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).