During that time, I always think about my mother. I look at her notes, and there are often annotations by my father's pen next to her beautiful handwriting. In my memory, my mother always leaned on the sofa with thick cushions and read a book. When I staggered past, she would put down the book and hug me on her lap, humming a little song softly.
Edgar was right, his father and mother didn't believe it, who else could believe it
The mother's gray-blue eyes are beautiful, and they fall gently on everyone who talks to her. This kind of tender gaze has been on me, on my father, and even on Andymond.
Anderson said that his mother had unique insights into cryptography. In the days of reading her notes, I found that her real talent lies in mathematics, but she devoted her whole life to deciphering the code for the motherland. Even after she retired for many years, in her last notebook, she still managed to summarize the deciphering method into some mathematical formulas. These formulas apply to the previous life of "Miss" - an early mechanical encryption device at that time.
I think it's the love of England that has carried her this far.
Her short life was fixed in the photo, and she will always be that demure and gentle young woman.
I started spending my free time trying to understand the formula she left behind. In the meantime I saw Andremon once more.
That was a coincidence. My interest returns to mathematics. Cambridge is a place where mathematical geniuses gather. As long as you are willing, there will never be a lack of communication partners. I joined a math club and made a lot of friends. Emily. Rotter, who had already published a paper on abstract algebra in an academic journal during her sophomore year. And Adam. Mensa, American, 26-year-old visiting professor at Cambridge. Linton would occasionally join us on the weekends, and when he mentioned work, he would always refer only to "the Golf and Chess Club". Encouraged by my friends, I wrote a paper on group theory. After being introduced by Emily, I decided to take it to a professor who lived in the urban area of London—Hasson, the mathematician at the time. Dr. Watt.
It was winter, and the light snow had just stopped. The housekeeper asked me to wait outside the study. After a while, the door opened, and Professor Watt and Andrew came out. Behind them followed a gold-rimmed spectacles in military uniform. Anderson was taken aback when he saw me, and Professor Watt explained with a smile: "This is Alan Custer from Cambridge, a third-year university student, very talented in mathematics. He wrote a very interesting paper on group theory. about it. My dear Andymond, perhaps you'd be interested—oh, do you know each other?"
He passed me by: "Alan is my former student—Dr. Watt. If you are interested in the work at Plimpton Manor, please feel free to contact me."
I chased him out, and Andremeng walked very fast, without any intention of stopping to wait for me.
Still following behind him, the gold-rimmed glasses in military uniform reminded him, "That student has chased him out."
"Edgar said, did you find me?" I asked aloud.
He turned to look at me, his emerald green eyes narrowed.
"No, your friend identified the wrong person."
I said quickly, "I know you doubt me. I just want to tell you, my parents, that they are innocent."
Andymond's black car was parked on the bare winter avenue outside the professor's back garden, and the top was covered with a thin layer of snowflakes. He was wearing a heavy black overcoat. Peter stood upright by the door and waited for him.
I haven't seen him for half a year, and Andemon has hardly changed, but his expression is a little tired. My head was hot, and I blurted out: "You still need people, you are inviting Dr. Watt to join. If you can trust me, I can help you. You know I like you."
Peter opened the car door for him, and Andmon didn't sit in, but turned sideways to look at me. He walked towards me suddenly and quickly, and I was caught off guard. Our faces were so close, I could feel his breath on my face.
"Quit the 'math club' you joined," he said. "Stop submitting papers to academia."
I don't know what kind of madness Andrew is going: "You have no right to interfere with my freedom!"
"Also, don't just go to a bar and make 'friends.'"
I can't believe it: "You spy on me?!"
After we parted ways with Andymond, I was drunk in bars for a while, and then I was woken up by Edgar punching me. I am not the only gay guy in Cambridge. I made a few "friends" but no deep developing relationships. I thought I was doing it so carefully that even Edgar didn't know it.
But Andrew knew.
"You know Plimpton's secret, so you will definitely be investigated." He paused, then suddenly lowered his voice: "Don't worry, it's only for a while, and it won't affect your normal life."
"You still don't trust me."
Andrew nodded.
"So we broke up."
He froze for a moment, as if trying to sort out the cause and effect, then nodded again.
"So you don't have the right to interfere with my private life. The matter between me and my friend has nothing to do with you."
Andmond was silent for a moment, said "whatever you want", and then walked back to the car, Peter opened the door for him. Gold-rimmed glasses were waiting for him, and he glanced at me with interest when he got into the car.
Trying to fall in love is just a pastime for Andymond, and I have been serious about it for a fucking year. I like Andymond. I think since he can't trust me and we can't be together, then we should go back to our original lives. I swore I would never beg to stay by his side again.
Edgar commends me for having figured it out: "You might as well try dating someone else—like me."
I kicked him: "Isn't your lover Venus with a broken arm—that's in the art room."
I tried to get back to the life I had before I met Andemon, but the month after that was miserable. I rented a car and asked friends I met in the bar to go for a drive, but the car broke down halfway; I met a handsome boy and saved money to invite him to a high-end restaurant for dinner. ticket. The conductor smiled and told us with a pile of unsold tickets: "It's all bought."
Edgar argued with the conductor, and I cursed Andemon ten thousand times in my heart.
In desperation, I had to spend time every day in the math club on the third floor of the library. The other members used to come here after dinner to have a cup of coffee and participate in the discussion, but I just sat in the activity room all day with nothing to do. Besides me, Linton is the person who spends the most time here. He only comes over on weekends, unkempt and unshaven, and doesn't go back until very late. When everyone was discussing heatedly, he sat in the corner and listened silently.
One day he stopped me: "Ellen, can you stay and have a drink with me?"
Linton drank until midnight, and almost all the students in the library had left, talking nonsense for a long time. I asked him, "Is that why you don't want to go back to Plimpton Manor?"
He scratched his hair: "So obvious?"
Under the flickering gas lamp, he asked me: "Alan, did you really unlock the code S?"
I shrugged and said nothing.
"I heard Peter, the adjutant who drove Garcia, talk about you. He asked Mr. Garcia, why you cracked the code name S, but you were not accepted into Plimpton Manor? I happened to pass by..."
"I can't get in." I answered curtly.
Linton's face could not be seen clearly in the dim light, and he could only hear him say: "Everyone is a genius there, and there are endless seminars every day, and the work in hand is completely ineffective—it is hell."
The decryption of Plimpton Manor can be divided into two types, one is instant decryption, and the other requires teamwork. A dozen people spend several weeks to decrypt a long telegram. The general encryption rules of passwords that can be decrypted instantly are relatively simple, and the content of the ciphertext is not so important. As a rookie, it is not surprising that Linton was assigned to the instant decryption team.
But his grades were not ideal.
Linton has been regarded as a mathematical genius since he was a child. Even in Cambridge, his talent is obvious to all. But Plimpton Manor is different, where "genius" is only a basic requirement, and everyone has a unique talent in their own field. Anderson not only recruited mathematical geniuses, he even recruited perverted chess champions and linguistic experts. Obviously, Linton was not outstanding.
We don't like each other very much. Yet he made a decision that violated Plimpton Manor. He decided to ask me for help.
He smuggled out an encrypted file.
"Help me, Ellen. I have no one to turn to," he told me.
The first step in decrypting a password is to guess the other party's encryption method. You must first determine the method by which the other party encrypted the text before you can unravel it in reverse. During the last world war, password substitution was usually used: for example, replace a with r, p with o, l with f, and e with w. Then the ciphertext of Apple apple becomes roofw. Such a password is actually very easy to crack, because the probability of each letter appearing in the text is almost constant-for example, in English, e has the highest probability of occurrence and z the lowest. The odds of "eh" appearing in the monogram are much lower than the odds of "he". With the advent of probabilistic analysis, such ciphers became obsolete.
The cipher that Linton gave me is nothing more than an improvement of the alphabet analysis method.
The other party was very smart. In order to avoid the frequency analysis method, he first made a letter substitution table. When the plaintext is encrypted, the letter in the first line of the substitution table is used to encrypt the first time a letter appears, and the letter in the second line is used to encrypt the second time it appears, and so on.
"This masks the frequency of individual letters," I said to Linton. "It's not difficult."
We worked quickly under the dim gaslight in the math club's activity room. At four o'clock, I handed him a piece of paper with the result written on it.
"No matter how you change it, when the replacement table reaches the end, you have to go back to the first line and start again. Only the ciphertext is long enough to be deciphered."
This is the beginning of my helping Linton decipher the code. I know that this violates Anderson's regulations on Plimpton Manor. I just want to prove my loyalty to Britain and the ability to enter Plimpton Manor to serve the country. I trust myself too much, and I trust Linton completely.