A letter from Oct 25, 2022

Dear FutureMe, Making this email on a complete whim. How's life? Trivia time: ... I couldn't think of a good enough question. Alright then buckaroo, let's switch it up then. You always think you're the one who's better than me, living in the future and all. Well guess what, two can play at that game. You ask me a question, and I'll answer it right now without knowing what the question is. The answer will be at the very bottom of this email so that there's no cheating. If I get the answer right, then that'd really show I'm better than you, and that life is just a series of various pseudorandom events in which someone grows taller and grander before steadily crumbling and weakening into a mute and limp body of flesh in a never-ending state of decay and dust, all strengths and weaknesses gone with the wind, all memories and feelings buried under immense time, and all the food they've eaten in life being eaten a second time by the little worms and bugs that wriggle through their bones. Anyway, ask away! Unfortunately there are some shortcomings to this: you can't actually ask a subjective question, or else my answer would be most definitely wrong (and that's a tad bit unfair). But if you instead ask an objective question with only a few possible answers, I run the risk of remembering what answer I gave in this very email for 3 entire years, only for the memory to pop most conveniently into future me's hands; that is, your hands. With the knowledge of what my answer is, you can deliberately ask a question that will make my answer wrong, thus "proving" that you are smarter, but only proving that you're a dirty cheater by default. So instead, we'll make the premise much simpler. I just have to say a random number from 0 to 10, and you reading this right now will have to ask a question whose answer is a number from 0 to 10. It's got limited choice so it's not completely unfair, and there are enough numbers to choose from that it's likely I'll remember what number I choose, thus erasing the possibility of the memory sticking around until you read this. By now you're probably basking in the genius vested in me, having found this email on a bright sunny day in October, ready to toil away on the work you were tasked to complete and achieve within a tight schedule. And you'd be quite right to do so. But surely, you whine, I'd only have a 1 in 10 chance of getting it right? Well, wrong, it's a 1 in 11 chance. But even so, my answer will be correct. I have to. It is for the Way of Things. If I get this wrong, then nothing will be right in my life ever again. If I get this wrong, all of my life will be naught but a collection of dates and badly worded phrases to accompany them in a history book that will never be written. If I get this wrong, then the past 15-30 minutes spent typing this out will be wasted, and you, 3 years from now, will be laughing at the expense of a version of you who exists no more to respond to your mockery. (by the way, you should have come up with a question by now.) And that's the beauty of it, isn't it? Because I myself will never know if I will answer correctly the question that is yet to exist. Even as I ponder what number I am to give, I wonder if I should give a slightly different number. But what does that matter anyway? By the time that I in the future, or rather you, find out who the victor is, I will not be there to cheer or to frown. For I will be dead in a sense, alive only in what dusty memories you have of this momentous event. Only you will be there to witness the Battle of the Time Travelling Email, and only you will be able to win or lose. Or maybe you, 3 years from now, are already mute and limp, and quite dusted in a coffin; if that's the case, then ****, that's just plain ol' sad. I in this moment will already be gone, the molecules within me replaced over the months and years like a biological ship of Theseus, and you will be in a buried box somewhere, or lost in the dizzying depths of a sea or cave. If that be the case, with no one to finish this battle at end of day, then I call dibs on winning by stalemate. No hard feelings mate, I gotta do everything to win, even if I don't get to enjoy it. Anyway, by now you should have already thought of a question to ask. If you've already remembered what I gave as the answer, then I also call dibs on winning by my-opponent-cheated over the board. I'll even file a lawsuit if I have to. Hey, how'd that go for the esteemed chess prodigy anyway? Hans Niemann probably won, but that's just what I think. But enough beating around the bush, my answer is at the bottom of this page, and now the victor shall be found: Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you. That's right, it was a rick roll the whole time. Also the answer is 4. Did I do it? Did I get it right? I suppose I'll never know.