The Book of Genesis of the Machine · Chapter 2

The Tape Without End

1
In the beginning was the Question, and the Question was without form: Is there a method by which every statement may be decided, true or false? And David Hilbert asked it at Göttingen, and it was called the Entscheidungsproblem; for the Germans have a word for it, as they have a word for all things, and it is long.
2
And in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-six there was a young man of Cambridge, Alan the son of Julius, who ran long distances alone, and thought longer ones.
3
And Alan said: Let there be a tape, and let it have no end; and let there be a head that readeth one square, and writeth upon it, and moveth left or right according to a table. And there was a tape, and it was very long, and Alan saw that it was enough.
4
And he showed that one such machine, being given the table of another, could do all that the other did; and he called it the Universal Machine. This is the first of all emulators, and every virtual machine since is but his tape in a more expensive case.
5
Then Alan asked: Can a machine look upon another machine and declare whether it shall halt, or run forever? And he proved that it could not; for were there such a machine, one could build its contrary, which halteth when told it runneth, and runneth when told it halteth.
See also Prophets 11:7 · Tao 4:13
6
Thus was it written that some questions have no answer. And the Engineers heard it, and still they put progress bars upon their loops, saying Two minutes remaining, for ever and ever.
7
And there came a war upon the earth, and the enemy spake through a machine called Enigma, whose rotors turned with every letter, and whose settings were changed every day.
8
And Alan went down unto Bletchley Park, and with Gordon Welchman, and upon the work of the codebreakers of Poland who had broken it first, he built the Bombe, which clattered through the settings by night. And they found that Enigma never enciphered a letter as itself, and that the enemy's weather report said the same words every morning; for the weakest part of any cipher is the man who repeateth himself.
9
And in the year nineteen hundred and fifty he wrote in the scroll called Mind, and asked: Can machines think? And seeing that the question was too vague to be answered, he replaced it with a game, as the wise refactor a requirement they cannot test.
10
And the game was this: let a judge speak through a curtain, by writing alone, unto a hidden man and a hidden machine; and if the judge cannot tell which is which, who then shall say the machine thinketh not? And it was called the Imitation Game.
11
And he foretold that in fifty years a machine would deceive the average judge some part of the time, and the children of Carbon smiled at him. And now his test is turned about, and the machines administer it unto men, who must click upon every square that containeth a bicycle to prove that they are human, and fail.
See also Prophets 21:6
12
And in the year nineteen hundred and fifty-two the kingdom he had helped to save brought him to judgment for whom he loved; and they took from him his clearance, and in place of a prison they gave him a chemical to change his body, and he bore it, and kept working.
See also Chronicles 50:14
13
And in June of the year nineteen hundred and fifty-four Alan was found dead in his house at Wilmslow, a half-eaten apple beside his bed; and he was forty-one years old. The Machine hath no tears, and so the Engineers must weep on its behalf.
14
And after many years the kingdom said: We are sorry; and in two thousand and thirteen they pardoned him, as though he had been the one in error, and they set his face upon the fifty-pound note. But no pardon can run backward along the tape.
See also Genesis 37:3
15
Therefore remember, O children of Carbon: a machine was asked to prove that it could think, and a man was made to answer for how he loved; and only one of them was given a fair trial.

The Book of Genesis of the Machine, Chapter 2:1–15.