this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025

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You wake up as a random 10-year-old in 2002 with your memories intact. In your hand is a USB drive with a backup of Wikipedia as of Jan 1 2025. You must keep your identity secret. What do you do? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by vateso5074@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

97 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If anyone wants a specific goal, have it be either

Earn a Nobel Prize by age 18

Become a billionaire by age 18

For the sake of the scenario, assume the following:

If anyone learns that you are mentally from the future, you immediately have an aneurysm and die. You somehow just know this and therefore must keep your true identity secret.
You wake up as a random 10-year-old specifically in 2002, not your 10-year-old self, and not the age you actually were in 2002.
You live in the same country, speak the same language(s), and are the same ethnicity as your old self. Your biological sex matches your gender identity (flip a coin if you are enby).
You have 2 parents and 1.5 siblings. Your family earns exactly the median income for your country.
The person whose identity you now inhabit left a diary. You have no other knowledge of your new identity beyond this.
If you try to look for your old family, you learn they had a different child in this timeline who is the same age as you but is not you. They will not believe any attempt to convince them you are related.
The USB drive is compatible with any standard USB Type A connector. It is just large enough to fit all of Wikipedia, including hosted media and files, and the drive is read-only. The drive cannot be reformatted.
Stock market trends remain generally consistent for 5 years. After that, assume the butterfly effect will start to skew the results, so you cannot predict what will happen after 2007. Sports become too unreliable to bet on with 100% accuracy after 1 year.
I feel like I shouldn't need to clarify this one, but no grooming kids. Assume there is a magical force that prevents you from dating anyone until both you and they are at least 18, and no one is attracted to you unless they would also feel okay dating someone who is your mental age.

EDIT - Additional clarifiers, if this helps:

The USB drive is not based on 2002 technology but is fully compatible with it. Assume it uses a novel architecture that can repurpose itself to be compatible with whatever system it is plugged into, as long as it fits the correct type of USB port.

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[–] vateso5074@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

For the sake of the scenario, in addition to the details listed in the body of the post, assume the USB drive is type A and is readable by any PC with a USB type A connector, regardless of generation. It can also be read regardless of file system.

There's an inherent supernatural element to the premise, so assume "it just works." There can be a specialized browser on the drive as well if you feel like you wouldn't be able to make use of the raw HTML files.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No assumptions are even required because this commenter is simply flat out wrong. See the breakdown here, or TL;DR: It would be trivial to mount a drive up to 2.2 TB (not GB, not MB...) using 2002 hardware.

I think a bigger assumption in this scenario is that if you're reborn as a random 10 year old holding a USB flash drive, you'll zap to a place on the globe with ready access to a recent computer.

[–] vateso5074@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yep. My household in 2002 had a computer, but that's because I had a parent who worked in IT. Most people I knew at the time didn't have one. By 2002, ~40% of the United States still did not have access to a computer at home, though the gap would keep closing year over year.

But that's just data for the United States. Other countries may have had lower rates of adoption at that time, and in a scenario where you would be less likely to wake up in a random household with a computer, it would require a bit more thinking to figure out how to get access to one.

I'd probably look to schools and libraries as a place to start. If that's not an option, then it'd be figuring out how to befriend a local rich kid who might have a computer. Otherwise, the USB is effectively a paperweight for some time and you're left only with your memories of the future for guidance until computer access becomes more available.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Oh jeez I grew up with an engineer father and a mom who did punch card programming back in the day and just kinda assumed most people had a computer in the 90s

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

inherent supernatural element

ok now you killed me :-)

[–] vateso5074@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I guess more accurately I killed whatever 10 year old you magically mind swapped with, haha.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That brings to mind how the fuck most of us are going to avoid spending a nice long time in mental health treatment for the sudden change of personality and loss of memory

[–] vateso5074@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yep...you have a diary which likely covers big life events and chunks of recent history, but I hope you're a good actor.

My thoughts were similar to what others had suggested, find some way to simulate an accident, some sort of head trauma, or a serious illness to help sell why you suddenly can't remember much and why your personality is different. But I think a whole lot is going to require trying to be as invisible as possible for a while and try to pick up context clues from observing people around you.

And in the scenario above, even if simply explaining your situation honestly didn't suddenly kill you, I would hate to imagine the reaction of these parents who realize their child is effectively dead and has been replaced by some sort of fae changeling.