Cambridge University. The Cavendish Laboratory.
Rain lashed against the gothic windows. It was a weeping, English rain.
Alan Turing sat alone at a workbench. He was sixteen years old. His hands were covered in ink.
He was staring at a gear mechanism. A differential analyzer. It was primitive, clunky, and beautiful.
"It thinks," Turing whispered to the machine. "Or it tries to."
"Mr. Turing?"
He spun around on his stool.
A man in a tweed suit stood in the doorway. He held a wet umbrella. He looked like a professor, but his eyes were too sharp. Too predatory.
"I am occupied," Turing stammered. He hated interruptions. He hated people.
"I have a puzzle for you," the man said. He had a faint accent. Not German. Something deeper.
He placed a piece of paper on the bench.
It was a string of numbers. Binary code.
"This is nonsense," Turing said, glancing at it. "It's just ones and zeros."
"Read it," the man urged.
Turing frowned. He looked at the pattern.
01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111.
He tapped the table. H. E. L. L. O.
"ASCII," Turing whispered. "But... this standard doesn't exist."
"It exists where I come from," the man said.
He leaned closer.
"My employer has a machine that speaks this language. But it is broken. He needs someone to teach it to sing again."
"Where?" Turing asked.
"East," the man said. "Far East."
Turing looked at the binary. It was elegant. It was impossible.
"I have exams," Turing mumbled. "Mother would be cross."
"Your exams are for children," the man said. "We are building a brain, Alan. A brain made of lightning."
He put a train ticket on the table.
"Midnight. King's Cross. Don't pack."
The man turned and left.
Turing looked at the ticket. London to Berlin. Transfer to Moscow.
He looked at the differential analyzer. It looked like a toy now.
He picked up the ticket.
The Kremlin. Menzhinsky's Office.
"We have him?" Jake asked.
"He is on the train," Menzhinsky said. "Our agent used the binary code you provided. The boy couldn't resist."
"Good."
Jake paced the room.
"But we have a new problem," Menzhinsky said. "A local one."
"What?"
"Trotsky," Menzhinsky said.
Jake stopped.
He hadn't thought about Leon Trotsky in months. The Exile was rotting in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. Silenced. Irrelevant.
"Is he dead?"
"No," Menzhinsky said. "He is writing."
"Writing what? Memoirs?"
"Letters," Menzhinsky said. "To the Party leadership. To the Red Army commanders."
He slid a intercepted letter across the desk.
Stalin is betraying the Revolution. He allies with Fascists. He restores the Tsar's generals. He is building a Bonapartist dictatorship. We must strike now, while the iron is hot.
Jake read it. His hands shook slightly.
"He knows about the pact with Hitler," Jake realized. "How?"
"He has spies everywhere, Koba. You purged the top, but the roots run deep."
Menzhinsky lit a cigarette.
"He is calling for a General Strike. On November 7th. The anniversary of the Revolution."
Jake looked at the calendar. It was October.
"If the workers strike now," Jake muttered, "the factories stop. The rockets stop. The tanks stop."
He looked at Menzhinsky.
"Exile isn't enough anymore."
"I can send an agent," Menzhinsky offered. "An ice pick is traditional."
"No," Jake said. "If we kill him, he becomes a martyr. Like Hitler would have."
He crumpled the letter.
"We need to discredit him. Utterly."
"How? He is the hero of the Civil War."
"He was," Jake said. "Now he is a traitor."
He turned to the map.
"Bring him back."
Menzhinsky blinked. "Bring him to Moscow?"
"Yes," Jake said. "Put him on trial. A public trial. Broadcast it on the radio."
"It is risky," Menzhinsky warned. "He is a brilliant orator. Even with his damaged voice, he could sway the crowd."
"Not if we control the microphone," Jake said.
He smiled. A cold, shark-like smile.
"I want the world to see him fall. I want them to see the architect of the Red Army begging for mercy."
"And then?"
"And then," Jake said, "we execute him."
Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan.
The wind howled around the small wooden house.
Leon Trotsky sat by the stove. He was thin. His trademark goatee was grey. He wore a scarf to cover his scarred throat—a souvenir of Stalin's chlorine gas attack.
He was writing furiously.
The door burst open.
Soldiers in NKVD blue poured in. Snow swirled around their boots.
Trotsky didn't look up.
"You are late," he rasped. His voice was a whisper, a ruin.
"Get up, Lev Davidovich," the captain barked. "Moscow calls."
Trotsky put down his pen.
"Does Koba want my head?"
"He wants your voice," the captain said.
Trotsky smiled. It was a terrifying grimace.
"He took that years ago."
"He wants you to stand trial."
Trotsky stood up. He grabbed his coat.
"A trial," he whispered. "Good. I have a lot to say."
The Lubyanka Basement.
Turing sat on a crate. He was shivering. He still wore his school blazer.
"This isn't a laboratory," Turing said. "It's a dungeon."
"It is secure," Kurchatov said. The physicist looked exhausted. He was holding the dead laptop.
"This is the machine," Kurchatov said. He placed the Dell on the table.
Turing stared at it.
"It's plastic," Turing said, touching the lid. "But... perfect."
"It is dead," Kurchatov explained. "We need to wake it up."
Turing opened it. He looked at the black screen. He tapped the keys.
"The architecture..." Turing murmured. "It's impossible. How did you build this?"
"We didn't," Kurchatov said. "Stalin did."
Turing looked at the Russian physicist.
"Stalin built a machine from the year 2000?"
"Don't ask questions," Kurchatov hissed. "Just fix it."
Turing pulled a screwdriver from his pocket. He began to unscrew the back plate.
"I need light," Turing demanded. "And tea. Earl Grey."
"We have vodka," Kurchatov said.
"Tea," Turing insisted. "Or I don't work."
Kurchatov sighed. "I will find tea."
Turing looked inside the laptop. The motherboard gleamed. Gold traces. Silicon chips.
It was a city. A city of logic.
"Hello, beautiful," Turing whispered.
He touched a chip.
Intel Core i7.
He didn't know what it meant. But he knew he was looking at God.
The Great Hall of Columns. Moscow.
The show trial was ready.
Searchlights swept the ceiling. Microphones were set up. The press box was full—reporters from the New York Times, the London Times, Der Spiegel.
Jake stood behind the curtain. He watched the crowd.
"They are nervous," Menzhinsky whispered.
"Good."
The prisoner was brought in.
Trotsky walked with a cane. He looked frail. But his eyes were burning coals.
He stood in the dock.
The prosecutor, Vyshinsky, stepped forward.
"Citizen Bronstein," Vyshinsky boomed. "You are charged with treason, sabotage, and conspiring with foreign powers to overthrow the Soviet state. How do you plead?"
Trotsky leaned into the microphone.
He opened his mouth.
A raspy, broken sound came out. Like dry leaves crushing.
"I plead..." Trotsky whispered.
The microphone squealed. Feedback.
"Louder!" someone shouted from the back.
Trotsky tried again. He strained his neck muscles.
"I plead... guilt... not..."
His voice failed him. The gas had done its work too well. He couldn't project. He couldn't orate.
The crowd murmured. They couldn't hear the Lion of the Revolution. They only saw a mumbling old man.
Jake smiled behind the curtain.
"He is powerless," Jake said. "A prophet without a voice is just a beggar."
Vyshinsky smirked.
"The accused refuses to answer! His silence is an admission of guilt!"
"No!" Trotsky croaked. He pointed a shaking finger at the curtain. "He... is... there! The... traitor!"
But it was a whisper in a hurricane.
"We have evidence!" Vyshinsky shouted. "Letters! Telegrams! Plans to sell the Ukraine to Germany!"
It was fake. All of it.
But the crowd didn't know. They saw the documents. They saw the mute defendant.
"Guilty!" the crowd began to chant. "Guilty! Guilty!"
Trotsky looked around. He saw the faces of men he had led in battle. They were jeering at him.
He slumped against the railing.
He realized the trap. Stalin hadn't just silenced him physically. He had silenced him historically.
Jake turned away.
"Enough," Jake said. "Finish it."
The verdict was delivered at midnight. Death by shooting.
Trotsky was dragged away. He didn't struggle. He just looked at the curtain one last time.
Jake walked back to his office.
He felt empty.
He had killed his rival. He had secured his power.
But he had destroyed the last piece of the old Bolshevik soul.
"It is done," Jake told the empty room.
The phone rang.
"Comrade Stalin," Kurchatov's voice was breathless. "The Englishman. He did it."
Jake's heart jumped. "The laptop?"
"He bypassed the battery," Kurchatov said. "He hardwired it to a rectifier. It is running."
"I'm coming."
Jake ran.
He burst into the basement lab.
Turing was sitting in front of the glowing screen. He was weeping.
"It knows everything," Turing sobbed. "Mathematics... history... art..."
He pointed at the screen. The Wikipedia page for Alan Turing was open.
"It says I die," Turing whispered. "It says I kill myself. In 1954."
Jake froze.
He had forgotten about the personal history.
"It says I am a hero," Turing said, tears streaming down his face. "But they arrest me. Because of... who I love."
He looked at Jake.
"Is this true? Is this my future?"
Jake walked over. He put a hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Not anymore," Jake said.
He closed the browser window.
"That future is deleted, Alan. Here, there are no laws against who you love. Only laws of physics."
He looked at Kurchatov.
"Can we access the files?"
"Yes," Kurchatov said. "The neutron calculations. The implosion lens."
"Then get to work," Jake ordered.
He looked at Turing.
"You are safe here, Alan. You are the wizard of Oz now."
Turing wiped his eyes. He looked at the glowing screen.
"It is beautiful," Turing whispered.
"It is a weapon," Jake corrected. "And we are going to use it to win the war."
He turned to leave.
He had the Bomb. He had the Rocket. He had the Computer.
The Trinity was complete.
Now, he just needed a target.
And looking at the map of a rapidly rearming Germany, Jake knew exactly where the first lightning bolt would strike.