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.