Breaking Enigma || The Imitation Game

◈ THIRTEEN- Lunch ◈

It had taken nearly just over a month, a month that dragged immensely and horribly, to figure out that if we had ten men checking one setting a minute, for twenty-four hours every day and seven days every week, it would take... Well, the shocking truth really, is that the job wouldn't take weeks or months. It would take years-

Twenty million years.

To stop an attack on British ships, we would have to check twenty million years worth of settings, in just twenty minutes. Which, quite evidently, is an impossible task.

John, Hugh, Carlton and I were doing our best to decrypt the thousands of messages that kept on flooding in like an infinite river, but we were getting nowhere. The countless amount of messages were no match for the five cryptographers of Hut 8.

Allany, meanwhile, was still focused on drawing out the designs and equations for her code-breaking machine. I decided it was best to leave her to her own devices, but John and Hugh in particular were irritated by her lack of participation and contribution in the Team. Although, they did their best not to show it.

Carlton and I were sat at our desks, using perforated sheets to analyse Enigma messages as a young woman entered the Hut. Surprisingly, it was the same one that I had bumped into on my first day at Bletchley. She gave a little smile in my direction, before depositing yet another stack of encrypted messages onto Hugh Alexander's desk. I smiled back and watched her leave in the direction of the mansion. She was, I'll admit, rather pretty.

Everywhere you looked, as far as the eye could see, there were towers of messages on each and every desk in the Hut. We were buried in pile after pile of undecrypted messages. Another passenger convoy had been lost today because we weren't able to move fast enough. We were so far behind with everything that we were blind to see it.

"...I'm famished," Carlton announced, finishing with a tired sigh. I think we all were. Work had been non-stop since six o'clock this morning and it was now one in the afternoon. There hasn't even been time for a cup of tea, so now seemed like the perfect time to get some lunch. Even John seemed to agree as he subconsciously nodded, transfixed on his work.

Hugh stretched, like you would do in the morning when you wake up, as he stared out of the window. I could tell that a passing WREN caught his eye, as he smirked in an obvious way.

"Good Lord," he uttered. "What is it with women and little hats?"

John and Carlton turned their attention to where their colleague was staring and I felt the curious urge to gaze out of the window also. Although, by the time I did, the WREN was gone. I couldn't help but find Hugh's attraction to women odd and amusing, not that there was anything unusual about the typical male trait he possessed. He seemed to have two separate minds- one for women and the other for his intelligence.

I decided that now was the perfect time for leaving Hut 8 for a while to get something to eat. Carlton seemed to have read my mind, as he began to get up too. Rising out of my chair, I walk over to Allany, thinking she would like to join us.

She was sat at her cluttered, solitary desk in the corner of the room, away from everyone else.

"We're going to get some lunch," I tell her, expecting her to feel just as hungry as the rest of us and for her to get up too.

Allany seemed to be ignoring me, fully concentrating on the electrical schematic diagrams she was drawing.

"Allany?"

"Yes?" She muttered, refusing to look up.

"I said we were going to get some lunch."

Nothing, was the reply and her expression appeared to be a blank one.