Imagine you wake up in the body of a famous and influential person in the bedroom where that person sleeps in. You know nothing about that individual prior to this incident apart from the fact that they are considered a high profile person.
Your only chance of survival here is to act like that person in front of their family, friends and the public for the rest of the unforeseeable future. How do you ensure you learn to imitate the personality of the individual by arousing the least amount of suspicion?
You don’t. You crack your head and claim to have lost all memory. Let your friends and family do the work for you.
Work smarter, not harder. ;)
First --> Check if I have boobs.
If yes --> Play with them for a bit.
If no --> Proceed to find out who I am.
Malcovich, Malkovich, Makkovich!
Nice try, quantum leaper.
Oh boy
I’m —
Fake being sick. Like vomiting, diarrhea, extreme fatigue sick. That can explain away lots of unusual behavior, plus an excuse to bow out of any commitments for a day or two.
Then research the hell out of this person online, and study their calendar/diary/whatever.
Hopefully they are wealthy along with high profile, so I can easily retire from the public eye if needed. Recent elections made me reconsider my values and how I want to spend more time with family, yada yada, who cares what the reason is so long as it sounds aspirational enough.
Fake a stroke. Then memory loss.
You are now inside the body of a high profile person
ಠ_ಠ
“Well, this is awkward”
record scratch
“I bet you’re wondering how I got here,”
Am I in someone sane, rational, and smart, like a scientist or humanitarian, or did I wind up as some clueless jackass celebrity? There are wildly different requirements for these.
The latter would probably be easier - but the former would be more resplendent.
- Try to find out my name, and then read the wikipedia article and recent news
- Fake a stroke or a seizure and be taken to the hospital
- Pretend I have brain damage and remember only foggy details
Tell everyone that I’ve just watched a Jordan Peterson video and I’m going down the rabbit hole and ask them if they know where I can get my hands on some ketamine. My irrational behaviour and urgent need for fast access to my funds would then seem pretty par for the course.
Jordan Peterson’s really big on maxing out all of one’s lines of credit. Makes sense.
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Quickly try to guess whether alcohol is okay in this person’s culture and whether they would have reasonably gotten drunk.
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Pretend to be hung over for as long as possible to stall for time.
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???
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Find out their banking details (or call in their banker) and transfer all their money to a good cause.
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Abandon your family, grab a fanny pack and begin to search for Wonder Woman, obviously.
Regarding behavior: Pretend I met god in a dream and use that as an excuse to explain away any discrepencies in behavior.
As for figuring out everything else. Here: (I’m gonna be making a lot of assumptions, bear with me):
First of all, if the amount of people that are considered “high profile” are probably mostly celebrities or prominent CEOs. Chances are, the person would have an iPhone with icloud backup enabled (unless I get unlucky and got into director of a 3 letter agency, in which case my plan would probably get derailed, but anyways, lets presume I don’t get unlucky), I would have to hope Face ID still works and haven’t reached the 24 hour (or was it 72 hours? whatever) mark, which would require pin, and that’d suck. But assuming Face ID works, I’d quickly go into settings and reset the icloud password using Face ID [yeah you heard it right, it doesn’t prompt for icloud password, thanks Apple :)], once thats done, I’d go through every photo and notes and everything I can find on their phone. Since the phone eventually would prompt for PIN, I’d have to backup the data, then reset the phone, then restore from backup. Hopefully this person does Journals/Diaries, that’d also provide more information about their life.
If this person doesn’t use biometrics, or if it reached an interval that requires PIN, then I’d have to borrow someones phone and contact apple to reset the Apple ID password. Hopefully, the person is on good terms with Tim Cook and a quick video call would get my icloud password reset, then I’d reset my iPhone, log with Apple ID, then restore from icloud backup. Search all the info… etc.
If this person is an android user, it could get tougher especially because android backups to google aren’t as complete as iCloud backups. If biometrics work, I’d connect to a PC, and backup to PC. Then reset the phone (remember, the phone would eventually prompt for the PIN, so resetting is necessary), and restore from backup. If biometrics don’t work, I’d have to hope google backups have enough information for my transition into this body as seamless as possible. I’d have to call Google CEO and hopefully this person is on good terms with the Google CEO and get the password reset. Then reset the phone, log in, restore from cloud. Hope theres enough data backed up to google, fingers crossed.
If the person was director of a 3 letter agency, they’d probably not have a normal phone, especially not one backup to cloud, so I’d probaby have to immediately resign and pretend like I saw a ghost or something, then just enjoy retirement.
That would be a serious memory loss episode and the family and friends would know immediately. There’s nothing to hide so just be honest and carry on with the new life.
read “the tightrope men” by desmond bagley. it’s a novel set in finland that uses exactly this premise.
