Enigmatic Emotions

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

"I am the least difficult of men.
All I want is boundless love."

-Frank O'Hara

Trigger Warning - Mention of suicide (and a lamentation I already apologise for)

With the end of the story, also follows the end of a proof. "Quod erat demonstrandum", what was to be shown. Be it the definition of love – which frankly does not exist, as my friends had to point out – be it something else entirely. For me, it is something obscure.

For anyone who realises what love is, and knows the concomitant heartbreak as a loyal friend, cannot deny how tragic it is for those trapped in an eternal puzzle of feelings.

Alan knew that better than anyone else. Although it was sometimes painful to see how similar our lives were – apart from the fact that he was a genius and I am a wacky reincarnation of a wombat – I learnt a lot from him.

Alan Turing was found dead in Hollymeade, his home in Manchester, on 7 June 1954.

The 41-year-old man joined Chris in his sleep, with a half-eaten apple on the small bedside table, as he ate one every evening. The cause of death was quickly established to be cyanide.

I assumed myself that, as often happens, he had added too much of the toxic substance to his bubbling experiment in a clumsy move. (Reason number one why I don't work in a lab.) This is also what his mother believed.

Or possibly that was what he wanted you to believe.

The police immediately assumed it was suicide. That he had snow-white-like dipped the apple into the venom.

There was no real investigation. The report said that the mental processes of someone of his "kind" could never be predicted. (The professor-type, admittedly, though I am sceptical about that.) So the verdict was suicide because his mental equilibrium was disturbed.

End of story. We still live in a world where same-sex love is considered a crime. Where gender discrimination is ubiquitous and someone like Arnold would still be scolded at on the street. QED.

But we are taking small steps forward. I believe the more we make icons like Alan discussable, the faster we can create the world he longed for.

Thanks to the Turing-Welchman bombes, twenty million lives were saved during World War II, which was shortened by about three years.

The ACE is now known as the Universal Turing Machine – often pronounced with a German ü, much to Alan's frustration. This computer is still the basis for the machine on which I now type these words. Every computer scientist has heard of it, including myself. Yet this is not common knowledge found in history books.

Also, the labs – no, not the computer labs – at Sherborne are named after him.

In 1967, a new law was promulgated in England, under which deceased people convicted of "gross indecencies" were no longer regarded as criminals. This law is known as the Turing Act. It was not until 2013 that the secret work Alan did during the war was revealed and he was granted a royal pardon. Together for the other thousands of gay men, this came too late.

Since 2021, however, Alan is hard to miss, given his image is on the £50 notes.

Small steps, I am incredibly proud of what we have already achieved. Since Alan can't see it, I still want to ask you something.

Should you ever find the person who makes everyone else seem so ordinary, and when your whole world transforms into a colourful canvas, go to that person and whisper together to the stars. "Quod erat demonstrandum."