"It's discouraging to think how many people
are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit."

-Noël Coward

Alan stumbled down the stairs. He was jolted awake from his nightmare to find an empty, still-warm spot next to him. In his haste, he slid down the last step.

It had meant nothing to Arnold. He had moved on with his life, which was complicated enough as it was. He didn't need him. Or at least that's what the little voice in his head said. Alan could kick himself.

As he walked to the porch to catch a trace of the missing boy against his better judgment, he was distracted by a strange smell.

His nose led him to the kitchen, where he found Arnold. With a careless gesture, he obliged Alan to sit down. Alan pushed back a chair in surprise and was presented with a plate.

"I had to improvise a bit." Arnold slid an omelette along with apple slices and beans onto a plate in front of him. "But at least you'd have a good breakfast for once." With a wink, he placed a slice of toast on the egg.

Alan speechlessly took a bite of the egg. With a stuffed mouth, he muttered a thank you.

He closed his eyes to imprint this moment in his memory, because he knew it was not going to last forever.

When he opened his eyes again, they landed on the empty opposite side of the table. "Aren't you joining me?"

The boy turned off the stove and wiped his hands on his open-hanging shirt. "No can do, I have a job interview."

A disappointed 'oh' escaped his lips even before he could stop it.

"If I have a job, my father will have to take me back in. Though I expect he has already come around from the moment Chubz had to take a walk. Thanks for letting me stay here." He took Alan's hand and pressed a kiss on it. "Wish me luck."

Alan put down the fork and turned around in his chair, looking at the green coat that was taken off the hook in a whirlwind. He tried to banish the disappointment from his voice. "Good luck." The slamming door cut off his words.

He sighed and took another bite of the egg. The taste was less delicate than it had been a moment ago. So he reached for his wallet and took out a picture.

A smiling grey face stared at him. As sad as that photo made him feel, he could never resist smiling back.

"Is this love, Chris? Quod erat demonstrandum?" He shook his head. "If it ever becomes that, maybe one day, I'll let you know."

There was no point in dwelling on the past, but a promise he would always keep.

In one fatal second, he tried to grasp the colour of the ocean that burned in his memory. With one last glance at the picture, he turned it over in his hand.

Alan's gaze slid to the plate, his stomach turned.

As he safely stored Ms Morcom's photo in his wallet, he noticed something. At least twenty pounds had disappeared, more than his weekly wage. Arnold must have taken it.

Alan cursed so loudly that the neighbours would probably like him even less. He was furious with himself for being so naive. With boiling blood, he shoved off the plate and took out stationery.

On his way to work, Alan had slipped the letter under the door of the flat above the restaurant. He solemnly hoped the father had a shred of respect after all, and was not reading his son's mail.

As best he could, he had tried to articulate that he did not want to see the boy again, and that he was breaking off their non-existent affair.

Shaking his head, Alan got off his bike. He had hoped he would feel better. That he could shake off his worries along with the letter, but nothing was less true.

At that very moment, he was overwhelmed by the bustle at his workplace. Exactly what he needed. Men walked in and out of the Victorian house they rented, carrying boxes. Darwin had clearly pushed the decision to sponsor them.

He wriggled his way inside, only to bump into Williams. He had never seen the Welshman so cheerful. Alan reached out to him and helped carry a heavy rotor to the workroom.

Every time he stepped into that room, he had the feeling of being back in Bletchley. Boards with calculations and blueprints hung on the walls, with a huge plugboard in the middle of the making.

"I didn't expect we would receive the materials so soon." Williams scratched his hair absently. "I haven't even finished the calculations for the delay lines."

Alan jabbed a finger in the air. "Aha." He fumbled in his shoulder bag and took out a stack of papers. "I've already made those."

Almost eagerly, the engineer read through his notes. "I don't understand any of this." Nevertheless, he started making notes on one of the boards.

As always, mathematics offered an escape from his worries. From the face full of freckles that kept looming before his mind's eye.

Alan snorted loudly as he pondered, oblivious to the man who was eating a sandwich in the back, looking at them in amusement. Probably one of the delivery men who chose this very moment as a lunchtime.

"Got it," he exclaimed, deleting two terms from the equation. "That should do it."

At that, Williams laughed. "If you want the machine to overheat and blow us sky high." He clearly took pleasure from Alan's mistake. "Typical mathematicians, no regard for reality."

Alan wanted to respond brusquely that he was precisely attempting to escape reality, but returned to his thinking posture.

The man took another bite of his sandwich and laughed out loud, as if he was watching a stage show. The epic battle between the mathematician and the engineer. It would not draw crowds.

Alan turned briefly, taking in the man. He had an unkempt beard with some mayonnaise hanging in it. For a moment, he considered making a comment. Live and let live, he reminded himself.

"Say." The man put down his sandwich and took a newspaper from his vest pocket, lifting his lunch break to a whole new level of relaxation. "You scientists can certainly help me with this crossword."

Alan glanced at the riddle. "I am very bad at cryptograms," said the cryptographer, shrugging his shoulders.

That was enough motivation for his colleague to examine the puzzle, determined to find an answer to confirm his superiority.

Alan turned back to the board and pressed the chalk against it so hard that it broke. As if his day wasn't bad enough, Womersley came waltzing in. He didn't even try to hide the fact that he had been eavesdropping.

"See, that's why I hired you two."

In his mind, Alan corrected him, he had hired Womersley. He let the man continue his argument.

"Mathematicians are dreamers, they live in an infinitely stable world, in which they can create a secure fortress with their imagination and axioms as building blocks," he said with a crooked smile at the duo. "The engineers on the other hand, serve to pull these floaty thoughts to the ground and throw a hearty serving of rules of physics in their faces."

The sandwich guy put his hands together.

"In fact," began Williams – amused by their boss's speech, "Alan was helping me with the calculation for the delay lines. I can relish his absurd vision."

Alan rolled his eyes and watched as Womersley picked up the crayon. The mathematician and the engineer crossed their arms in sync, curious to see if he would solve their problem.

Womersley wiped the abbreviation for their machine ENIAC off the board with the sleeve of his shirt and wrote in its place ACE. "There, Automatic Computing Engine, surely that sounds much better, and it sounds less like the name of the American machine." He put the chalk back down and wiped his hands with satisfaction.

"We thank you for your unforgettable contribution," Alan muttered.

He had regained some courage when they could finally get to work with the supplied material. After some screwing and swearing, Alan had completed the first prototype of the machine. He wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"How do we know if it works or not?" Williams sat cross-legged on the floor and stuck the last plugs in place.

"If smoke is coming out, then it's not working." Alan took a step back to take in the work. Currently, the machine only consisted of a small control panel, but if they got more budget, it could take up the whole room. "The machine has a memory capacity of a shrimp, it would be a miracle should it be able to calculate one plus one."

Williams tapped gently on the plugboard, almost afraid it would fall apart. "But thanks to my great plan to use electrical wiring instead of electromagnetic, the machine is faster than the Americans'."

"With a longer cable, the information could travel from London to Cambridge in five seconds," said Alan, who had already made the calculation once. He now sank to the ground, also exhausted. "One day, the machine will be able to think all by itself."

Williams put his head back and smiled doubtfully. "I bet you know Ada Lovelace." Alan nodded. She had been the first to describe the machine they had just built. "She says the cleverness is not in the computer, but in the brain of its creator." He brought a finger to his temple. "A pike of metal can't think."

Alan couldn't help feeling attacked. "Machines are no less because they look different. We shouldn't discriminate against anything based on their appearance."

Williams was respectful enough to let him ramble.

The thought of Arnold blew back into his head after all these hours. He thought of how he was scolded because of his nail polish. For once, people had to learn to accept each other without a murmur. Anger bubbled up inside him.

With a short tug of his hand, he set the machine in motion. There was no smoke. He saw it as a baby, it couldn't count yet, but it still had to learn. He would raise it.

Alan sighed and continued in a more restrained tone. "We cannot measure intelligence based on gender, appearance, or even material. The machine will learn over time to behave like a human, until no distinction could be made."

Just like me, he thought.