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.