As I’ve got Tom’s wristpad, I’ve been using it in spare moments to do some research. I was checking whether there was any reference to Project Hermes in this world, when I came across an article about the god Hermes himself.

From what I could remember about ancient mythology, I had understood that Hermes was the messenger to the gods. I seem to recall, when I was in Greece on holiday one year, seeing him as the symbol they use for their post office. That seemed to make sense as the name for a project intending to send things a distance.

I now see, however, that he wasn’t just the messenger to the gods. He was also the Greek god of shepherds and cowherds, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures and commerce in general (none of which have anything to do with this project, as far as I can see) but he was also the god of the cunning of thieves and liars.

I have been wondering for some time if the scientists in the team knew, or suspected, more than they were letting-on to us. Perhaps they thought they were being very clever, naming their project after the god of the cunning of thieves and liars. I’m sure they must have had some test objects (particularly the heavier ones, which must have travelled further back in time) returned showing the effects of their journey. Yet they sent us on our way, with no hint of what might happen. The cunning of thieves and liars, indeed.

The further I looked, though, I found that there is even more to the god Hermes. He wasn’t just a messenger between the gods themselves, but, as a translator, Hermes was a messenger from the gods to humans. Hermes apparently gives us our word hermeneutics, which is about the art of interpreting hidden meaning.

Perhaps I’m just getting paranoid now, but one site told me that being the herald, or messenger, of the gods, it was also Hermes’ duty to guide the souls of the dead down to the underworld – and he was closely connected with bringing dreams to mortals.

That information certainly set me to thinking. What is the real purpose of Project Hermes? Guiding the souls of the dead down to the underworld sounds horribly like what has happened to us.

So I dug a little deeper, and I found that Hermes had another function, according to some authorities. He was also the god of boundaries and of the travellers who cross them. That might just fit in with the aim of the project as it was explained to us, but it sounds far more like what we are actually experiencing.

It all makes me wonder whether Hermes is genuinely intended for military transport (in which case it’s a complete and utter failure) or whether the scientists in charge had a good idea what was going to happen to us, and sent us – unprepared - on some kind of scouting expedition into other dimensions.

I will have questions, when I return home.

Well, Tom got me a job, filling magazines for the Kalashnikovs he and his partner sell. Not too demanding, loading 25 bullets at a time into magazines, but it keeps me indoors, out of sight, in relative warmth, and for that I am grateful.

It gives me time, too, to think.

I believe that I have decided that the aerial (or whatever it is in my spine) connects me with the team back in our world, and it’s that which picks up the signal and sends me off to another world.

My last theory, if I remember right, that this must coincide with future tests – or even working uses of the system.

I now have another theory. Given that it is now, according to this computer site (and, I might add, the locals here) the end of March 2007, then I suspect that what I’ve been experiencing for the last couple of years isn’t the team continuing sending, but the effects of the sendings they were doing in the run-up to the first human test. In other words, when I arrived here earlier this month, that was as a result of a sending of a test animal on that same day in March 2007 in our world.

If only I knew what the time-table of the tests had been, I could confirm my theory – and have some idea when I might be sent again. Unfortunately, neither Tom nor I have any idea when the team were making their earlier tests.

If I’m right – and this is something I’m pinning a lot of hope on – then maybe next year, on the day that we were sent the first time, we’ll arrive at the expected destination. We’ll be three years older, of course, but apart from that, the experiment will have worked.

It is, I will of course report, a complete failure as a system intended to deliver troops and supplies instantaneously on the battlefield, from a depot miles behind the lines. Given that we were sent back three or four years on a sending of about five miles, then using it in action could result in a middle-aged army arriving on the battlefield, possibly without weapons and equipment, having lost them over a period of years spent in one or more other dimensions.

Similarly, food supplies would have perished. Perhaps ammo could be sent that way, if it were packed securely, but as a military system – no, it’s a failure.

Well, I will report that when I get home. I’m determined it will be when, not if.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep my head down, fill magazines, and wait my time out.

The first bullet hit the man we were hunting in the shoulder. If this had been a film, no doubt he would have clamped his hand over the neat wound, and kept on running. Real life is a bit different.

The bullet came out of him in a gout of blood, flesh, and flashes of white bone. He was knocked flat on his face, unable to get up – partly because his right arm was only held on by strips of flesh.

The sheriff walked up to him, put his gun to the man’s head, and pulled the trigger.

Justice done in this primitive version of the England I once knew.

I didn’t throw up, but I felt like it. I’ve been in the army for four years, but I’ve never seen a man killed – and certainly haven’t seen such casual violence. I hate to think how long I would have survived here on my own - I am just grateful that I met Tom so early on, and have his knowledge of what is acceptable here.

Before I joined the Hermes team I did three months duty with the LN peacekeeping force on the Pakistan border, in the aftermath of the Second Afghan War. I know the League of Nations is seen to be a pretty toothless beast, but I think we did some good work while we were there.

What really strikes me about this version of Britain (or England, actually – Tom tells me that he’s managed to work out that union with Scotland never took place, and that Britain as a nation doesn’t seem to exist) is that it seems to resemble a lot of what I saw in that region of the Northwest Frontier. Norfolk may not be the Hindu Kush, but the primitive buildings, the local warlords (sorry, here they’re just called Lords – nobility seems to be the way this place is governed) and even the casual violence, and routine carrying of weapons vividly brought back my time in Pakistan. About the only difference is the lack of heat and dust.

Tom is staying in a run-down part of the outskirts of Norwich. So far, apart from the cathedral, I haven’t seen a single building larger than two stories. Very few houses are built of brick. Mostly houses, shops and even public building are constructed of wood and adobe, with thatched roofs. Some attempt in the past had clearly been made to build some decent roads, but now even the main street is mostly a series of water-filled potholes connected by strips of tarmac. Most of the side streets are just beaten earth (which at this time of year are mostly covered with a layer of mud).

Tom says that he gathers other parts of the world are far more advanced than this – which explains the jet airliner I saw on the first day I arrived. He thinks, from hints he’s heard from travellers passing through, that the Persian Empire is the dominant world force. England is a backwater, and appears to have been in decline for years. Presumably if, three hundred years or so ago, England didn’t unite with Scotland, then England alone wasn’t as powerful as Britain was in our world, and so I assume there was no British Empire

In many ways, this place reminds me of Darra, where I was stationed with the LN. Like Darra, the major local industry here seems to be making weapons. Every other building, or so it feels, houses a workshop, turning out guns – mainly fairly primitive things, although Tom has a variation of the standard Kalashnikov.

He admitted that they didn’t seem to have invented the AK-47 on this version of Earth, and as it is such a useful, and simple weapon, he decided that he would ‘invent’ it, and showed a gunsmith how to make it. Now the two of them are in partnership, turning them out on quite a large scale. It means that Tom is now quite a wealthy man, and at least I’ve got a decent bed to sleep in, and enough food to keep me comfortable.

Tom has introduced me to the local forces of law and order – which is principally the sheriff, and whoever he deputises to assist him in the dispensing of what passes for justice to those criminals that the Earl of Norfolk (our local representative of the King, power and authority) decides have gone too far. That’s how I got dragged into the manhunt. It wasn’t pretty, and I really think I need to find a way of keeping my head down, and not getting too involved in this world – unlike Tom, I don’t feel the need to build a home here, for I expect to be moving on again before too long.

Well, I needn’t have worried about what was going to happen to me there, because the day after I typed my last entry, I woke up in the early hours of the morning to find that I was no longer in my bed, but was on a damp, and cold, grassy bank.

I’d almost allowed myself to believe that I wasn’t ever going to be sent again, and that Professor Ilyes would find a way of communicating with the Hermes team. So you can imagine that I was a bit down as I huddled up against the cold, and waited for dawn to break.

When it did, I found myself on a bare hillside, with view towards what looks like Norwich – but not a version of the city that I particularly recognised. The spire of the cathedral was visible, but no other tall buildings at all. There was plenty of smoke though, rising from chimneys on the buildings I could make out, so obviously the place was inhabited.

The thought of getting some warm food inside me saw me walking briskly towards the city.

As I got closer to the first building, I saw that this Earth is clearly very different to the one I had just come from. I would have guessed we were in a medieval world – in addition to the shabby buildings, the people I passed were in general quite a bit shorter than me, thin, and poorly-dressed.

Then, though, I saw a large passenger jet flying high overhead.

I was just getting over that conundrum, when I saw a face that I recognised – it wasn’t hard to spot him, as Tom, at six foot five and eighteen stone does stand out from the crowd.

After mutual exclamations of surprise and pleasure at finding each other, he took me to his house, and briefed me.

My first surprise was to discover that he has been here the whole time since the first sending. I don’t know why, although I began to wonder if I am the only member of the team to have a device implanted – I am the officer in the group, so perhaps the device was just for me – and if it is, in some way, keeping in touch with Hermes, and causing me to be sent then that might explain why Tom has been stuck here the whole time.

I had a look at his back later, and there’s no sign of a scar, or any hint that something has been surgically inserted there.

The second oddity was that he is sure that he has been here for nearly three years. I am pretty certain that I’ve only been going through this for just over two years (and the dates on this site seem to confirm that).

Perhaps this has happened because, as the professor guessed, weight (or mass) has been a factor in the time-shift. If she was right, the heavier we are, the further back in time we get pushed. In that case, Kate is probably nearer home than both of us are.

Tom has lent me his wristpad to write this up – he can’t access the internet with it, whilst I (obviously, as I’m writing this) can. This makes me think that the device planted in my back must be some kind of transmitter/aerial which is allowing me to communicate back to ‘our’ world.

The more I think about it, the more suspicious I am becoming. Why send two engineers and an officer on what should have been an instantaneous trip? Did the scientists in fact have an idea of what was happening (were there perhaps signs of wear and tear on the inanimate objects they sent?) and did they therefore pick us because they thought that the three of us, working as a team, might be able to survive what we have actually been through – and be able to give a coherent report when (or if) we returned?

Perhaps that explains why only I have whatever the thing in my back is – they thought we’d all be together and could track us (or keep in touch, or whatever function it plays) with it.

It is quite tiring writing this way, rather than using a computer keyboard (a wristpad is really intended for brief reports from the field, not documents like this). This entry has taken me nearly three days to type, so I’ll close now, and try to write up some more observations when I can.

I called in to see the professor yesterday afternoon, as I hadn’t heard from her for a couple of days. It is amazing how having someone that I can talk to about what’s happened – and this is the first time I’ve been in this position for the last two years – has really made a difference to my mental attitude. Despite the shock of the interview, this last week has seen me feeling so much more positive, even though home still seems a long, long way away.

However things took a bit of a downturn yesterday. The professor was very off-hand with me at first, before eventually telling me that she too has had a visit from some government agents, who have planted a seed of doubt in her mind.

She says that of course she doubted my story at first, but she was intrigued by it, and saw enough of her particular field of interest in what I was telling her to make it worth her while investigating further.

Now she’s not so sure – in fact she virtually accused me of making everything up. The tests that she had carried out on me showed that I didn’t come from round here – but that doesn’t necessarily mean I am from another version of Earth; I could just be a foreigner.

The device that she found embedded in me is also worrying her. She doesn’t think I’m a walking bomb (for a start, there is no sign of any explosives), but she says I might be a trigger for one, if I am an enemy agent. Similarly the device could enable me to transmit or receive information.

When I quite forcibly expressed my innocence, she said that another thought that had occurred is that the device might be a way of sending a message to my brain to activate a hidden command – in other words I could be some kind of sleeper agent, who has been given a false identity – so false that even I believe it, this fake ID having somehow having been implanted in my brain.

Quite why I would have been given the memories of my strange journey, rather than just believing I am a normal citizen, she couldn’t explain – other than to say that tinkering with the mind is a difficult task, and perhaps it had all gone wrong.

I really don’t know what to say. I have to believe my own mind – and the physical things I’ve been through and experienced (or should I say, that I think I have experienced?). Surely this whole nightmare isn’t just a false memory, given to me by my own government?

I do know I was part of an experiment, that’s true. Has my brain been messed with, causing me to have delusions?

I can’t believe it. How I convince Professor Ilyes to believe me, I’m not sure, but without her on my side, I believe things here might become really desperate – particularly if the government decides to act against me.

Well, Professor Ilyes was still willing to see me – I can see that she believes at least part of my story. The first thing she did was to put me into a full-body scanner. While she was waiting for the results to come through, she told me some of the ideas she’s come up with.

I’m no scientist, so I can’t properly explain this, but if I understand what she was telling me (and I think she was explaining in very basic language) then her main points go something like this:

I remember one of the team telling me that when we were sent we would travel instantaneously from the transmitter to the receiver. There would be no sensation of movement, or anything else, because no time would pass. He said that’s what had happened with the inanimate objects they had sent before – as far as could be ascertained (and they had very accurate measuring devices) sending was an instantaneous process.

That’s where the professor thinks the problem lies. She isn’t sure, because she hasn’t reached the level of the team – she can’t transmit matter herself yet. She does, though, understand basic physics. As I understand what she was saying, if something travels from one place to another in no time at all – or even in a tiny fraction of time, then it is going to get very close to (or if it really is instantaneous, exceed) the speed of light.

That, I said to Professor Ilyes, I understood to be impossible. She says that that theoretically it’s not impossible (but here she started to talk about Einstein, and general relativity, and she really lost me; I think though that what she was trying to explain is that travel at that sort of speed affects time too).

So, if things appeared to be moving instantaneously, they couldn’t be. Time is being affected somehow, or somewhere. Now, an inanimate object, or even a live guinea pig, can’t tell the researchers what happened to it during the sending. They just disappear, and re-appear. But a human being, well, that’s different.

She speculates that the sending is what caused me to move back in time.

I questioned this – surely a guinea pig would have aged significantly – or died – over the course of several years. She explained something I didn’t really get, about mass and acceleration. Perhaps a small animal would only travel back in time a short period – perhaps only minutes. It’s only someone big – like a human being (and there were three of us in the first test, all big, bulky soldiers, with all our kit) – well, something that big might be moved back by a period of years.

We’d about reached that point in her lecture (with me understanding about one word in three – so what I have just said is a gross over-simplification, and probably totally inaccurate) and I was about to ask why I haven’t just moved back in time, but am in a different, albeit nearly parallel world, when we were interrupted, as a technician brought in the result of my scan.

She told me that I have a micro-chip, and some wiring, near the base of my spine. I do know that we had a full medical, which included a period under general anaesthetic, before the test started. We were told that they were examining us completely for defects which might affect the test. It seems that perhaps they were also inserting this thing into our bodies.

The professor has no idea what it might be. It could, she speculated, be some form of receiver (it doesn’t appear to be a transmitter) or aerial, used in the sending process. Perhaps this is the link across the dimensions, which is keeping me in touch with the Hermes transmitter?

She didn’t have any more time for me today. I’m left, I must say, with more questions than answers.

When I got to Kiln House, Professor Ilyes met me and said she had some ideas – and some further tests she wanted to carry out. First, though, there were a couple of people who wanted to talk to me. She took me to meet them in the canteen, and left me there with them, while they plied me with coffee and questions.

I took them to be post-graduate students of hers, who were interested in my problem, and were looking for ways to help me, so I was completely open with them.

The man introduced himself as Bill Gardener. He was well-built, mid-thirties, with thinning hair, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with some sort of design on it. He looked like the sort of bloke who’s never had a real job in his life, but lives as a permanent student. Frankly, If he told me he played guitar in a band in pubs in the evening, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

His partner never did give me her name, although I think Bill referred to her as Debs once. She was quite short – under five foot, I would guess – and was wearing a pink t-shirt with the words ‘I'm no angel’.

They seemed a very pleasant young couple, and I happily told them all about how I had arrived here. Then the trouble started.

Although I am usually not very good at remembering conversations, what followed so shocked me that I think I can recall it pretty well verbatim.

Bill: “I’m afraid, Mr. Colman – if that is your name – that we don’t believe you.”

Debs: “Ever since your television broadcast was seen by one of our colleagues – and you really were rather silly, drawing attention to yourself that way – we’ve been looking into the records – and believe me, we have very detailed records – and you don’t exist. Yes, there was a Robin Colman, who would have been about your age – but he died in 1988. Did you pick his name from a gravestone?”

Bill: “You don’t seem to belong here, do you?”

Me: “Well no, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you – ”

Debs: “The payment card you’re using. It’s not registered in your name, is it? Did you steal it, or is it a forgery? Or did your employers provide it for you?”

Me: “No, I told you, when I arrived here I didn’t have anything, but a coin dealer gave it to me in exchange for some labouring work.”

Bill: “Yes, yes, we know you’ve admitted that you’re an illegal immigrant. But who are you working for? Where are you really from? You may have fooled people like the professor and that silly girl who interviewed you on the television with your cock-and-bull tale, but I think we’ve reached the stage now when you ought to just tell us the truth.”

Me: “Look, who are you? I have been telling you the truth.”

Bill: “I don’t think it matters who we are, does it? Let’s just say we work for the government. More to the point, who do you work for?”

Me: “The British government – same as you. I am Lieutenant Robin Colman, of the Norwich Regiment. I was sent here entirely by chance, as I’ve explained to you at length.”

Debs: “Really? Well, I think we’ve heard enough of this nonsense. You’re an odd sort of spy, certainly. I can’t think of many who would advertise their presence on the television. I’m not quite sure what to make of you.”

She stopped and looked at Bill at this point. He shook his head.

Bill: “We’re not taking you with us just now, but be assured we shall be keeping a very close eye on you. Don’t leave Norwich, will you?”

With that, they stood up and walked out. They left me, I must admit, in shock.

First, there was the very fact of being accused of being a spy by these government agents.

Then there was the shock of there having been a ‘me’ here. I knew that famous people – politicians and the like – seemed to crop up in the same line of work in different worlds, but it had never occurred to me that ordinary people would be replicated too – and certainly not that I might be here too. Except I wasn’t, it seemed, as the ‘me’ in this world had died as a child.

I had a sleepless night last night. I know that, eventually, I’ll be sent away from this world, so threats of imprisonment don’t worry me too much (unless spying is a capital offence here – I’m not sure that sending will be much use to me if I’m dead). Of course, I can’t be absolutely sure that I will ever experience sending again – I still don’t know what causes it, and even if it is, as I suspect, to do with the Hermes team, there is no guarantee that they will keep on doing whatever it is they are doing.

I really don’t know what to do, or think. I couldn’t talk to the professor yesterday – after the interview, or whatever it was, I was just too shaken-up to think straight, so went for a long walk. Anyway, she says she still wants to see me, so I’ve arranged to meet her again tomorrow. Perhaps she’ll have some ideas about what I ought to do.

Travel has not been easy, mainly because of the high price of fuel. Before I set off on my journey I went to the library to do a bit more research, and I found that this Britain doesn’t seem to have discovered North Sea oil. Assuming it’s only social history that has changed on this world, and not geology, then if I only had the money to set up a drilling company, I could make my fortune here – unfortunately, it would take a fortune in the first place, and many years, which I probably don’t have. And then, in this Britain, I might not be allowed to do it anyway. Every major industry seems to be nationalised: gas, electric, telecommunications, the railway system – even the few filling stations that there are all seem to be BP, which appears to be state owned.

I couldn’t afford to hire a car, and bus travel is very expensive, but the railways seem economical – at least British Rail is offering a way of getting around the country. The coaches were old and a bit tatty, but the engines are electric (nuclear power seems plentiful and cheap here). I bought a rover ticket, giving me access to the entire rail network for a week, for just £20, and set off to explore Britain – well, bits of England actually.

I was surprised that the air didn’t seem clean and fresh, given the small number of motor vehicles, and electric trains, but as I travelled around I saw a lot of heavy industry; the midlands particularly are very heavily-polluted, with factories belching out thick smoke.

I have much more to say about the state of the country, but I’ve arranged to meet the professor in fifteen minutes (when I got back there was a message from her at my digs, asking me to be at Kiln House at 10.30 this morning) so I’ll have to stop for now.