The answering machine has of course been quite fruitful as a device to probe the semantics and pragmatics of indexical expressions. See for example:

Alan Sidelle. 1991. “The Answering Machine Paradox”. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, pp. 525539.

Stefano Predelli. 1998a. “I am not here now”. Analysis, 58(2): 107115.

Stefano Predelli. 1998b. “Utterance, Interpretation and the Logic of Indexicals”. Mind & Language, 13(3): 400414.

Let me add to this the time machine scenario. Imagine you had a correspondent who lives two months in the future from now (December 2006). One thing I would ask that correspondent has to do with an event that is going to happen a month from now, in my future but my correspondent’s past. Here’s my question to my friend in the future:

Who won the election?

But note that I could also ask my friend this:

Who will win the election?

To my ears, both ways of putting the question are fine. Bonus points for anyone who can tell a convincing story about the semantics and pragmatics of tense that will cover this case. [I have no idea whether this is easy or hard. Questions of tense scare me and so I try to avoid thinking about them.]