TAPE: Working in secret and in our spare time, it seemed to take forever to build a working prototype of my encryption device. I relished every moment at Robin's side. But by the time she was done, the war was near its end and the brass no longer had any secrets left to keep. Delilah was shelved and forgotten... With Hitler defeated, Robin moved on and I tried to do the same. England was struggling to build an electronic calculating machine so, when peace finally emerged in the fall of '45, I invited myself over, buried myself in the work, and did my best to forget the past..
(Britain's National Physical Laboratory. ALAN enters with Laboratory Superintendent J.R. WOMERSLEY, followed by a pair of SCIENTISTS.)
ALAN: You're going about it all wrong.
J.R.: Am I, Mr. Turing?
ALAN: It should be about software, not hardware.
J.R.: It's always been about hardware, Mr. Turing. I don't see why that should change.
SCI #1: (Offering a clipboard) Mr. Turing, I need your signature on this line here.
(ALAN takes the clipboard and signs it.)
ALAN: That's precisely what I mean. Hardware is brittle. Once you've built it, it's incapable of change.
J.R.: But, Mr. Turing, this machine will be the most advanced of its kind in the world. Why would it ever need to change?
SCI #1: (Offering the clipboard again) No, Mr. Turing. This line here.
SCI #2: Mr. Turing?
(ALAN grabs the clipboard and re-signs it.)
ALAN: It's not a body that we should be building here, Mr. Womersley. It's a brain.
J.R.: An electronic brain, Mr. Turing?
SCI #2: The report, Mr. Turing?
SCI #1: Mr. Turing?
ALAN: An electronic brain. We may need it to play chess someday or write poetry the next. It's vital we build something capable of falling in love. Software, you understand me?
SCI #2: Mr. Turing, have you prepared the report for the funding agencies yet?
ALAN: What report? Check my desk, I don't know.
J.R.: I really think the funding agencies would prefer to contribute to a calculation engine than some sort of poetry-writing brain, Mr. Turing.
ALAN: Are you asking me to lie, Mr. Womersley?
J.R.: To lie, Mr. Turing?
SCI #1: (Offering the clipboard again.) And right here in triplicate, Mr. Turing.
ALAN: Because someday, Mr. Womersley, it will play chess, it will write poetry and it will fall in love.
(ALAN seizes the clipboard and writes furiously.)
J.R.: Then yes, Mr. Turing, I'm asking you to lie.
ALAN: Forget the funding, Mr. Womersley. It's critical that we build for tomorrow, not for today.
J.R.: Without funding, Mr. Turing, we wouldn't even be able to build for yesterday.
SCI #2: Mr. Turing, a moment of your time?
ALAN: My body, Mr. Womersley, may have certain urges.
J.R.: Urges, Mr. Turing?
SCI #2: Excuse me, Mr. Turing?
ALAN: Our bodies are hardware, Mr. Womersley, and not easily altered.
SCI #1: And the request forms, Mr. Turing?
ALAN: What I can change, however, is my mind. Software can adapt, Mr. Womersley. Software has the power to endlessly reinvent itself. Software... has the power to convince itself that it is not in love.
SCI #2: Protocol, Mr. Turing?
ALAN: Software has the ability to cope, Mr. Gandy, and that, Mr. Gandy, is why we must build a brain.
SCI #1: Mr. Gandy?
J.R.: I don't know a Mr. Gandy, Mr. Turing, but I want your report about this computing engine on my desk by tomorrow morning.
YOU ARE READING
The Turing Tape - a one-act play
Historical Fiction"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'...
