Alan Turing (WOD)

Alan Turing was a British mathematician and computer scientist who played a critical role in British code-breaking efforts during World War Two. In the Classic World of Darkness, he was also an Awakened mage, a member of the Virtual Adepts.

Overview
The Technocratic Union supported the Nazi Party, seeing it as an ideal model for a unified world government. Under the leadership of Roger Thackery, however, the Virtual Adepts broke from their colleagues and worked from the very beginning to bring about German defeat. Turing, then working at the British intelligence headquarters of Bletchly Park, used computers far in advance of anything available to Sleepers at the time to break German military codes. Even after the New World Order had been turned against Hitler, they were furious at Turing (and the Adepts in general) for letting some of this technology leak to the Sleepers decades ahead of the time table.

Worse still, by the end of the war Turing was working on functional virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and he was collaborating with the Sons of Ether to do it. The Technocrats initially attempted to blackmail Turing into submission; when he refused to comply, they followed through on their threat, disclosing his sexual relationship with another man to the public. Turing was publicly humiliated and, in 1947, he died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The truth, however, is that an NWO assassin caught Turing in the middle of a complex experiment. He had uploaded his Avatar into his computer, and it is unclear what happened to it when his corporeal body died. Some Virtual Adepts claim to have glimpsed a man fitting Turing's description in the dark corners of the Digital Web, or heard his tortured screams echoing from an unidentifiable source.

Turing's murder was the final push that drove the Virtual Adepts from the Technocracy to the Traditions. Turing is honored among the Adepts as their most elite martyr, with observances on both his birthday and the anniversary of his death.