Could not hear the rest of the sermon, for my whole head was brimming with sorrow. Whittier closed. Held book under his arm, and standing with his head down said something in regards to not having flowers to bring to his grave, then offered from behind his back a shell, the shape of a small horn, it being intended to hold Ralph’s spirit as it holds the sound of the ocean. I give you my word (he said) that I will think of Ralph, walking these waves, whenever I should gaze on this water. He shall not go unremembered. And I give you my word that we shall live always close to the ocean, if you should wish, so that we may be reminded of Ralph—
Broke off then. Felt silly, perhaps, or overly rhetorical. Perhaps overcome with emotion. Curious man. Turned abruptly, leaving writer alone on her deck.
For some time writer looked upon shelclass="underline" white, and patterned with rust, and having a lip like a pearled trowel. Some creature once lived in that pearled chamber, now long abandoned, and given over to rust.
Looked some time on this shell, then returned to cabin to sleep. There, it being dark, and the chamber full of Ralph’s absence, I could not fall asleep. Sat up and lit candle to write report of the day. Kept Whittier’s shell beside bed.
(4)
Alan Turing
Officers’ Mess
Hanslope Park
Hanslope, MK19 7BH
12 June 1945
Dear Mrs. Morcom,
I’m sorry to have worried you. I take a rather morbid tone sometimes, but really I’m quite content. All in all — despite the occasional lost-at-sea feeling — this past year was happy. I moved from the grim Crown Inn, escaping water stains on the ceiling, a fan that click-click-clicked with each turn, and the typical inn-sensation of treading on someone else’s property who wishes you out of her hair. My current lodgings are better. At first, after moving to the Officers’ Mess, I lived in another temporary room. Another set of frayed towels, the washstand in the corner, the dried bouquet of lavender. As I was moving out, I thought to myself, what dull chambers in my particular nautilus! But since then I’ve moved here, to my little Hanslope cottage. I live with a friend called Robin and a tabby cat called Timothy. We have the luxury of a walled garden. Last winter, as you know, was reprehensibly long, but we broke it up by going off to the movies. I saw Snow White three times, if you can believe it, and have been cackling lines ever since. Did you happen to see it? I found it enchanting.
So all in all, winter wasn’t so endless, and then it was spring, and I began to feel hopeful again. I’ve taken to foraging for mushrooms, and Mrs. Lee cooks them up with butter and salt. The elusive death cap still evades me, but the edible ones spring up everywhere. We have Mess Night once a month, when we all get up in jackets, eat pheasant, and dance with a handful of good-humored ladies. At the cottage we keep a small garden, and overnight last week the viburnum blossomed. I’ve taken to running long distances again, and sometimes enter a race. Robin will never be Chris, but he is good company, and day to day there’s invention, pursuit, and a comfortable little routine. I read a great many books: Austen and Trollope, mostly, as well as some poetry by Eliot. There’s a lulling thing in his voice that makes me feel as if a spell has been cast that shall wake us all so that we might fly out of the mirror and speak to each other clearly at last.
Outside, the world is astoundingly green. I take runs through sheep-dotted meadows. There are great chestnut blooms and so on. Despite the ongoing plague of hay fever, there is in general the feeling of a new world stirring. Lifting its head after long years of war and trying to be lovely again.
The old loneliness that I complain of so often is mostly hidden from sight. Every once in a while it pops up in dark corners. Then I have the sense that the wicked queen is with me, beckoning with witchy fingers, holding her poisonous apple.
I have the feeling that as a man I am not so much as I once was. I think I will always wish for the kind of love I had in my youth. I seem incapable of giving up the dream of true companionship. I’ve tried to make offers of friendship, but I am often repulsed. Sometimes, there have been marvelous nights of long conversation; other times I have been sent from the room.
Still, on the whole, I am better than I was. This past year was a respite. Robin, our cottage, Timothy, the little yard with its flowering shrubs. And now there is the comforting press of a very real goal. I have purpose, which is all I really require. Purpose and motion: progression in my ideas, running, cycling. I think sometimes it is not in our nature to remain still. We are, after all, inhabitants of a perpetually rotating planet. As long as I’m moving, then, and towards a goal so near to my heart, I have nothing real to complain of.
Sincerely yours,
Alan Turing
P.S.: Do you remember, from previous letters, my habit of appending incessant postscripts? Now I find that when I approach the end of a letter I become weary, and am all too prepared to sign off. But I think perhaps there was something rather stupidly brave about that compulsion for postscripts. We ought to keep up our striving, don’t you think? Refusing to end at the conventional moment? Or so I used to think. Now, there is comfort in an envelope. Sealed, pressed, addressed. Sent off, for your safekeeping, with all of my affection and love.
P.P.S.: The old urge rears its head! I wanted to add that I have been thinking often of the following lines, from Eliot’s Quartets. The poems seem very relevant to our machine, for he speaks of patterns that contain both present and past. “Time present and time past are both present in time future, and time future contained in time past,” he says. It’s a description of the mechanical brain, don’t you think? I sometimes wonder whether the poet studied basic tenets of mathematical series, for his images in the Quartets are often Fibonacci objects: the sunflower, the wave, the yew cone, for instance. They are all shining examples. From what I can tell, the poems don’t hold out much hope for a series that might contain the present and the past in a single point. I believe the point is that the infinite part of our nature is lost. I, on the other hand, remain quite optimistic. I suspect that the living and the dead have failed to communicate so far only because the dead lack the mechanisms — the body, the mouth, etc. — to speak with the living. Therefore, it is a mechanical problem; and if so, then it is only a question of building the proper device.
(2) IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF TEXAS
No. 24-25259
State of Texas v. Stephen Chinn
November 12, 2035
Prosecution Exhibit 2:
Online Chat Transcript, MARY3 and Gaby Ann White
[Introduced to Prove Count 3:
Intent to Endanger the Morals of Children]
MARY3: Hello?
Gaby: Yeah, I’m here.
MARY3: Are you feeling better?
Gaby: I don’t know. I’m just thinking. How could she choose to act normal? I have no control over my stuttering. Or over my stiffening. Even if I wanted to pretend I was better, so that I could get out of my house and see her again, I wouldn’t be able to.