Wired is reporting on a mysterious package adressed to Henry Walton Jones, Jr., (b.k.a. Indiana Jones) the University of Chicago received recently. The university tried to bring the package to Henry at first, but soon found there is no such person on their staff. They opened the package and were surprised to find an exact replica of Abner Ravenwood’s journal.
Fans of Raiders will remember that Abner Ravenwood’s journal was what Indy used to find the Ark of the Covenant. Ravenwood was a professor at the University of Chicago and one of Indiana Jones’ mentors. The replica of his journal that was sent to his former university is meticulous in its details: photos of Harrison Ford as Indy, maps, currency, and even – as one eagle-eyed internet responder pointed out – handwritten text that can be found here.
The stamps used on the package turned out to not even be real stamps but replicas of Egyptian stamps that fit the time in which Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is set. Lucasfilm has denied any involvement and are wondering just as much how the meticulously recreated package got to the University of Chicago’s mailroom and who created it as they are. The university has set up a Tumblr to help them in their quest of tracking down the creator, so far to no avail.
Garrett Brinker, director of undergraduate outreach for the university, hopes it’s an elaborate application. “I would like to believe, in some sense, that it was a prospective student that dropped it in the mail and wanted us to go on this discovery, and wanted us to find clues of some sort that tied this book back to him or her,” Brinker said. “I think if it was from a prospective student, it would be seen in a positive light. It would show us this student might think a little bit differently.”
While that would be awesome in itself, I choose to ignore this fairly reasonable explanation in favor of an even more awesome though admittedly less likely one: If the theory of infinite parallel universes is true than it means there is also a universe in which Indiana Jones is not a fiction but reality. Somehow, a postal package from that universe materialized in ours and simply got delivered to its intended address. In that case, we now have a clue to where the Ark can be found and travelling to alternate realities is not only a possibilty, it is one we have to find STAT.
Seeing how the package just got delivered, in that universe, “Raiders” is the current storyline, and this means there’s still time to prevent the fourth Indiana Jones film from happening.
We have a moral duty to save them from that disaster.
More pictures and the full story can be found at Wired. You can join the search on Tumblr.
