Alan Turing: National Hero.

Lucas Armstrong

Imagine this.

Your country is fighting. It’s the second world war, bombs blitz from gloomy skies unleashing hellfire on your country. Your comrades sink with the ships at sea.

Things could not be more hopeless.

Your country is on its last legs, desperately fighting back against the relentless armada headed by the unstoppable and oppressive superpower that’s taking over the entire world. You won’t allow this. You won’t allow this oppression to dictate the lives of our children. You, and you alone, are going to make a difference.

But how?

The Enigma Code.

A complex, intricate labyrinth of code, the Germans’ impenetrable shield, defending themselves as they lay siege upon The Allies. But your superior computer knowledge beyond your peers, your ability to understand and then solve the most difficult problems in computing makes you the man for the job.

But even this, this seems downright impossible, the best of the best could not break through.

But you do it. Thanks to your dedication, your skill, you solve it, crack the technological riddle set before you.

You’re on top of the world.

You are Alan Turing: National Hero.

Eventually the Allies drop bombs on Japan and the war’s over. Finally, we can live in freedom from oppression. Which is good, being a closested homosexual man in the 1940s. Maybe slowly, you can start to be yourself.

“Gross indecency”. That’s what they called it. The crime of being who you truly are. Unbelievable that the world you saved is removing the freedom you fought so hard for.

There’s no getting out of this.

Chemical Castration. Apparently, it’s the merciful option. But to you, it’s practically a death sentence.

You lose the will to live.

Alan Turing, a hero to his country, committed suicide not long after. He saved them, and they killed him for the crime of being himself.

But we’ll make sure he won’t be forgotten. We’re in the present. Things have changed, we have changed.

Alan Turing, you will be remembered.