Alex wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, his once-stiff uniform wrinkled in the morning light peeking over the horizon. A light draft rustled the full trees, the verdant green catching the sun’s brilliant dawn rays. He and the rest of his team had scattered about the building after twenty-four grueling hours, pouring over endless senseless numbers.

In the early May breeze, the war seemed surreal. It was a typical morning—he was relaxed at home, sitting on his porch watching the blazing sun rise. Inside, the tea was boiling atop the stove, screaming through the glass. He had not spent the past year at a specialized code-breaking school, recruited by the British government. Alex was a normal man, who travelled to work in the morning and enjoyed his time off reading the latest of novels and going out with friends.

He was not a code-breaker.

His life was not classified.

“Sir,” A voice called from the doorway, breaking him from his reverie. “You are needed again.”

Alex turned, a protest waiting on his lips. “I’ve been released for rest time. I have another fourteen hours before I have been ordered to return.”

The waiting man pursed his lips, speaking in a clipped tone, “I understand, sir, but you are needed immediately.” He stepped out of the entrance, standing formally beside Alex. His brown hair was combed back neatly, opposite of Alex’s shaggy blonde mess that stuck up oddly.

Alex did not know the soldier’s name—few were authorized that information—and he doubted that he had ever seen the man before, and he didn’t remember if he had. The government was good about that. Secrecy was of the utmost importance to them, especially now. Germany was working just as hard as they were, attempting to crack their codes to intercept the British soldiers.

“This way,” The soldier ushered him away from the mansion, leading him across the vast grounds of Bletchley Park to his workplace: Hut 6. Alex entered the make-shift office alone, greeted only by his partner, 308. He knew not his name. Nobody on the grounds did, save 308. It was the same for Alex, and every other man on the premises. Leaked names led to a higher possibility of danger, of MIAs and prisoners of war.

Alex nodded to 308, his exhaustion settling heavily on his shoulders. He had never been called back after such long hours. British Intelligence was generous enough to take their basic needs into account, such as sleeping. A new code must have just come in.

“What do we have?” Alex asked his partner.

“The Germans evidently aren’t aware of the early hours. A new code was just sent through the system. We’ve picked up some patterns.” 308 replied, enamored in his work. The dark rings beneath his green eyes were beginning to look more like bruises, his dull brown hair as shaggy as Alex’s. They wore identical uniforms, though neither remained neatly pressed. Yet somehow, 308 still seemed alive, still enthused at the prospect of an end. An end of war. An end of brutality. An end of isolation and long hours and strenuous work. No matter how deeply he looked, Alex couldn’t seem to find that hope.

“What’s on your mind, 427?” His partner glanced at him, tearing his eyes from the machines and numbers laid out across the tables.

Alex sighed, hating that he hadn’t heard a voice utter his name in over a year. If he didn’t remind himself of it every day, he would surly forget it. “This war,” he spoke gravely, “will never end, will it?”

308 looked to him as if he were ludicrous to speak such a thought. “Of course it will. It’s 1940. We’ve only been at war for eight months. Many wars have lasted years and years—with the work we’re getting done, it could all be over by Christmas!”

“You have a dreamer’s mind if you’re to believe that rubbish. We’ve barely passed enough information on to give our troops safe passage, let alone end all of this turmoil.” Alex spat. He took a deep breath, reigning in his temper. “I apologize, my friend. It seems that I’ve allowed my anger to get the best of me.”

308 shook his head idly. “You’re exhausted—we all are. These hours are ridiculous. They’re inhumane.” Alex stared at him incredulously. He had never heard his partner speak negatively against British intelligence. “Well, we best be getting to work now. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can sleep.”

The two busied themselves in an ocean of work, their eyes scanning and rescanning the list of numbers. At first glance, it seemed like a piece of nonsense numbers. But as Alex studied the work, his mind picked out patterns that occurred frequently throughout the message that made the code even easier to break.


Alex snatched a piece of paper and a pen from one of the tables, trying to make the numbers click in his brain.
1942 538 322 3160 1942 1648 1252 1252 1378 1792 3160 1942 1252 118 262 2260 118 1132 208 322 3160 1252 1132 3160 160 322 460 622 2098 1018 3160 118 1132 262 3160 538 1252 910 910 118 1132 262 3160 1252 1132 3160 1942 538 322 3160 1942 322 1132 1942 538 3160 1252 388 3160 1018 118 2782 3160 1132 622 1132 322 1942 322 322 1132 3160 388 1252 1648 1942 2782.

“We’re receiving another message.” 308 said with widened eyes. “They’re making it too easy. It’s an equation. It’s as if they know we’re obtaining their codes.”

“It’s bloody well likely, considering they’re doing the same thing not a thousand miles away.” Alex said matter-of-factly. “What’s the equation?”

308 wrote the surprisingly short function out for Alex to see. Alex narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “A decoy? Or the real message?”

His partner shook his head, “Maybe they’re just trying to mess with our heads. In any case, it’s working.” His hands fell heavily to the wooden table, and he continued as if to persuade himself, “Let’s just decode this. It shouldn’t take too long, and we’ll be doing our jobs. It’s not in our hands to decide if this is real or a façade.”

For half of an hour, they worked diligently, their brains preoccupied and focused on the numbers that soon unfolded into letters, the letters that soon became words. They decrypted the same cypher thrice, to ensure a correct translation; but, in doing so, the duo grew horrified at their results:
The troops to advance on Belgium and Holland on the tenth of May nineteen forty.

Alex turned to 308, “What day is it today?”

“I can’t be sure, but I believe it is the ninth,” the man replied back. “We still have time, but we must send this on immediately.” 308 relayed the message to Hut 3, who would turn their work into an intelligence report and send it on through the channels.

Though Alex had recovered by the time the two were dismissed for their free time—this was war, after all, and it was not the first time a message such as this had been diverted into their hands—his acquaintance had not. 308 seemed in distress, still in shock at the thought of how many lives could be lost, how many soldiers could fall, how many innocent pedestrians could be claimed victim, if their message was not one hundred percent accurate. The man was one of the only truly good people remaining on the estate.

To Alex, it seemed that 308 held his hopes too high, that his vision of the world was too flawless, his mind too kind, that soon enough he would break because of it. But then Alex thought to his own numbness, the way he brushed everything off, shut his mind off so completely, just to stay whole inside. If Alex’s detachment to the world was his solution, could 308’s not be his pureness?

Before departing in their separate directions, Alex clapped his fellow partner on the shoulder, bidding him a good rest before the start of the next morning. He trudged sleepily through the halls of the mansion, finding his room through half-closed eyelids. He had just shut his door when darkness welcomed him and he fell to his pillow.

Alex didn’t have much time to dream, let alone enjoy his free time. He was awakened some fourteen hours after he fell asleep, another urgent message wrestling against his wanting of sleep. After a late supper—seeming as he slept through the entire day— he was to return to Hut 6 for further instructions.

He shoveled down a piping hot bowl of oatmeal, swallowing against the slimy substance burning down his throat, before rushing through the cafeteria and across the lawn in his newly cleaned uniform. Inside the hut, he found the rest of the team assembled, some hiding yawns or fighting the urge to close their eyes. But, to his surprise, all were attentive to the task at hand, whatever that may be. It had to have been a serious matter to awaken everybody and cram them into the small and enclosed space, just to crack yet another code.

“What’s going on?” He whispered to the man standing to his right—Alex believed his number was 756. He did not speak with him often, though that more than likely had to do with the fact that they worked mostly in pairs—and Alex’s partner, of course, was 308.

“The Germans are believed to be on their way to Belgium and Holland, but they just sent another message through. They wanted all of us to decipher the new code as fast as possible. They could have given away their position.”

Alex glanced at the board, doubting that the Germans would so easily give away such important information in a code as easy as the one in front of the group. Nevertheless, he quickly sped through the decoding process, fishing through the numbers to find any patterns.
18 8.5 13.5 10.5 21.5 9.5 15.5 15 18 17 15.5 14 21.5 15.5 11 21.5 11 17 8.5 15 9.5 10.5 21.5 8.5 18 21.5 8.5 14 14 21.5 9.5 15.5 17.5 18 17.5

The team finished in record time, using the information graciously handed off to them by the Poles to help decipher the German Enigma that coded all messages. They were all able to discover the chink in the armor, so to speak, and cracked the simple code easily.
Take control of France at all costs.

It was as if the Germans were hoping to give themselves a head start, to prolong the Allies military from protecting the next Nazi target. As if sending the message hours before the instructions needed to be carried out would prevent a defensive force from striking.

A man burst through the doorway, panting and out of breath. “News… from the frontline. The Nazis… They’re headed for France.”

Suddenly, the message in front of the team didn’t seem like another tedious task to their job. It was real. The Germans had raided Belgium and Holland overnight and were well on their way to France. The earlier message was not a fake—they had simply diverted the Allies main attention away from the unprotected neighboring nation just to the south. This message that had busied the team was not late; this message was a warning to the Allies.

But that didn’t make them unstoppable.

As the months passed, Alex was overwhelmed with news that only grew worse by the day. Holland surrenders; Belgium falls; France is invaded; Paris is bombed; Italy joins the war.

However, just as everyone else, he continued on with his normal schedule—as normal as one could get in Bletchley Park. Work, sleep, eat: a continuous routine, performed numbly and blindly. Alex forced out any thoughts that could have triggered past memories, making his life at the government cipher headquarters easier to live.

These days, he felt nothing. He couldn’t afford to feel anything— it would just get in the way of his work, and anything that interfered with his responsibilities interrupted any hopes of ending the war.

The team of Hut 6 saw minor action through the blistering summer. Much happened on the Continent, yet little occurred in their backyard. At least, until late July rolled around, and it seemed that they were bombarded with code after code, forcing the entire crew to pull together to break through the complicated Enigma.

As the war heated up, the group was required to meet each day, buried in work and decryptions. One particular afternoon still pricked Alex’s mind. The assembled team had spent days deciphering an exceptionally difficult code, one that drove each of them to try harder and harder, for if a code were this protected, it must have been of great import.

The numbers had been etched into Alex’s brain, it seemed, still haunting him. As much as his numbness had succeeded in blocking out any terrible thoughts and memories that infested his mind, nothing could work against the idea of his home country in danger.
446 508 1454 718 284 1246 2308 446 124 1348 2308 508 1348 1348 1564 284 238 2308 124 508 1246 2308 1246 124 508 238 1348 2308 124 388 124 508 878 1348 1454 2308 388 1246 284 124 1454 2308 158 1246 508 1454 124 508 878 2308 1457 964 2308 158 284 388 508 878 2308 508 878 2308 124 1564 388 1564 1348 1454

In other words, Great Britain had been threatened.
Hitler has issued air raids against Great Britain to begin in August.

Through the months, as bomb after bomb was dropped throughout the country, nothing made him feel worse than knowing that his fellow people constantly remained in jeopardy; that his friends and his family remained in danger; that his own life was on the line.
It took what seemed like eternity for the next few years to pass. After the Enigma had been successfully cracked and the Americans joined the English in the treacherous war, things began to look up. But it wasn’t until 1945, when the German forces felt threatened, that Alex felt a little spark ignite throughout the grounds and he— shamefully— admitted to himself that watching the German Nazis squirm was a nice change.

They had received a message from the Enigma that erupted cheers in the hut:
2.6124 2.75 3.1726 3 2.9014 3.0607 3.3919 2.9014 3.199 3.3919 2.7906 2.559 3 3 2.9014 3.0607 2.8292 3.3919 3.299 2.75 3.3919 3.0607 2.75 2.75 2.7071 3.3919 2.559 3 3 3.3919 2.559 3.2748 2.559 2.9014 3 2.559 2.6124 3 2.75 3.3919 3.2247 3.1726 3.0897 3.0897 3.118 3.199 3.3919 3.2247 3.0897 3.3919 2.7071 2.75 2.7906 2.75 3.0607 2.7071 3.3919 3.2247 2.866 2.75 3.3919 2.6614 2.9014 3.2247 3.3463

Berlin is falling. We need all available troops to defend the city.

It was the end for Germany. It was the beginning of the end of the war. For the first time, Alex allowed himself to feel happiness. He allowed himself to believe in his friend, and 308’s hopes that once seemed so crazy to Alex.

For once, Alex could see himself sitting on his porch, his friends around him, laughing and chatting as if no time had passed. As if nothing in the world had ever gone wrong.