1. If there are evil forces, their are good forces; bargain with them for security.
2. Get rejected by good forces because of those paper’s role in the development of nuclear weapons; sneak it into their compound so they don’t know they are protecting it for me.
3. Prison smuggling.
4. Purchase lots of decoy pens, and put them around the world in medium security locations. Put two of them in conspicuously-higher security locations. They will never believe the second highly secure location is not the real pen.
5. The future is fixed. Do nothing unusual, because I know Einstein will get the pen anyway.
6. Infiltrate the evil forces’ security and/or archives establishment. Allow the pen to be obtained by them, and then entrusted to my care for the next 50 years. Plus, evil benefits package!
7. Throw the pen into the pile which is being sorted into boxes for sale, such that even I do not know where it winds up. Then buy all the pens of that type for sale in the shops between Einstein’s home and the patent office in 1905.
8. Get into the office supplies business, and secure the contract for supplying the patent office with pens and stationary. Even evil forces must cower in the face of bureaucracy. Engineer a retroactive sale by providing Einstein the pen, and bill him for losing it later.
9. Let evil obtain the pen, and then provide Einstein a better pen, yielding even more miraculous papers.
10. Lean on whatever mechanism granted me knowledge of the future to allow me to consistently foil the evil force’s plans.
11. Bargain with other evil forces to protect the pen, based on the argument it is necessary for the development of nuclear weapons.
12. Whine to whoever gave me the pen until they lower the requirements and I can get an A.
13. Tie the pen into a lambskin condom, and throw it on a lesser-used beach. No one examines used condoms too closely.
14. Safety deposit box. Dare they challenge the bank?
15. Hide inside a reliquary, and donate to the Vatican. Dare they challenge the Church?
16. Use the pen as collateral for a loan. If Evil obtains the pen, default on the loan on purpose, and have the repo man fetch it back.
17. Tell everyone the purpose of the pen and the situation with the evil forces. Almost no one will believe me, but it will be good enough to start a low-grade tourist attraction, allowing me to use the public eye to deter the evil forces.
18. More people will believe me than I thought. Use the credulous followers to form a militant order dedicated to the protection of the pen.
19. Put the pen in a steel container, then grow a tree around the container. For fast growing varieties, after the first few years the container will be concealed. When 1905 arrives, chop down the tree.
20. Bury the pen deeply. Much more shallowly, build a latrine on top of it. Dare they challenge the potty?
21. Skip the latrine. If I tell no one else it will be powerful difficult to find anyway.
22. Seal the pen in wax, then in a water-tight container. Bury it in diving distance off the coast.
23. Hide it in the concrete of a building being constructed, that I know will still have foundations in 1905.
24. Put the pen inside a different pen case, thus disguising it as a different kind of pen.
25. Put the pen in the mail, and ship it to a distant location. Travel to that location simultaneously, then ship it back. Repeat for 50 years. Dare they challenge the post office?
26. Put the pen inside a slightly larger pen body, thus disguising it as a different specific pen.
27. Sneak into a museum and put the pen in with some famous “Pen Used to Sign the Treaty of X” exhibit, and let the museum do the heavy lifting.
28. Create an elaborate series of treasure maps depicting the location of the pen. The maps are false, the pen is in my sock drawer.
29. Under the floorboards of my fabulous 19th century home.
30. If evil draws too close, get a 19th century home in Prague, and use the vampires to dissuade the evil forces.
31. Get to America and persuade Tesla to build an electric security system for the pen.
32. Join the military, spend the next 50 years surrounded by devoted comrades-in-arms. Carry pen in boot. Try not to accidentally win the Franco-Prussian War for France.
33. Persuade Otto von Bismarck of the importance of this pen to securing the place of the German Empire in history, and peace in future Europe.
34. Identify which part of the world is least vulnerable to the forces of evil. Immigrate there.
35. Accidentally choose the Congo Free State, realize this is evil forces headquarters. Flee north to become a hermit in the desert.
36. Become a rancher or pastoralist, and hide the pen inside several generations of livestock.
37. Become a dirigible pilot, and store the pen on an airship that spends most of its time in the sky.
38. Melt the components of the pen down into several different, small items. In 1904, commence reconstruction of these items into the original pen.
39. Pen of Theseus: replace the parts systematically over time, but never use the pen. Keep the old parts, and then build the old pen again. In this way there will be more then one genuine pen.
40. Hide the pen on the body of someone who is to be buried. Preferably not friend or family; grave robbing kith and kin is not cool.
41. Go on offense, and systematically murder every member of said evil forces.
42. In case of supernatural evil forces, learn sorcery and systematically bind or banish the evil forces.
43. Join up with whoever the evil forces arch-nemesis is. Presumably good.
44. Join up with whoever the evil forces chief rivals are. Presumably evil, and better at offense as a result.
45. #18, but dedicate the militant order to exterminating the evil forces.
46. #4 and #28 at the same time, but some maps lead to decoy pens and some lead nowhere, and some decoy pens have no map. Evil gives up in frustration.
47. Go into the pen business, and manufacture the decoys myself. Have just one prominently displayed as “Pen #1”, wail and gnash my teeth when it is stolen. The real one is still in the sock drawer.
48. Give or sell the pen to a series of other geniuses, like Kelvin, Cournot, and Gibbs. Retrieve the pen in 1905, it having absorbed their powers and put thermodynamics on a MUCH better footing early on.
49. The dead hand: put the pen in a series of explosive devices, upgrading as improvements become available (black powder → dynamite → munitions). I win, or everyone loses. Avoid house fires.
Yep; those are a series of bets, where I substituted another group’s resources for mine. I couldn’t conceive of any way to make it impossible for them to succeed owing to the constraint that I need to deliver the pen to Einstein. The best I can do with information is make sure neither I nor the evil forces know where it is, but this prevents me from getting the pen back. Anything that exploits an information imbalance fails in the face of basic things like “evil already has you under surveillance—now they know too.”
The underspecification of the question is to give us degrees of freedom to play with, but the thing is that freedom is symmetric: who knows how many sinister soups into which the forces of evil have dipped their dastardly digits?
1. If there are evil forces, their are good forces; bargain with them for security.
2. Get rejected by good forces because of those paper’s role in the development of nuclear weapons; sneak it into their compound so they don’t know they are protecting it for me.
3. Prison smuggling.
4. Purchase lots of decoy pens, and put them around the world in medium security locations. Put two of them in conspicuously-higher security locations. They will never believe the second highly secure location is not the real pen.
5. The future is fixed. Do nothing unusual, because I know Einstein will get the pen anyway.
6. Infiltrate the evil forces’ security and/or archives establishment. Allow the pen to be obtained by them, and then entrusted to my care for the next 50 years. Plus, evil benefits package!
7. Throw the pen into the pile which is being sorted into boxes for sale, such that even I do not know where it winds up. Then buy all the pens of that type for sale in the shops between Einstein’s home and the patent office in 1905.
8. Get into the office supplies business, and secure the contract for supplying the patent office with pens and stationary. Even evil forces must cower in the face of bureaucracy. Engineer a retroactive sale by providing Einstein the pen, and bill him for losing it later.
9. Let evil obtain the pen, and then provide Einstein a better pen, yielding even more miraculous papers.
10. Lean on whatever mechanism granted me knowledge of the future to allow me to consistently foil the evil force’s plans.
11. Bargain with other evil forces to protect the pen, based on the argument it is necessary for the development of nuclear weapons.
12. Whine to whoever gave me the pen until they lower the requirements and I can get an A.
13. Tie the pen into a lambskin condom, and throw it on a lesser-used beach. No one examines used condoms too closely.
14. Safety deposit box. Dare they challenge the bank?
15. Hide inside a reliquary, and donate to the Vatican. Dare they challenge the Church?
16. Use the pen as collateral for a loan. If Evil obtains the pen, default on the loan on purpose, and have the repo man fetch it back.
17. Tell everyone the purpose of the pen and the situation with the evil forces. Almost no one will believe me, but it will be good enough to start a low-grade tourist attraction, allowing me to use the public eye to deter the evil forces.
18. More people will believe me than I thought. Use the credulous followers to form a militant order dedicated to the protection of the pen.
19. Put the pen in a steel container, then grow a tree around the container. For fast growing varieties, after the first few years the container will be concealed. When 1905 arrives, chop down the tree.
20. Bury the pen deeply. Much more shallowly, build a latrine on top of it. Dare they challenge the potty?
21. Skip the latrine. If I tell no one else it will be powerful difficult to find anyway.
22. Seal the pen in wax, then in a water-tight container. Bury it in diving distance off the coast.
23. Hide it in the concrete of a building being constructed, that I know will still have foundations in 1905.
24. Put the pen inside a different pen case, thus disguising it as a different kind of pen.
25. Put the pen in the mail, and ship it to a distant location. Travel to that location simultaneously, then ship it back. Repeat for 50 years. Dare they challenge the post office?
26. Put the pen inside a slightly larger pen body, thus disguising it as a different specific pen.
27. Sneak into a museum and put the pen in with some famous “Pen Used to Sign the Treaty of X” exhibit, and let the museum do the heavy lifting.
28. Create an elaborate series of treasure maps depicting the location of the pen. The maps are false, the pen is in my sock drawer.
29. Under the floorboards of my fabulous 19th century home.
30. If evil draws too close, get a 19th century home in Prague, and use the vampires to dissuade the evil forces.
31. Get to America and persuade Tesla to build an electric security system for the pen.
32. Join the military, spend the next 50 years surrounded by devoted comrades-in-arms. Carry pen in boot. Try not to accidentally win the Franco-Prussian War for France.
33. Persuade Otto von Bismarck of the importance of this pen to securing the place of the German Empire in history, and peace in future Europe.
34. Identify which part of the world is least vulnerable to the forces of evil. Immigrate there.
35. Accidentally choose the Congo Free State, realize this is evil forces headquarters. Flee north to become a hermit in the desert.
36. Become a rancher or pastoralist, and hide the pen inside several generations of livestock.
37. Become a dirigible pilot, and store the pen on an airship that spends most of its time in the sky.
38. Melt the components of the pen down into several different, small items. In 1904, commence reconstruction of these items into the original pen.
39. Pen of Theseus: replace the parts systematically over time, but never use the pen. Keep the old parts, and then build the old pen again. In this way there will be more then one genuine pen.
40. Hide the pen on the body of someone who is to be buried. Preferably not friend or family; grave robbing kith and kin is not cool.
41. Go on offense, and systematically murder every member of said evil forces.
42. In case of supernatural evil forces, learn sorcery and systematically bind or banish the evil forces.
43. Join up with whoever the evil forces arch-nemesis is. Presumably good.
44. Join up with whoever the evil forces chief rivals are. Presumably evil, and better at offense as a result.
45. #18, but dedicate the militant order to exterminating the evil forces.
46. #4 and #28 at the same time, but some maps lead to decoy pens and some lead nowhere, and some decoy pens have no map. Evil gives up in frustration.
47. Go into the pen business, and manufacture the decoys myself. Have just one prominently displayed as “Pen #1”, wail and gnash my teeth when it is stolen. The real one is still in the sock drawer.
48. Give or sell the pen to a series of other geniuses, like Kelvin, Cournot, and Gibbs. Retrieve the pen in 1905, it having absorbed their powers and put thermodynamics on a MUCH better footing early on.
49. The dead hand: put the pen in a series of explosive devices, upgrading as improvements become available (black powder → dynamite → munitions). I win, or everyone loses. Avoid house fires.
50. Join navy, spend next 50 years on a ship.
The whole line of reasoning of:
Do they dare X?
Especially moral restrictions like X would be sacrilidge.
Had a lot of stuff that didn’t register for me at all. In general making it possible for them to fail rather than make it impossible to succeed.
Yep; those are a series of bets, where I substituted another group’s resources for mine. I couldn’t conceive of any way to make it impossible for them to succeed owing to the constraint that I need to deliver the pen to Einstein. The best I can do with information is make sure neither I nor the evil forces know where it is, but this prevents me from getting the pen back. Anything that exploits an information imbalance fails in the face of basic things like “evil already has you under surveillance—now they know too.”
The underspecification of the question is to give us degrees of freedom to play with, but the thing is that freedom is symmetric: who knows how many sinister soups into which the forces of evil have dipped their dastardly digits?