Newcomb's Package

There was nothing especially suspicious, or insidious, about the package itself. In fact, the first time Dr Hannover saw it – propped up against a bench in St. James’s Park, she assumed it had been left by mistake, or indolence (the nearest recycling bin was a fifteen second walk along the path). Perhaps, living so long in London, she had become inured to the, ‘See it, say it, sorted’ tricolon – which had contributed to fractured communities and increase in xenophobia (as argued in her paper, published in Mind last month). It was only when she bent down to inspect it that she recoiled: Her name had been written in a thick, black, felt tip pen, over the brown paper. A piece of string was wrapped around it, sealed with yellow wax, which bore the impression of a stamp, embossed with a letter N.

She decided to leave it, and the park, immediately.

In all probability, it was a practical joke. Almost certainly, her research assistant’s. It was his last week and he knew her habits. Yes, that was it. Julian, the jocund junior researcher, she thought, putting a spring in her step as she walked out onto the Mall.

The next morning, when the postman rang the bell she did not expect to see it again.

She might have refused to take it, had it not been for the fact that the postman had wrapped her letters (two bills, a credit card statement, and some junk mail) around the package with a large, red, elastic band, and dashed down the path before she had the chance to wish him a good day. Besides, Dr Hannover was expecting a present she had ordered for her sister to be delivered that week.

There it was – on her kitchen table: about eight inches by five, and five deep. The brown paper it was wrapped in was very ordinary. The yellow string was unusual. The wax seal was especially idiosyncratic.

Only her address had been added in the same, black, pen. The postmark was Westminster (hardly a surprise).

She let it remain there for fifteen minutes while she made herself a cup of Darjeeling and considered:

It was certainly suspicious but whether it was dangerous was, she thought, unlikely. Philosophy professors tend not to attract the sort of enemies who would go to the bother of sending bombs through the post, or leaving them under park benches. There was no Moriarty in her life, as far as she knew – and she dared not think of herself as Sherlock Holmes. Besides, knowing how unreliable Royal Mail is, how much they throw parcels about, she doubted it could contain anything explosive.

After rummaging through the usual drawer for her parcel scissors, Dr Hannover had to settle for the green handled pair she usually used for cutting flowers.

Not wanting to ruin the wax seal, she snipped the string at the top and slid it off. The brown paper peeled like an onion, and she soon found herself staring at a wooden box in white beechwood, with her name engraved on its lid.

She lifted it – a little gingerly – and saw an envelope, with, Read Me First written on it. Turning it over, she saw it had been sealed with wax, again. This time, it was embossed with an E.

Inside, was a thick piece of card, written on in brown ink. It ran thus:

Dr Hannover,

The contents of the other envelopes contain details about your future.

We are a small firm of time travellers who remain politically neutral. We sponsor select individuals who are working on various aspects of temporal mechanics.

We know your current area of research is free will in relation to time travel and wanted to sponsor you to enable you to go beyond mere thought experiment.

Yours, most sincerely,

TW Goodemire.

She turned the card over and reread it several times.

There were five other envelopes.

The first was sealed with a W and was labelled, “Winning Lotto numbers for 11/11.”

The second, sealed with a C had, “Your Significant Other”, and a heart drawn on.

Third, sealed with an O, read, “Something to avoid.”

Next, sealed with an M was printed with, “Only read if you ignored O.”

The last envelope was black, as was the wax seal (a B). In red font was printed: “Your death date.”

It took Dr Hannover a few minutes to realise the significance of the letters on the seals which spelled out NEWCOMB and then it seemed rather obvious: Newcomb’s paradox.

It was an old thought experiment – although there were several iterations of it by now. In a nutshell, there is a game, in which a contestant is given a choice of taking one, or two boxes. One box (A) is transparent and contains a thousand pounds. The other box is opaque. The contents of Box B (B) has been decided by an omniscient machine. The Machine has made a prediction about what the contestant will do. If the machine has predicted that the contestant will pick only Box (B), then that Box contains £1million. However, if the Machine has predicted that the contestant will pick both boxes, then Box B will contain nothing.

In addition to game theory, the philosophical paradox was one of free will: if the omniscient Machine made a true prediction then the contestant could not really choose which box to take.

Did knowledge of the future secure it or make it malleable?

Of course, this was all academic – indeed, her life’s work. Besides, she still assumed the package was an elaborate practical joke.

She tore open the next envelope nonchalantly. Inside was a slip of paper with six numbers. Today was the 12th. She googled yesterday’s Lotto results. They were a perfect match. It would have been far more impressive to have predicted today’s, of course.

As a matter of course, she checked the postmark again on the outside of the package. It was certainly yesterday’s date. To her knowledge, none of the post boxes in Westminster did a collection after 7pm. Still, applying Ockham’s razor, it was quite a simple matter to fake a postmark and simply hand deliver an item.

She sighed, and, looking inside the next envelope, found a head shot of a mixed-race man, dressed in a grey fedora and cream T-shirt. On the back was written, in a blue biro, Jason Harris, 34.

There were no other details. He looked attractive enough but then, so had Ian, and Omari, and Mike. Attractive wasn’t the problem.

She considered the other three envelopes but felt she had enough to think about without further data. Besides, she had a job interview to prepare for.

The interview was, in fact, a second round one for a professorship at King’s College, London. She was, perhaps, a little young for the role and somewhat under-published, so when the call came an hour later, as she sat in a bookshop café, trying to ignore her nerves, the offer took her by such surprise that she let out a little squeal, attracting the attention of most of the other customers. Most looked away. Only one offered his congratulations: a tall, well-dressed man, who had been reading John Locke at the table opposite hers. She had failed to notice him because (she supposed), she had not been expecting him. Perhaps she should have – it was Jason Harris.

She was almost tempted to ignore him – out of a schoolgirlish spite for the package. She had never liked being told what to do. On the other hand, she supposed Jason might have sent the package himself, having admired her from afar.

There was only one way to find out.

It was a month later that Dr Hannover decided to open the next envelope. She had enjoyed several dinner dates with Jason, some walks, and a visit to the National Portrait gallery – which nearly ended in disaster when he gave his opinion on the Chandos portrait.

Preparation for her new job had taken up more hours than she cared. She was having to revisit some material from her undergraduate days and keep abreast of some new developments in quantum theory which were slightly beyond her non-specialist’s brain without concerted effort, copious amounts of notes, and several phone calls to learned colleagues.

In fact, the day she had got home from meeting Jason, she had hidden the package and its envelopes in the back of the cupboard under the stairs, behind her moth-eaten tennis racquet.

When she returned to it, she opened the third envelope and knocked over the glass of Merlot she had just poured herself; the message ran:

Do not take the professorship at King’s – even with the extra £1500.

This was starting to go beyond a joke, now. In haste, she tore open the next envelope.

What she found inside made her immediately regret having spilled the Merlot. She reached for the bottle and drank deeply.

It was a winning Lotto ticket for the previous month, and it changed everything.

Knowing about her job was one thing, planting an attractive man in her path was a mere bagatelle (especially if it had anything to do with the job interview). Predicting six numbers which would secure her an eight figure payday was too improbable.

But if it were all true . . . if the envelopes really did predict her future, then had she been acting freely?

Of course: omniscience paradox had no bearing on free will. Even Boethius had understood as much in the 6th century: there is a difference between simple and conditional necessity. She knew this. If Socrates is sitting, the statement that Socrates is sitting must be true, but this does not compel Socrates to sit. A time traveller was no different to Boethius’ God who sees everything at once and therefore cannot not know our actions but such knowledge does not compel them. If someone had been at her kitchen window a few minutes ago and looked in, they could not have seen her knock the bottle of wine over but their looking did not cause the accident.

Unless the Copenhagen interpretation was right, of course . . .

She took another swig of the bottle.

There was still one envelope.

It was an old thought experiment – one she had gone through with countless First Years: if you knew you were going to die on a certain date, would that knowledge change anything? Did it depend on where the knowledge came from? Would it not cause the event in trying to prevent it?

Would you even want to know?

Dr Hannover had always said she wouldn’t want to know but that wasn’t the honest answer. Of course, it would depend on the circumstances of her death: if she knew she would die in her sleep, at a ripe old age, in peace – all would be well, and she needn’t know the date. On the other hand, if she were going to die suddenly, before her proverbial time, then she would want to know – in order to make preparations. Then again, she might become overly obsessed with avoiding her impending demise to the exclusion of enjoying her remaining time.

Most of her students argued themselves into similar knots but the reality of time travel complicated things. If she were to take the original card at face value, she had been sponsored by an organisation from the future – a future which (presumably) knew her work. So she was unlikely to be hit by a bus the next day . . . unless the last envelope had been sent to warn her and thus change her fate?

Before she gave into temptation she took a match to the black envelope and set it on fire on a metal tray.

The envelope was consumed quickly enough but it wasn’t paper inside – it was metal, and its message glowed in orange:

You will burn this on 12/12

She smiled, and took out another glass.