The Text of A Man from the Future

1926. A son of the British Empire,¹ Alan Turing was accepted by Sherborne, a moderately distinguished public school.² One could conform, rebel, or withdraw—and Alan withdrew.³

At the age of ten, he had been given a book called Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know. Alan told his mother later that this book had opened his eyes to science. But more than that, it opened the book of life, attempting to answer the questions "What have I in common with other living things, and how do I differ from them? And by what process of becoming did I myself finally appear in this world?" It was an introduction to science and sex, and conveyed the idea that there had to be a reason for the way things are, and that the reason came not from God, but from science.⁴ For, of course, the body is a machine.⁵

Alan liked chemistry experiments and inventing things.⁶ He was an independent boy, for although he had surely learned by now about the birds and the bees, his heart was to be elsewhere.⁷

He had been made aware by Sherborne of a secret that in the outside world was not even supposed to exist. And it was his secret: that he was drawn by love and desire to his own sex.⁸ There was a boy in another house. Alan had first noticed Christopher Morcom early in 1927 and had been very struck by him. He wanted to look again at his face, as he felt so attracted. Christopher shared with Alan a passion for science. Alan's utter loneliness was pierced at last.⁹ He wrote, "Chris was waiting outside the labs and took me out to see the stars."¹⁰

A mental picture of the universe had expanded a millionfold. Alan and Christopher discussed ideas.¹¹

No one had told Alan that Christopher had contracted tuberculosis as a small boy, and his life had been constantly in danger.¹² At noon on Thursday the 13th of February, 1930, Christopher died.¹³

Alan wrote to Mrs. Morcom, "I know I must put as much energy, if not as much interest, in my work as if he were alive, because that is what he would like me to do."¹⁴

Alan's brain, like a wireless set, resonated to a signal from the unseen world.¹⁵

Natural wonders every child should know
Birds and bees, and how the flowers grow
Why the sky is blue and grass is green
What boys and girls are made of
And how the body is a machine

…and grass is green
What boys and girls are made of
And how the body is a machine

Cambridge 1935. It had become his habit to run long distances in the afternoon. At Grandchester, lying in a meadow, Alan Turing dreamed of machines.¹⁶

He lay in a field
And dreamed of machines
He lay in a field
And dreamed of machines
Read, decode, execute
A logical extreme
For everything
A universal machine

1938. The Enigma machine was a central problem that confronted British intelligence. They believed it was unsolvable. Alan Turing made his fateful decision to begin his long association with the British government. He had, for the first time, surrendered a part of his mind, with a promise to keep the government's secrets.²⁰

1939. He reported on the 4th of September to Bletchley Park.²¹ Something quite new was required. And this was where Alan Turing played his first crucial part,²² mechanizing a search for logical consistency.²³

Beautiful machines made a noise like that of a thousand knitting needles as the relay switches clicked their way through the proliferating implications.²⁴

Alan was allocated Hut 8, in which to head the work on the naval Enigma signals.²⁵ In the British amateur tradition, he took out his pencil box and set to work.²⁶

They deciphered the innermost secrets of the U-boat operations.²⁷ Alan Turing's work denied the ocean lanes to Germany and secured them for the United States.²⁸

The arbitrary dispensations of the German cryptographic system had brought something like this into being: a sense of dialogue with a machine. The line between the mechanical and the intelligent was very, very slightly blurred.²⁹

They were having a wonderful time—seeing the history of the future.³⁰

Those who knew transferred it to a sealed compartment of the mind.³¹ Winston Churchill used to refer to the Bletchley workers as "The geese who laid the golden eggs, and never cackled." Alan was the prize goose.³²

"Whenever I recall some past epoch," Alan once said, "I think of whoever I was in love with at the time."³³

1943. Alan gradually transferred himself to nearby Hanslope Park,³⁴ devising a new speech encypherment process. It became known as the Delilah, the deceiver of men.³⁵ Delilah turned Churchill's words into a white noise—an uninformative hiss.³⁶

Oh, Delilah
Oh, Delilah
Science and sex

1944. As the European war ground to its end, it became clear that Alan's interest had turned to the brain.⁴¹

In speaking of building a brain, he did not mean that the components of his machine should resemble the components of a brain or that their connections should imitate the manner in which the regions of the brain were connected. That the brain's stored words, pictures, skills in some definite way connected with input signals from the senses and output signals to the muscles was almost all he needed.⁴²

He described to his assistant his idea of the universal machine that could take over the work of any machine.⁴³

And thus it was that, working with one assistant in a small hut and thinking in his spare time, an English homosexual atheist mathematician had conceived of the computer.⁴⁴ This threw all the emphasis onto a new place: the construction of a large, fast, effective, all-purpose electronic memory.⁴⁵ He concentrated upon the two really important things: the Memory and the Control.⁴⁶

1951. His fascination with computers had a complementary aspect. He was particularly self-conscious of things that other people accepted without thinking. Thinking and doing—the logical and the physical. It was the problem of his theory and the problem of his life.⁴⁹

Can you think what I feel?
Can you feel what I think?
Can we sleep together as lovers?
Can we think and feel the same thing?

As he walked along Oxford Road, Manchester, he caught the eye of a young man. Arnold Murray was nineteen, currently unemployed, and very hard-up.⁵⁰ Alan invited him to lunch, explained that he worked on the electronic brain, and asked him to come to his home at the weekend.⁵¹ They did not have much in common to talk about, but found links. Besides current affairs, Alan also talked about astronomy, played a tune on the violin, and let Arnold have a try.⁵²

"Can you think what I feel? Can you feel what I think?" he said with terrific emphasis at one point.⁵³

Alan made it clear that he wanted them to sleep together as lovers. And this they did.⁵⁴

"Regina vs Turing –
Alan Mathison Turing, being a male person, was party to the commission of an act of gross indecency with Arnold Murray, a male person." ⁵⁸

1954. Monday, the 7th of June.

2009. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, issued a statement.⁷³ It was the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II and, according to the Prime Minister, a year of deep reflection—a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before.

He continued by paying tribute to Alan Turing's unique contribution, which helped to turn the tide of war, and then referred to the horrifying fact that Alan was treated so inhumanely.

"While he was dealt with under the law of the time, and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly. Over the years, millions more lived in fear of conviction. I am proud that those days are gone…. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I am very proud to say: we are sorry."