you, I suppose it is possible that it did work OK for them, and they’re sitting in Norwich now, thinking it’s me who’s dead.

As to what happened to me, and that second sending from ’05 Norwich to this place, well, I have a couple of theories. The first is that whatever went wrong with the first test, has left some sort of wormhole (OK, I know that’s not what it is, but it’s a word I can use, and it helps me to visualise). If the hole is open (all the time, or just occasionally?) that might explain how I got here, and how it is that I can send and receive things to the internet.

My other thought is that the Project Hermes team are still sending – perhaps even using some sort of tracer to try to recover me (I guess the tracker built into my wristpad is still working). Maybe that’s what caused the second trip to this place.

Either way, there’s nothing I can do to get back. All I can do is sit here and hope the team find a way to rescue me; or alternatively that someone reading this message can figure out a way to get me home.

Oh yes, the photo. I realised that the camera on my wristpad is still working, so I thought I’d put up a picture of my surroundings. I’m sure it would suit some people, if they liked trees.

OK, where did I get to? Right. I really don’t need to be writing this, but it’s good just to get my fingers going again, and to do some writing, as this survivalist lark is making my thinking process atrophy I think. Actually, I’m not thinking much, that’s the problem.

Anyway, back to my report of life at Mercury House.

Well, as best as I can gather, the scientists eventually moved on from sending inanimate objects, to see if they could do it to living beings. Obviously, they’d put the solid objects they’d been sending to all sorts of tests, to make sure as well as they could that the things they sent were the same as the things received, and they seemed satisfied.

Now obviously, they didn’t want to tell us human guinea pigs what happened to the early real guinea pigs they sent, but I gather there were a number of failures, before eventually they did manage to complete a number of sendings that their subjects survived. Apparently they were perfectly healthy, and as far as every test (down to DNA) could say, they were the same animals that had been sent.

So, the next stage was to be humans. And being a military project, they’d picked three soldiers to send. Tom and Kate are both REME sergeants, and I think the theory was that they would be able to give a better technical report of what happened. Me? I’m a lieutenant in the Norfolk Regiment – we were responsible for base security, and I’d been brought into the team when they wanted someone to lead the first mission – not that we really thought that the three of us being sent five miles from Mercury House to the receiving point in the grounds of the camp in rural Norfolk needed much leading.

So what happened? Well, I don’t know, is the pathetic answer. We stood in a wire-mesh cage. The top boffin pushed a button, and I passed out. When I came to, I was in a park, in Norwich, but not quite the Norwich I knew, and one that was three years behind the one I’d left. There was no sign of Tom or Kate. My guess - and I hope I'm wrong - is that the process didn't work perfectly for them.

I’m getting choked up. Going to stop writing and post this, before I say something I might regret.

Still not a single sign of human life anywhere. Plenty of wildlife, most of which seems pretty tame (or at least, not frightened of me) which makes me wonder if there are no people in this area – or perhaps even on this planet. It’s getting pretty lonely. I thought I was self-contained, and could cope with a bit of solitary, but I really want to talk to someone else now. At least the internet gives me the sight of other human beings, and I can download movie clips, so I’m not completely without human contact – but I want to TALK to someone.

Still, this journal lets me put down my thoughts, and perhaps there’s someone out there reading them. I have still got the internet link, for which I’ve got to be grateful.

I did promise, some time ago (like ’05, when I was in Norwich!) to say more about the project.

Well, I’m not entirely clear about what happened before I joined the team at Mercury House in Norwich in 07. and I’m not a scientist, so I can’t give a proper explanation of what they were doing, but for what it’s worth, here’s what I gathered during my time with Project Hermes:

At some stage in the 90’s a group of theoretical physicists [OK, that’s probably not the right term for what they were, and Professor Bowden would be pulling his hair out if he read this, but I can only write this as I understood it – that’s the last time I’m going to apologise, now I’ll continue, saying what I as a layman think happened] came up with a method for moving objects around. It’s not as simple as saying they took things apart atom by atom, and rebuilt them somewhere else. Nor was it that they found a hole in space, and pushed things down it, so they appeared somewhere else. But there was something of both of those ideas about it. I know this sounds like science fiction, but I can’t explain it any other way. I thought of it like a wormhole [but that was just a word I’d picked up, and used to try to sound knowledgeable – one of the scientists told me witheringly that it was NOT wormhole technology]. Anyway, my understanding is that they had – in theory at least – the ability to open a wormhole, and then transmit things down it, to come out the other end, in a place they could chose.

Well, the whole theoretical idea got taken over by the MOD, as a military project (it certainly has military applications – you could send bombs to targets, with no need for guns or planes or missiles; you can re-supply troops without danger). This was all being run from the base in Scotland – reasonably remote, if there were any problems.

Anyway, eventually it stopped being theoretical, and became real. They were able to send (and sending is what the process became known as) objects short distances, with no apparent problems.

By the time I became involved, they’d set up a second research establishment in Norfolk, in a remote area, but with a base at Mercury House in Norwich. The aim was to try sending objects between Norfolk and Scotland.

A secondary project was to see if living objects could be sent. Again, that has military applications – being able to put troops where you want (including right inside an enemy HQ) gives quite an edge.

That’s where I was brought in. Partly we military guys were there for security, but some of us were intended from the start (although that only became clear to us much later) as human guinea pigs.

It’s getting dark, and my mind is aching, so I’m going to stop now, and will try to finish off this explanation soon.

It's OK, I'm still here. Just busy surviving at the moment. Got a bit fed up just eating meat, so tried experimenting with various roots that I found, and some leafy plants growing near a stream. I was then very ill for a couple of days. Still feel weak. Have had a bit of time for thinking, though, and have some ideas about what got me here. Realise that I also promised to give more background to the whole project. Will try to write more in a few days.

Sorry for the break. I’ve spent the last few days just getting shelter and food. Fortunately I’ve had basic survival training, and there’s plenty of wood here (!) so shelter and fire haven’t been a problem. Food hasn’t been that hard either – the woods are alive with animals – and once I found some open space on a hilltop, birds and rabbits are plentiful too. I’m not sure of the geography of this place, but the hills seem vaguely reminiscent of Norwich (I may just be imagining all this, but I wonder if what’s happened in the last sending was that I either went back in time to a prehistoric Norfolk, or to another parallel planet where this part of the country hasn’t been populated yet).

Anyway, I’ve got my shelter halfway up a hill, with a spring just below, and plentiful food (meat anyway, not seen much sign of vegetables). From the top of the hill I can see that the tree canopy stretches away into the distance, in every direction. This is what makes me think of pre-history on earth – it’s what I believe England would have looked like.

There’s no sign of human life anywhere. I’ve got a fire burning, but I’ve not seen any smoke anywhere else.

Now that I can take a bit of a break from just surviving, I’ve had time to take stock. Kit-wise I’m quite well off. Warm clothing, a sleeping bag, knife, matches (they won’t last for ever though), and my wrist pad – albeit that not every function now works. The watch and calendar are running, although the calendar is currently telling me it’s the 6^th July 2008. Sat nav system is not working (unfortunately) – probably because there are no satellites in this sky! The Internet link works, obviously, as I’m able to post to this blog (and this is something that I just cannot understand. All I can think is that the wormhole [or whatever the technical term for whatever it was that got me here] is still open, and my signals are able to pass through it). As I’ve got internet access, I can use search engines to look things up – albeit limited to the knowledge of the version of Earth in ’05 that I found myself in last sending. I’ve tried sending e-mails to the team, but they bounce back – because they weren’t around on that earth in ’05? The radio function doesn’t work – I don’t understand why the internet does, but that doesn’t. Aren’t they both digital signals?

OK, I don’t know if this will get through or not, but my wristpad still seems to be working – thank god it’s solar powered. And there still seems to be a connection to the internet, although I just don’t understand how. So, for the sake of my morale, if nothing else, I'm going to keep posting things here – it looks like this is my last link with anything remotely like what I’d call civilisation. All I can do is hope that it’ll appear, and be read. If it doesn't do anything practical to help me, maybe it will be of some help to someone, somewhere, sometime.

Situation report: I went to sleep last night, with no sign that there was anything unusual. I woke up in the early hours, feeling very rough – the same sort of symptoms I had after the Hermes test. That time I thought the feeling that my guts had been turned inside out was psychological – knowing that my atoms had been disconnected and rebuilt might well make you think that’s how you ought to feel.

For what it’s worth, I can now objectively say that this feeling is a direct result of sending.

Because, when I managed to pull myself together, I found I wasn’t in my dingy lodgings in Norwich – I was still in my sleeping bag, but now I was laying on the floor of a dense forest. Actually, I didn’t manage to work that out until daylight. In the early house of the morning, all I knew was that I was definitely outdoors, and it was very cold.

Anyway, in daylight I discovered, as I say, that I was in a very thick forest – trees packed pretty tight together; many fallen trees just rotting on the ground; dense undergrowth. Surrounding me was everything I'd had close to my camp bed last night – mind you, some of it took a bit of finding, in the brush and ferns.

So I’ve got some basic kit, anyway: enough clothing to keep me warm, my boots, a plastic bottle of water, Swiss army knife, matches – and this wristpad, obviously.

Something moving. Shutting down…

I thought I’d write a bit more about me, first, to explain how I got into all this mess.

I’m 23 (I was born in 1985, so I know that may seem wrong to anyone reading this, but remember that the test took place in 08 in my world). I’m not your typical army grunt – for a start I’ve got my Cambridge degree (mind you, who wouldn’t go to uni if you got the chance – miss conscription for three years, guaranteed, and a good chance of officer selection when you do have to join the forces). Oh yes, that’s another thing I’ve found out in the last couple of days – there's no conscription here. It seems not having the First Afghan War has made a real difference.

I was rather hoping to join the RAF, but my eyesight let me down, so it was infantry for me – I tried for the Intelligence Corps, but I got shoved into the Norfolk Regiment, which wasn’t my cup of tea at all – marching around on cold, windy parade-grounds just ain’t much fun – and so when I was detailed for liaison work with a bunch of scientists, I thought I’d got a cushy number.

I joined the team at Mercury House in Norwich in 07 – that’s either in two years time, or a year ago, depending how you look at it. Whatever. I’ve been involved with Project Hermes since then.

I’ve been thinking long and hard for the last few days, as well as doing some reading of technical books in the library – trouble is I’m not a physicist, and I can barely understand the basics of what was going on in the project. I wasn’t brought in as a technical expert, just as someone reasonably fit, alert – and being in the army, prepared to be ordered around! Kate and Tom were both from REME, so perhaps understood a little of the technical side, but really we were all just test subjects (I was going to say objects, but to be fair to the team, they’d got through the using inanimate objects stage).

So I’m going to have to rely on what I think I understand, and, maybe, just a bit of irrational instinct. I think I’m in some kind of parallel universe, rather than having been sent back in time to the Britain that I came from, but three years earlier. In that case, whatever I say or do can’t change the future in my universe. I hope.

On the other hand, if I have gone back in time, well, it’s to a world that has already changed from how I remember it – so once again, it doesn’t matter if I do things which might change the future.

OK, that last bit of logic isn’t quite true. Maybe at the moment there have only been fairly small changes and things might still get back to normal (whatever that means). In that case, I should try to make as small a ripple as I possibly can. The thing is, I’m already discovering that, while on the surface this Britain looks just like the one I remember in 05, the changes I’ve found out about aren’t that minor – things like a whole new war; and I was shocked to read at the weekend that George W Bush got re-elected for a second term – god knows what repercussions there’ll be from that!

So on balance, I’m going to risk it. I’ve decided to write as detailed an account as I can of Project Hermes – who knows, it might even stimulate someone here to start research in the same area (if they’re not already doing it) – and maybe they could get me home.

Money, unfortunately, is still a problem – and gambling may not be my solution, if the future isn’t as clear-cut as I thought it was going to be. Anyway, I’ll write up things here whenever I can (thank goodness my wristpad still works).

I had nightmare moment last night. What if it’s this website that has changed history? What if the very fact of my having reported my presence here, in public, together with the small amount of information I’ve given about the project, has somehow changed things? But surely any changes could only be to the future – not the past? Or is time/the universe/whatever like a pool, and the ripples from the stone I’ve dropped in have gone not only forwards but also backwards, to change the past? I’m not sure if I need to be a physicist, or a philosopher to answer that.

Well, I’ve done a lot of reading and research, in my spare time (I was running short of cash, so I’ve had to do some paid work). But what I’ve found so far makes me think I’ve got a serious, serious problem. I’m not sure this is the same planet I left. There’s been a war in Iraq for a couple of years it seems. OK I was finishing my A-levels when it apparently started, and I know I was a bit self-centred in those days, but I think I’d have remembered that. And while there was a war in Afghanistan, it was nothing like what I remember watching on tele – we weren’t fighting the Russians, for one thing.

But so many other things are just as I expected them to be in 05 – I haven’t seen anything really about this country that strikes me as odd, or jarring (except for the missing Scottish Army camp, of course).

I don’t know if Project Hermes has somehow changed the past. Just sending me here has changed things (some bookmakers are now slightly poorer, for a start). But that wouldn’t explain the disappearance of a WWII army camp. Unless, of course, the earlier tests, with inanimate objects (I’m thinking of the very early tests, when things just disappeared) perhaps sent them back to the twentieth century, and really distorted things.

But what really scares me, is what if I haven’t been sent back into the past, but I’ve actually gone somewhere different (to a parallel universe?). Hermes certainly wasn’t about time travel, but about moving objects, so perhaps it has physically sent me somewhere else, and not, as I first thought, sent me back in time three years, leaving me spatially in the same place. Or maybe I am spatially in the same place, just shifted sideways by a dimension or four?

Probably I shouldn’t be writing any of this. I may be breaking the Official Secrets Act (but on which planet – and who’s going to prosecute me?). But I need to share my thoughts with someone, and who else can I turn to? If I’m right, then there’s no Project Hermes team on this planet, so the MOD won’t be interested. If I go to anyone in authority they’re just going to assume I’m a crackpot – at the best I’ll be slung out, and the worst, sectioned.

I did try putting Project Hermes into Google – and there is such a thing here, but it’s an EEC scheme, not what I was involved in at all (not that my Project Hermes would have had a website!).

So I reckon sharing my problems on the internet is the least of my worries, and, who knows, maybe someone out there will read this and be able to tell me what to do. It can’t do any harm to at least make a record of things.

What do I do now? I got to Scotland, and the base wasn’t there. Now this isn’t like Mercury House – for all I know that hadn’t been built in 05. But we’re talking about an entire Army camp here. I only went there once, for a couple of weeks, so I don't know it that well, but I would have said it was Second World War vintage.

One think I remember from the time that I was stationed there was the Black Watch war memorial, from the First Afghan War. You don’t forget a thing like that – seven hundred troops killed by the atomic bomb in Kabul.

That memorial must have been put up in the late 80’s/early 90’s. My visit was in 07 – so if the camp was there then, and was definitely around in the 80’s/90’s, then it must be here now, in 05. We’re not talking brilliant camouflage by the way – there was just a pine forest where the camp should be. I spent half a day tramping through it, and there is just no sign of a single building anywhere.

I’m back in Norwich now. I’m going to spend the day in the library, reading newspapers, and looking up some reference books, to try to work out what’s happening to me.

I’ve spent a lot of time just thinking. What on earth should I do?

One thing I’m sure about is that I don’t want to meet up with me. In February 05 I was still at uni – so I’m keeping well away from Cambridge, and anywhere else I can remember going to in my early twenties – and that was a lot of parties, in a lot of towns!

I did wonder about making my way to Scotland, and trying to contact Colonel Hunter – assuming HQ for the project was there in 05. The thing is, even if I could get near the place, I’ve no means of proving who I am, and even if I could – well so what? In 05 they’d never heard of me. I don’t/didn’t join the team for another two years yet.

And if I did manage to persuade them to listen to me (after all, I can give a lot of inside information about the project to establish my bona fides) what would happen then? If I tell them about what happened after the first test, would that mean that they’d change something? If they did, and were successful, then I wouldn’t be here in this mess. But then, if I weren’t here, then I couldn’t tell them about the anomaly, and so the test would go ahead as set up, and I’d be here…

So, if I’m thinking this through logically, I can’t have managed to tell anyone about what happened, or else I wouldn’t be here.

Which I could just about accept. I’d be prepared, I think, to keep my head down, and just wait for three years, and then turn up at Mercury House after the test run, and tell them what happened. I could do that – and certainly I can keep financially afloat with odd jobs and gambling (can you call it a gamble when you know the outcome?). Identity cards will be more of a problem, but I’ve got time to work out a way round that.

But. The big but. The one that keeps pounding in my head, and which I’m trying vainly to ignore. Tom and Kate came with me on the test - but they didn't make it here. So are they dead? If they are, and I can get back to the team and stop the test, then I’ll save their lives.

Or will I? We get back to that loop again – if the test doesn’t happen, Tom and Kate don’t die, but also I don’t get sent back to '05, so I can’t warn them, so the test goes ahead…

But I can’t sit here and do nothing. If there’s the faintest chance of saving the other two members of my team, then I’ve got no choice but to take it. So, I’m hitch-hiking to Scotland tomorrow.

I’ve managed to get to Norwich now, but Mercury House isn’t there. I can vaguely remember someone saying the team had moved in the year before I joined the project. That would mean they started using it in 06. Maybe it was a new building when they took it over. That’s all I can assume. Obviously I didn’t turn up in 05 and tell them that something went wrong with the test in 08 – or else they wouldn’t have gone through with it (or would they, and just not told me?). That’s the thing about paradoxes.

It’s difficult to know how much I can safely put here. I can only hope that the team find this website sooner rather than later (obviously they hadn’t found it when I left the base, but that doesn’t preclude someone stumbling over it the very next day). I’ll try to be reasonably enigmatic – but obviously I want to make sense to you guys in the team, while hoping any outsiders who come across this (and I realise the dangers inherent in posting on the public domain) are just mystified. I’m also concerned that I mustn’t give too many details away, or else I may create a paradox (I think that’s the right technical word).

I’m also conscious that the team will want to know how to get hold of me (although how they will achieve that is technically beyond me). At the moment I’m trying to establish a permanent address – for now, comments on this blog will reach me.

Finance is, naturally, my greatest worry. Fortunately I’m fit and healthy, so I can do labouring/cleaning jobs for cash (no bank account, and with no official status here, no way of getting one. I’m just glad that identity cards haven’t been introduced yet – what I shall do when they arrive is a puzzle at the moment).

Betting would seem to be the obvious way to make money, if only I could remember what happened. I’ve never been a great one for sporting events, and I certainly can’t remember things like who won the 05 Grand National. Fortunately King Charles and Camilla hadn’t announced their engagement when I arrived here, so that was one quick certainty which boosted my funds. My next big bet will be on the May election – if I remember right (and opinion polls in today’s paper seem to bear this out) the crushing defeat of Labour came as a complete surprise (although in retrospect, of course, dragging Britain into the Second Afghan War had spelled the end of Blair) and I should be able to get pretty good odds on that. But only if I can survive for another three months.

This is really a desperate throw, but I hope if I start posting details here, with some of the key words that the team will recognise, maybe they'll be picked up on a search engine. Then, if I'm very lucky, at some stage in the future someone in Project Hermes might just happen to stumble across this site, and discover what happened to me - and maybe even be able to do something about this.
My wristpad survived the journey (military specification probably helped) and amazingly it seems to be able to interface with the internet here, so I'm able to post things on this website that I've signed up to.
At the moment I'm having to scratch around to be able to buy enough food to keep body and soul together - I didn't bring any cash, or plastic with me, and I'm not sure they'd be acceptable anyway.
In the meantime, if anyone from the Project Hermes team reads this, post a comment; let me know how I can get back in touch.