How can a ghostly being who can't be remembered for longer than 60 seconds secure access to electricity?

Question

I have a character in my story (set in 1998) who has been magically altered in three major ways:

1: She cannot be remembered for longer than 60 seconds without continuous exposure to her by one of the five senses. By the time the 60 seconds of not being in her presence are up, all memory of having ever encountered her will completely vanish.

2: Any second-hand direct recreation of her image or voice (photos, videos, tape recordings, etc.; drawings don't count) are impossible to acknowledge. If she's in a group picture, you simply won't notice her. If she's the only person in the picture, you'll think you're looking at a picture with nobody in it. If she makes up most or nearly all of the picture, you won't even be able to recognize you're looking at a picture at all.

3: She can, at any time, transform into an invisible, incorporeal, flying phantom form that can see through walls. She cannot be selective about this, and thus can't "ghost" anything through walls with her, and in fact leaves her clothes completely behind too and has to get new ones wherever she chooses to re-manifest.

This, naturally, has made it basically impossible for her to properly participate in human society. She can't get a job, can't go anywhere that requires a photo ID, can't even go anywhere where it would be weird not to recognize someone. My initial idea was that she'd live out of a stolen RV near a small Idaho town, until I discovered I had been grossly overestimating what the internal battery of an RV is capable of powering without being directly plugged in to a power source at an RV campground, which I suspect she wouldn't be able to use without arousing excessive suspicion. This is a problem, because one of the things I want her to be doing in her copious amounts of free time before the plot starts is playing video games, including home console games that she'll obviously need a proper power source to use. So I thought I'd check here if there's a more obvious solution.

Given her above abilities and limitations, what is my heroine's easiest method, legally or otherwise, of securing a source of power with which she can, bare minimum, play video games undisturbed?

Answer 1

People remember account numbers:

She's not in as bad of a place as you might think. semi-normal life (and the electricity she needs) is not so far away. Just because you can't remember meeting someone doesn't mean you can't remember them. Letters, notes, and documents are permanent. Email was a thing in 1998 (but not so prevalent), and she could have relationships with folks she didn't meet in person (that they remember). She could talk to people, learn things about them, and then connect with them using those details - all by mail and letters.

Your character can get really good at paperwork. She can enter any business or administrative office after hours and mess with the files of anything (as long as the office isn't too chilly).

First off, she really needs to find someone who looks a lot like her. Get pictures of this alternate person to use in documents. Identity-theft the crap out of them. She could create an entire alter-ego of the person, or use the image to make a completely new semi-legal entity.

People may not remember your character, but they certainly can acknowledge that a hotel log says room 13 is occupied by Jane Dough. If someone goes to room 13 and checks on who is in 13, she tells them to go check the log at the front desk. They'll see 13 is marked as occupied by Jane Dough (probably wondering why they were checking).

Similarly, a bank account #3456732 can have money deposited in it by anyone. If a young woman has the bank card, she can fill out the paperwork for a credit card from the bank. If they need a driver's license, they'll find she has one for Jane Dough, the account holder. They don't give a crap about who "Jane Dough" is, or what she looks like; only that she matches. The deed for a house or car can be filed with an agency, and no one looks at it except to fill out forms. If you have the deed, it's yours.

• Similarly, she needs a job (assuming she doesn't just steal like crazy, which would be really easy) that has flexible employment in a large bureaucracy. Their records show Jane Dough is an employee, and the work gets done. So what if no one remembers hiring her? Someone punches in every day, and punches out. Admin delivers a check to bank account #3456732. And there's a girl with an ID badge that kind of looks like her but the hair is different. Some jobs pay by how much you produce - so if you log work done, it gets paid for. Do more work, and as long as someone verifies this "Jane Dough" person's work got done, who cares?
• She might also manage doing door-to-door sales. If she sells products that she delivers immediately, then people may not recall her, but might have a vague memory of buying a vacuum cleaner that is obviously sitting in their living room. The less reputable version of this is selling stuff out of the back of a van/truck: it might be legitimate or not.
• Your mystery woman could also be an outstanding freelance reporter. As long as she can establish a "deep throat" identity (where the editor doesn't know who's providing the articles), she can funnel articles to a newspaper that pays money to her bank account. She could follow people and be immediately forgotten. She ghosts into the police station and reads classified documents or case files, then sneaks out. Even if she's detected, she ghosts away and they just forget. How did she get that exclusive in the New York Times where she reveals secret documents from the Cuban embassy? The most forgettable woman in the world could have a world-famous alias and yet remain perfectly forgettable.

An apartment is sub-let by a Jane Dough who always pays her rent. She sure must keep to herself, because she drops off notes to get the sink fixed, but no one can recall seeing her. She's not Jane Dough the famous reporter, is she? Whoever she is, it sounds like she's playing video games.

Answer 2

Become a Real Ghost

Other answers work if our hero can still communicate in written form. In that case she can still maintain a job, home, and access to electricity. This answer is in case you want to turn her powers up to eleven, and make even her bank account number subject to the 60-second rule.

In that case her best bet is to live in someone else's home and use their electricity. Ideally someone who poses no physical threat for when they run into each other, and who is amenable to things moving around in their house without explanation. The first can be accomplished by a home owner who cannot run or move quickly. The second by them already believing their house is haunted.

So she should play the role of a real ghost. For example there was once a family family that lost their child son. The family broke up due to the emotional trauma. The mother still lives in the family home, and has entered the delusion that the house is haunted by the spirit of her son. She keeps the room locked and rarely enters. But she often notices her son's spirit has moved things around since last week.

Since she has claimed the house is haunted since years before the protagonist moved in, no one believes her now that the house is actually haunted.

Additionally, the home-owner has a trick hip, and has installed a stair lift elevator. She mostly lives on the bottom floor and the protagonist mostly lives on the top floor. This makes it easy to avoid the occasional encounter, since the stair lift is very noisy and takes a few moments to reach the top. Enough time to vanish into another room.

Answer 3

Inspired by Daron's answer, live with someone elderly who has a somewhat shaky memory anyway. Rather than never be seen, you can pop in to the living room and have a nice chat if you want some human company - just tell them you have been sent by the council to help them. Rather than just "stealing" electricity and food from them you can check on their welfare, make sure they've turned the oven out, sit and talk them through those confusing letters from the council or stop them from answering the scammer on the telephone. Sitting with them while they use the phone or call a handyman for example you can easily ask them to add in a couple of extra electrical sockets in the study while they also fix the drip in the tap in the spare bathroom. When the workman comes the elder might not remember exactly why they requested something but there's a good chance they will just accept it. Similarly if you sit with them while they order food from the nearest supermarket you can suggest they get extra, then reappear to help them unpack when it arrives. The outside world just sees a slightly eccentric old lady and forget about her helper after they leave.

Answer 4

Theft

She is the perfect thief. She stole the vehicle, why not steal the electricity as well ? Just plug in the console's batteries reloader at the nearest neighbour. Even if the victim sees her, he will forget her presence very quickly, when she vanishes with her magic, or runs away and hides near the house, somewhere.. and try again.

She can also easily steal another car. Suppose she would, the owner could even witness the event, no problem. After one minute the owner would remember someone stole his vehicle, but he cannot remember what that person looked like. He would be of no help to the police.

(I replaced the text of this answer, thx @E Tam for the remark)

Answer 5

Why can't she just use solar panels to get enough power for her games?

As for money, she can slip into almost any place--this could be used for good (bugging mob bosses and the like), evil (theft) or in between (espionage.)

To use for good: Bug a mob boss. Send an e-mail to the FBI giving the location and frequency--put $50k in such-and-such a place and you'll get another such e-mail.

To use for evil: Get a safe deposit box, put tools in it. Go back when it's closed, use those tools to rob other boxes.

Answer 6

I'm going to assume that she wasn't born this way, since having your parents forget you exist when you're dependent on them for your survival is a little tough.

This means she already has a legal identity of some sort. She probably has a bank account, maybe a social security number, driver's licence and so on. She can use these things to get goods and services through the internet, no problems. Doesn't matter if nobody can remember her if they never actually interact with her.

Depending on her skills she could also get a job online, without ever having to interact with a real person. Online trading, jobbing sites, whatever. She could hire herself out in a variety of specialist jobs, although most of them are pretty shady. If she used her abilities well she could become one of the most well-known investigative journalists in the world, even though nobody could pick her out of a lineup.

If she can build up a reasonable income then she can hire people to do the rest, without ever actually having to meet them.

Answer 7

Perhaps try to find a friend? Establishing any kind of relationship in this state is hard, but I don't think it's impossible. I think quite a few people would appreciate having a sort-of imaginary friend that actually comes around once in a while - perhaps she should try meeting some science-fiction writer?

While people can't remember her, they should believe things that they wrote themselves and that they said, right? So she might come once, tell her story, make the writer write it down, and than say "in order to proove what I said, I'll leave the room now, and come back in 5 minutes. You will experience me as a new person, but I will know the password that you give me now, please write it down for verification". A curious person will be willing to make an experiment, and hopefully will believe the story after a few repetitions. Of course, one day experience, no matter how convincing, may be shrugged as a dream, but show up every day for a week, always remembering some password or secret to authenticate yourself, and with a properly chosen patient you will get a believer, not remembering you specifically, but remembering of your existence (they have written about your existence every day in their diary for a month, right?), and expecting a "new" person showing every day before their door and greeting with "how are you doing, old friend".

If she's willing to show naked in front of that person (perhaps picking a female to befriend is preferrable anyway?), a quicker and perhaps more convincing experiment is to simply dissappear in front of the person and appear a short while later - before being forgotten.

Oh, actually, there may be people even more interested in meeting her: some doctors and psychiatrists working with people with amnesia and dementia may just want to try having a similar experience.

Hopefully no one will go mad from that.

Anyway, it's probably not the shortest way to get the electricity, but I think that's an interesting one, and I think there is a lot of place to play with finding loopholes in this memory-vanishing.

Answer 8

I dont see why she couldnt participate in human society.

Yes she cant get photo ID, but photo ID is a gatekeeper. Its not a participation blocker. Three examples:

• photo ID is needed to get to work? Not really, its needed to get in the door, past security. Once inside, photo ID isnt needed. Even if someone challenges her for not having it, she can vanish through a wall, and 60 seconds later they wont remember a problem.
• But its needed to get a job? Again no, a file record of ID is needed, at HR. But she can visit through the walls, to fake it, as in other answers.
• Its needed for a bank account? Again no. She can get her "2 forms of ID" easily, because a utility bill or rent bill is common, she can watch for postal deliveries or letters sent by a homeowner, and slip through a wall to intercept or modify them, and get a bank account with that and some silent file manipulation....

But that aside, what exactly stops her from entering places with electrical cables, and adding a couple of her own to draw on them? That's how I'd do it.

Answer 9

Find a translator

So maybe this isnt quite in the spirit (heh) of the character but given:

She cannot be remembered for longer than 60 seconds without continuous exposure to her by one of the five senses. By the time the 60 seconds of not being in her presence are up, all memory of having ever encountered her will completely vanish.

and

Any second-hand direct recreation of her image or voice (photos, videos, tape recordings, etc.; drawings don't count) are impossible to acknowledge.

This doesn't mean people cant remember being told about her.

A lot of the other answers seem somewhat nefarious or high effort but if she finds a couple of spiritual people she could use one person as a speaker or mouth piece. It doesn't even have to be the same person every time). So a group of people could be aware of her existence around them and even have somewhat convoluted permanent relations with a small group

It really depends on how far down the chain of interaction the memories are lost and if a primary interaction with this method removes all previous associated memory (which could be a pretty tragic romance plot)

Answer 10

I like the idea of making her an actual 'ghost', but if you are willing to bend your second rule a little bit, you can also go the other way and make her participate in society like a normal person.

You said that

Any second-hand direct recreation of her image or voice (photos, videos, tape recordings, etc.; drawings don't count) are impossible to acknowledge

but I would change that to

Any second-hand direct recreation of her image or voice (photos, videos, tape recordings, etc.; drawings don't count) becomes impossible to acknowledge at the same time that the memories from her actual presence vanish (#1).

And perhaps expand it a bit to include

Any recreation of her image or voice matches her current appearance.

So she could get her photo taken, get an ID and anyone she will show it to will see that the person in the photograph matches the person in front of them.

Even if she leaves her ID lying around, as soon as she disappears from someones memory, they will not recognize her on the photo as per your original rule.

The main consequence -- since you said she is not able to take even her clothes with her when she disappears through a wall -- is that if she wants to go somewhere with her ID, she will have to physically carry it there without doing the ghost thing. That may open up new possibilities in your story too (e.g. she really wants to 'fly' through the walls of the secret government base, but she's going to need proof of identity to go into the main control room which means she can't use that ability).

Answer 11

I'm really quite surprised that no one has thought of using a gas-powered generator. If she can steal an RV, she can steal a generator and a jerry can. Then she can walk up to a gas station, fill up her jerry can, and either sneak off, or provide a big enough distraction to be able to just walk away.

A very brief Google search tells me that a generator with a gallon of gas in it (or 4 litres) will run for about 5 hours. Apparently, you're not supposed to run them for more than about 8 hours at a time, so she'd probably need two generators (since she wouldn't need either while she sleeps).

Answer 12

Touch is a sense

Wait until her hair is longer enough. Cut it. Braid the clippings into string. Dye some of the strings different colors.

She trims her grown out fingernails, and the polishes them (as in sands them smooth, not puts on nail polish). Integrate the nail clipping into the string. Make fancy, organic friendship bracelets.

Give the bracelets to people to wear. Congratulations, she is now in constant physical contact with the person. Continually stimulating their sense of touch with a piece of her own body. So long as the person doesn't take off the bracelet for more than a minute, they will remember her.

Answer 13

Electricity can come from an RV park. Hear me out. I currently work at one. And there are residents that we see, and residents that we don't see (because they work night shift or some such). Some people check in after dark.

As long as the vehicle slot is paid for by check or money order she can stay in a park. in the 1990s electronic transfer isn't so much a thing, and while it CAN be paid by credit card, in those days this wasn't accepted as payment for rentals as much, depending on the place.

You're saying that ID is a problem. But...you fail to see the advantages of being a "ghost." It means you have infinite do-overs to gather information. And that means that you CAN get anything. Including fake IDs with a picture of a girl who kinda looks like you.

Answer 14

Just steal it the same way lots of people do in real life, hook into a street lamp.

She might need to befriend an electrician or you can give her the skills to do it herself. Worst case she may have to move around every now and again if the city keep disconnecting her connection, but as they won't remember her she won't be getting into trouble for it

stealing power