I’m going to assume the evil forces knew I had it, but can’t read my mind or know everything I did to hide it. They’ll spend a reasonable amount of resources looking, but not an infinite amount, and they won’t torture me to find out where it is (they know how unreliable torture is as information gain!).
Put the pen in a small steel box, go on a multi-day hike, and randomly bury the box somewhere along the hike. Remember where you put it.
Travel to a new country and keep it in a bank deposit box under a fake name. (Did they have those in 1855?)
Acquire a bunch of pens that look exactly the same, put a different color marking on the interior of each, and give each to a friend. (Figure out some way to make sure the Evil People don’t just steal all of the pens?)
Put the pen inside the wall of a friend’s house.
Destroy the pen and then remake it in 50 years.
Embed it in a tree core. (Would the tree grow to crush it?)
Commission a copy of the pen and give it to them, claiming it’s the real thing.
Have 10 friends over and give them each a pen, only one of which is the Destined Pen. Then, each of them meets 10 people and gives one of them the pen, and so on once again. The final person who receives the actual pen is given the appropriate instructions and payment plan for delivering the pen to Einstein in 50 years (DDOS their resources—they probably can’t investigate 1000 people).
Find a box and put the pen in it.
Disassemble the pen and entrust the pieces to a pensmith (is that a thing?)
Preserve the pen in some kind of resin
Form a concrete block around the pen, or otherwise embed it in some kind of wall, and then take it out when needed
Go spelunking and leave the pen wedged in one of the caves in a memorable but rarely frequented location (I notice I’m focusing on the “hide from dedicated group of people” constraint, which is slowing me down. I’m going to focus on just “places you could put a pen” without worrying at all about hiding for now.)
On the ground.
In the attic.
Bird’s nest
Buried in dirt
Library
Carriage
Warehouse (Ok, back to solutions that have at least a small chance of working)
Pay someone to hide the pen, split up the location info into a cryptographically secure 3-out-of-5 secret-sharing scheme, and then dole out the info to me and four close friends who live far away and move frequently. In 1855, it would be logistically hard to coordinate to track 3 of us down at the same time. They pass on the secret to their children and spouses, in case any of us die before 50 years pass.
Unethical: kill the evil forces?
Unethical: take over the local government and have them protect the pen.
Talk the bad guys out of wanting the pen.
Set up an elaborate dungeon below my house (Legend of Zelda-style), at the end of which is a fake copy of the pen. Keep the real pen in my desk drawer.
Similarly, go to a lot of trouble to look like I’m building up a vault for the pen, all the while keeping “the rest” of my pens on a pedestal in the middle of my house. Of course, the real pen is there.
Persuade the bad guys that pens are really annoying and you should use a mechanical pencil (that totally existed in 1855, right?), if you aren’t going to use a digital writing device (which they aren’t going to use).
Give a fake pen to a major world power, and then tell the bad guys it’s already out of my hands, and eat popcorn while the two groups fight.
Find Einstein’s ancestors and convince them to pass down the pen.
Using extreme computational resources and technological prowess, build a capsule that’s shot into LEO which is timed to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in front of Einstein right when he’s looking for a new pen.
Deduce exactly what kind of simulation we’re on, then execute a bizarre policy that mind-hacks whoever’s observing us into spawning 1x Pen of Destiny for Einstein at exactly the right time.
Compute a Butterfly Effect policy for a molecularly identical pen spontaneously assembling itself in front of Einstein at the appropriate time (this is totally a thing, right?)
Wedge the sanitized pen between my radius and ulna. That totally wouldn’t go wrong, and it’d be too gross for them to want to retrieve.
Buy a farm and hide it in a hay bale.
Go to a stream and instruct a friend to wait some unknown # of miles downstream. Put the pen in a bottle, float it downstream, and the friend retrieves it and waits downstream. Maybe a festival could be going on near the stream at the same time. In any case, even if I’m being trailed at that moment, they wouldn’t know how far downstream it went, which would give my friend an important head start for hiding it in a different town.
Pay someone to take it to a tribe which will be convinced that it should be worshipped as a sacred object, and then steal it back in 50 years.
Memorize a binary sequence using a memory palace, which I use as an XOR cipher on a series of coin flips which indicate: “heads: go north 100 feet; tails: go east 100 feet”. Flip 100 coins and write down the result, and then bury the coin in the place indicated by the flips XOR the sequence. (This is basically a one-time pad for north-eastern lattice paths)
Do the above, but just through the pseudo-randomly generated memorized sequence. Also, have a habit of taking these north-eastern lattice path walks randomly for a few days before and after actually burying the pen, so they don’t know the walk on which I buried the pen.
Enter into a 2-out-of-2 secret sharing scheme with someone difficult to intimidate, like a major world leader.
Do 38, but using a fall tree branch as my (not technically) pseudorandom source: given a branch, choose the one that has the reddest leaf on it, using an appropriate embedding from branch choices into directional bearings for the next step.
Put the pen inside a football that won’t be used. Who would do that?
Preserve the pen in permafrost somewhere stable (is that a thing? would it be crushed by changing pressures?)
Encase the pen in diamond or some even harder material, which Einstein will need to invent molecular nanotech to undo. He wants his miracle papers, let him do the impossible!
If I’m making myself as capable as in #43, why not just build an AGI to ensure Einstein gets it? Might as well.
Toss the pen into a furnace in front of the bad guys; unbeknownst to them, the furnace has a secret compartment in which the pen will be safe from the heat.
Keep the pen inside a wooden compartment, which I nail to the underside of the nearest bridge (so that if the pen falls, it falls over land).
Fake my own death and inter the pen with the fake body.
47, but hide the pen in the gravestone.
48, but a friend surreptitiously removes the pen from the gravestone compartment during the funeral.
Just give the bad guys the pen and take it back before Einstein needs it.
Then move from 13. and the move back in 20. was something that you managed to do but I struggled and failed to do. It was good move that grows important skills.
#7 is simultaneously right up my alley, and also opens up an entire area I barely explored except by accident. You mine that vein pretty good. Well done!
I’m going to assume the evil forces knew I had it, but can’t read my mind or know everything I did to hide it. They’ll spend a reasonable amount of resources looking, but not an infinite amount, and they won’t torture me to find out where it is (they know how unreliable torture is as information gain!).
Put the pen in a small steel box, go on a multi-day hike, and randomly bury the box somewhere along the hike. Remember where you put it.
Travel to a new country and keep it in a bank deposit box under a fake name. (Did they have those in 1855?)
Acquire a bunch of pens that look exactly the same, put a different color marking on the interior of each, and give each to a friend. (Figure out some way to make sure the Evil People don’t just steal all of the pens?)
Put the pen inside the wall of a friend’s house.
Destroy the pen and then remake it in 50 years.
Embed it in a tree core. (Would the tree grow to crush it?)
Commission a copy of the pen and give it to them, claiming it’s the real thing.
Have 10 friends over and give them each a pen, only one of which is the Destined Pen. Then, each of them meets 10 people and gives one of them the pen, and so on once again. The final person who receives the actual pen is given the appropriate instructions and payment plan for delivering the pen to Einstein in 50 years (DDOS their resources—they probably can’t investigate 1000 people).
Find a box and put the pen in it.
Disassemble the pen and entrust the pieces to a pensmith (is that a thing?)
Preserve the pen in some kind of resin
Form a concrete block around the pen, or otherwise embed it in some kind of wall, and then take it out when needed
Go spelunking and leave the pen wedged in one of the caves in a memorable but rarely frequented location (I notice I’m focusing on the “hide from dedicated group of people” constraint, which is slowing me down. I’m going to focus on just “places you could put a pen” without worrying at all about hiding for now.)
On the ground.
In the attic.
Bird’s nest
Buried in dirt
Library
Carriage
Warehouse (Ok, back to solutions that have at least a small chance of working)
Pay someone to hide the pen, split up the location info into a cryptographically secure 3-out-of-5 secret-sharing scheme, and then dole out the info to me and four close friends who live far away and move frequently. In 1855, it would be logistically hard to coordinate to track 3 of us down at the same time. They pass on the secret to their children and spouses, in case any of us die before 50 years pass.
Unethical: kill the evil forces?
Unethical: take over the local government and have them protect the pen.
Talk the bad guys out of wanting the pen.
Set up an elaborate dungeon below my house (Legend of Zelda-style), at the end of which is a fake copy of the pen. Keep the real pen in my desk drawer.
Similarly, go to a lot of trouble to look like I’m building up a vault for the pen, all the while keeping “the rest” of my pens on a pedestal in the middle of my house. Of course, the real pen is there.
Persuade the bad guys that pens are really annoying and you should use a mechanical pencil (that totally existed in 1855, right?), if you aren’t going to use a digital writing device (which they aren’t going to use).
Give a fake pen to a major world power, and then tell the bad guys it’s already out of my hands, and eat popcorn while the two groups fight.
Find Einstein’s ancestors and convince them to pass down the pen.
Using extreme computational resources and technological prowess, build a capsule that’s shot into LEO which is timed to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in front of Einstein right when he’s looking for a new pen.
Deduce exactly what kind of simulation we’re on, then execute a bizarre policy that mind-hacks whoever’s observing us into spawning 1x Pen of Destiny for Einstein at exactly the right time.
Compute a Butterfly Effect policy for a molecularly identical pen spontaneously assembling itself in front of Einstein at the appropriate time (this is totally a thing, right?)
Wedge the sanitized pen between my radius and ulna. That totally wouldn’t go wrong, and it’d be too gross for them to want to retrieve.
Buy a farm and hide it in a hay bale.
Go to a stream and instruct a friend to wait some unknown # of miles downstream. Put the pen in a bottle, float it downstream, and the friend retrieves it and waits downstream. Maybe a festival could be going on near the stream at the same time. In any case, even if I’m being trailed at that moment, they wouldn’t know how far downstream it went, which would give my friend an important head start for hiding it in a different town.
Pay someone to take it to a tribe which will be convinced that it should be worshipped as a sacred object, and then steal it back in 50 years.
Memorize a binary sequence using a memory palace, which I use as an XOR cipher on a series of coin flips which indicate: “heads: go north 100 feet; tails: go east 100 feet”. Flip 100 coins and write down the result, and then bury the coin in the place indicated by the flips XOR the sequence. (This is basically a one-time pad for north-eastern lattice paths)
Do the above, but just through the pseudo-randomly generated memorized sequence. Also, have a habit of taking these north-eastern lattice path walks randomly for a few days before and after actually burying the pen, so they don’t know the walk on which I buried the pen.
Enter into a 2-out-of-2 secret sharing scheme with someone difficult to intimidate, like a major world leader.
Do 38, but using a fall tree branch as my (not technically) pseudorandom source: given a branch, choose the one that has the reddest leaf on it, using an appropriate embedding from branch choices into directional bearings for the next step.
Put the pen inside a football that won’t be used. Who would do that?
Preserve the pen in permafrost somewhere stable (is that a thing? would it be crushed by changing pressures?)
Encase the pen in diamond or some even harder material, which Einstein will need to invent molecular nanotech to undo. He wants his miracle papers, let him do the impossible!
If I’m making myself as capable as in #43, why not just build an AGI to ensure Einstein gets it? Might as well.
Toss the pen into a furnace in front of the bad guys; unbeknownst to them, the furnace has a secret compartment in which the pen will be safe from the heat.
Keep the pen inside a wooden compartment, which I nail to the underside of the nearest bridge (so that if the pen falls, it falls over land).
Fake my own death and inter the pen with the fake body.
47, but hide the pen in the gravestone.
48, but a friend surreptitiously removes the pen from the gravestone compartment during the funeral.
Just give the bad guys the pen and take it back before Einstein needs it.
Then move from 13. and the move back in 20. was something that you managed to do but I struggled and failed to do. It was good move that grows important skills.
#7 is simultaneously right up my alley, and also opens up an entire area I barely explored except by accident. You mine that vein pretty good. Well done!