(The TURING TAPE performs occasional sound tests during the pre-show, the reel-to-reel spinning slowly as it will throughout the play. It contains a lot of crackle and noise but is still intelligible. As the pre-show draws to a close, ALAN enters, tinkers briefly with the reel-to-reel, and crosses to speak into the Delilah, a telephone handset that extends on a cord from a hard-shelled suitcase. ALAN's voice merges with that of the TAPE.)
TAPE & ALAN: Testing... Testing... Whoever you are, if you're listening to this, it means you've just cracked Delilah, the most powerful voice encryption my generation has to offer. To everyone else, this tape reel appears to hold nothing more than random white noise. Only you and I know different.
ALAN: It's the seventh of June, 1954. My name is Alan Turing. I have been witness to a terrible conspiracy. The deaths of kings and leaders. A new world order. The building of the bomb. Soviet assassins are on their way to kill me. There are forces within British Intelligence that wish the same. I doubt the Americans hold me in any higher regard. Provided the above don't get here first, I will tell you everything... I only hope you're ready to hear it.
(Lights down on ALAN.)
YOU ARE READING
The Turing Tape - a one-act play
Ficción histórica"The Turing Tape", a one-act play, is a madcap conspiracy theory about the life and times of Alan Mathison Turing, a brilliant cryptanalyst, computer visionary, and homosexual within the British intelligence community of the 1940s and 50s. The play'...
