Chapter 1 – A Walk in The Park

September 28, 2056 – London, UK

Grady had met with a gentleman who worked at Bletchley Park in their museum. He’d reached out to ‘The Archivist’ to see if they could locate a lost codebook the recovering SAS team had once called the Epsilon Book. It had been used to break many codes after its recovery and had helped the codebreakers get program data for the Bombes. After the war, it had apparently been misfiled or lost.

“We understand that your man, this Archivist, is known to recover missing things somehow.” The man had said at the end of the story.

“Yes, we typically do.” Grady replied. He and James had decided that they would publicly announce failures to recover items every now and then, even if they hadn’t been asked to recover them. They wanted to seem very good at recovering things, but not magical. Skill brought attention, magic brought scrutiny. “We would just need some basic research questions answered and we can work from there.”

“Yes well, you could have near unlimited access to the archives at Bletchley Park.” The man said smiling. “The Crown is very interested in restoring this piece of lost history now that we are without veterans of the war and all records have been unsealed.”

Grady had asked James and Celeste to meet him at the Bletchley Park Museum. What had started as a grand plan to live entirely in the past had gradually become something more flexible—they could live in both eras, adjusting as logistics and comfort demanded. Even when they were in the 21st century, everything about their setup had to support the mission. Any base, any house, any stash of supplies could be used to stage operations, monitor events, or ensure they weren’t inadvertently erasing history. Sometimes, going home just felt good—but it was never just home.

James and Celeste had recently picked a house in 1875’s East Village of New York City. Grady, still cautious about manipulating the timeline, had paused when James proposed leasing out the land in the present to generate passive income for the operation.

“James, we don’t know who’s supposed to own that property,” Grady said, frowning. “What if this causes a paradox?”

“I hear you,” James said, flipping through a packet of assessor’s reports, “but the lot I’m looking at is owned by the City of New York today. It’s a tax lot—vacant land. That means the city might not even use it differently. We’re not interfering, just... occupying.”

Grady didn’t look convinced—but he’d agreed in the end. The idea itself wasn’t terrible.

So, James and Celeste stocked the house as their ‘in-time’ base of operations, keeping currencies, clothing, and artifacts on hand. It wasn’t quite them living together fully, and Celeste’s upbringing kept her from going too far “modern,” but it allowed them to function.

The one thing Celeste loved about the 21st century was the freedom to dress casually and blend in without drawing attention. She still favored simple dresses—always with pockets—but had embraced wearing her hair down more often and loved the comfort of sneakers.

Arriving at Bletchley Park with James, she felt much more at ease than during that first car ride to Placerville from the mine. Back then, it had been her very first time even seeing a modern automobile, and on top of that, Grady was badly hurt and the whole journey had been a blur of speed and noise, faster than any train she had ever taken and with none of the steady rhythm she was used to. It had terrified her, every jolt and lurch making her grip the seat tighter. But now, after spending more time here and encountering cars under far less dire circumstances, she had begun to see them as something she could live with, even if she doubted she would ever quite love them.

James had started to embrace the past more with each passing day. He’d occasionally forget his cell phone and found himself gravitating toward the natural fabrics he’d come to prefer. A t-shirt and jeans still were his go-to, but now, he as often chose a cotton button-up, slacks, and sometimes even suspenders. Today, it was a button-up and slacks day—but he still wore tennis shoes for comfort.

Despite the bright sun and cloudless sky, the air around the mansion felt cool—a soft breeze drifting across the grounds. It felt like home for Celeste, like any given day in San Francisco. The house at first glance seemed to invoke the Victorian style she saw in homes being built in San Francisco, but looking further, there was more to the house.

“James, Celeste!” Grady called as their bus pulled away. “This place is so neat! They used computers in the 1940s!”

“What is this place?” Celeste asked, marveling at the house and its strange mishmash of architectural styles.

“In World War Two—” James began, then caught himself. Celeste often gave him a very specific look when he barreled into explanations for things she hadn’t yet learned. Sometimes she became frustrated when he missed her silent cues—and he always felt bad when that happened. He was getting better at noticing.

“Sorry. There were two wars—massive ones—where most of the world took part. The second, this one, was worse. Both were incredibly destructive.”

He knew they’d talk more about the World Wars at some point. He worried that, being so kind and sensitive, Celeste would be horrified when she learned how many had died. And then there was the Holocaust. He’d wait until after the mission to bring that up.

She frowned slightly, then nodded—processing the scope of it, her expression shifting from confusion to something quieter.

“In that second war,” James continued, “the Germans used a machine to scramble their military messages. It was advanced for the time—made them unreadable unless you had another machine set up exactly the same way. You’d type in the code like a typewriter, and it would light up the decoded letters.”

Celeste drifted into thought, as she often did when taking in something new. James had come to recognize these silences—not as distraction, but as the beginning of something. She rarely did anything without thinking it through first.

That was what had made her first playful peck on his cheek—back when they barely knew each other—all the more surprising. And meaningful.

Usually, when she returned from these moments, she came back with insights that left James quietly stunned, having perspectives only someone free of modern bias could offer.

“So, this machine must be more than just changing one letter to another. How difficult would these codes be, to need two machines?”

“Incredibly difficult,” James said, as they entered the museum. Grady handed a card to the person at the front desk, who glanced at it, smiled, and waved them through without charging.

“It’s called a substitution cipher—but this one was dynamic. Every time you pressed a key, the machine changed the mapping. So, A might equal T on the first press, but Z the next.”

“And it had extra settings,” Grady added, stopping beside the glass case that held the Enigma machine. He pointed to the plugboard at the bottom front of the device. “You could preconfigure it, so even if someone figured out the dials, they’d still need to decode this part.”

Celeste studied the machine. It looked simple—just a compact box with keys and dials—but her brow furrowed as she imagined the depth of what it could do.

“This is a bit much,” she said. “I assume… Germany lost that war?”

“They did,” James said. “And the work done here helped make that possible—along with the soldiers who risked everything to capture codebooks and pieces of machines.”

“Mr. Dennison! How good of you to come!”

A short, balding man was walking briskly toward them, hand extended. He stood just over five feet tall and carried a bit more weight than his frame needed, but behind his round glasses were eyes sharp with intelligence and curiosity. His wide smile showed he genuinely loved what he did.

“Mr. Banfield,” Grady said, shaking his hand.

James and Celeste exchanged a quick glance at the name. Celeste had abandoned the name Banfield after her supposed death in the 1906 earthquake, taking Whitlock instead—something timeless and subtle enough to pass through history unnoticed. Secretly, she hoped one day her last name might be Callahan, but she hadn’t told James that when she’d changed it.

“These are my researchers, James and Celeste,” Grady added.

“Please, call me Charles,” the man said, shaking both their hands. “I trust you’re all well. We’re excited about what you might be able to find for us.”

“We’re excited too,” James said. “I think all we need to start is everything you’ve got on the recovery of the Epsilon Book—and what might have happened to it.”

“Well,” Charles said, gesturing toward the research library, “we know that after the war, His Majesty’s government didn’t order everything preserved. The Epsilon Book was important—all the codebooks were, in their own way—but not important enough to warrant special protection.”

“Then why the interest in recovering it?” Celeste asked. She’d learned that even in the 21st century, being the woman in the room sometimes meant being overlooked. She made sure she wasn’t.

“Ah, that’s easy,” Charles said. “We believe its true importance was missed. That without it, the war might have ended differently.”

“How so?”

Charles removed his glasses and polished them with a cloth. “There was a bombing mission in France. A small village, targeted because intelligence believed German officers were using it as a transfer point. But Dr. Turing’s team—using the settings from the Epsilon Book—decoded a message just in time. The officers had moved out and civilians had moved in.”

“Turing called Churchill personally and had the mission scrubbed. The bombers were minutes from their run.”

“That’s amazing,” Grady said, eyes wide. He loved those last-minute saves—had lived one, in fact, though getting shot in the process had tempered his enthusiasm for repeat performances. He had told James shortly after leaving the hospital that it wouldn’t be happening again.

“It gets better,” Charles said. “Among the people in that village? A spy. One of ours. With information that ended up shaping the D-Day invasion strategy.”

James glanced at Celeste—he saw it in her eyes. That phrase, D-Day, had caught her attention. He’d planned to ease her into the darker chapters of the war later, but it looked like that talk would come sooner.

“Well, Mr. Banfield,” James said, placing a hand on Grady’s shoulder, “Celeste and I should get to work. But I’d bet anything Grady’s just itching to use that free museum pass.”

Grady grinned. “He’s right. I’ll catch up with you two later.”

“In that case,” Charles said cheerfully, “let me give you a personal tour.”

With that, the two of them turned toward the museum exhibits, while James and Celeste headed for the library—and whatever secrets the Epsilon Book still held.

It took a little over an hour to find the piece they needed. James had figured that the easiest way to get access to the book was to be on the receiving end at Bletchley Park and that would require one of them to be hired by the Government Code and Cypher School.

As they discussed the option, James pulled an envelope out of one of the boxes. Inside was a personnel record for one of the Women’s Royal Naval Service—or as they were called, the Wrens.

“What if we just forge you some papers, get you inside the park, and try to position you either to receive the book or be on site when it arrives so you can grab it?”

“But I don’t have an English accent,” Celeste said. “And the longer I’m with you, the more I sound like you.”

“Remember when we first met and I said you talked overly proper?” James said, then launched into a terrible attempt at an accent that sounded like a drunken mix of Irish and Cockney. “If you just add a lilt to it, you sound right proper.”

Celeste looked at him and stifled a giggle. “Sweetheart, don’t ever speak like that again—you sounded rather ridiculous.” She said in a far better first attempt at faking received pronunciation.

“Oh really?” He gave her a playful shove, feigning offense. “What’s the phrase from your time? Putting on airs?”

“It looks like we’re on our way to 1942.” James said slipping the personnel packet into his jacket. Grady had told them the museum had given them full access to anything they needed, but he didn’t think that meant taking anything from the museum. He’d get these back before they left, maybe have Grady return them.

“That means we get to go shopping!” Celeste exclaimed. She knew that James wasn’t all that interested and so she loved to ham it up when they needed to. While she loved fashion, the shopping centers of this new world were often a bit overwhelming with the amount of people shopping along with the almost too many options. She was also still getting used to the idea that $5 was not as extravagant as it was in her day.

“Don’t forget—dresses with pockets are a lot less common in the 1940s,” James said, grinning like the Cheshire Cat as he opened the door.

“Don’t ruin all my fun,” Celeste replied, slipping back into her RP accent with mock offense.