u/erinoco

You take a preliminary overview of his effects. Most of these are easily dealt with, but you find two very large locked chests. You can't find any keys which correspond to the locks.

Before you take further steps, you are visited by someone who describes himself as a close friend of your uncle. You have met this man a couple of times in your uncle's company, and your uncle has mentioned him in passing occasionally, but neither you or your relatives know anything more about him.

This man offers you £10,000 in cash (or your local equivalent) to take away the chests, as long as you make no effort to open them. When you ask him elaborate, he says: "If you do open the chests, I guarantee that you won't get that amount of money with what you find there. You will also end up with a load of hassle. You won't be able to sort this quickly." The man refuses to elaborate further, but says he must know within 24 hours.

Do you take the man's offer, or do you proceed to force open the chests by any means you can?

You choose which detective's universe you enter; they must exist in any work of fiction which has been published or publicly released.

In this universe, you will have a first cousin of the same age and sex as you. This cousin is worth around USD 100 million at 2026 prices. You are currently in line to inherit this cousin's wealth; the cousin intends to pursue a romantic relationship which will almost certainly lead to a new will being made leaving you out.

Your challenge is to murder this cousin, and then to baffle the detective for a year and a day after the murder. Once you have conmitted the murder, someone will ask the fictional detective to investigate the circumstances surrounding your cousin, even if there is no evidence of an actual murder or foul play in public. If the fictional detective suspects you, but has no idea how you murdered your cousin, you win. But if the detective can accuse you openly of the murder and explain how you performed it, then you lose.

If you win, you are transported back to the present day, and you receive the cousin's wealth in your country's currency at current values. If you lose, you remain in the alternate universe and have to cope with either the criminal processes of that world or any other consequences that might arise.

If your fictional detective usually benefits from plot armour (lucky coincidences, for instance) the universe will give them some of the same treatment, so you will have to bear this in mind.

EDIT: you can select a lead time of anything up to a year before you commit the murder once you have arrived in the universe. If you don't do anything, you return unharmed to the present day.

The samples consist of various items we discard: shed skin, hair and nail clippings, bodily fluids (including blood, semen and fecal matter) and any other items that can be captured. Swarms of nanobots capture these items and take them to larger robots capable of flight, who transfer the items to the facility. The items are preserved; meanwhile, a precise and complete record of the genome is compiled from the clipping. The bots are sophisticated enough to seek samples from specific humans to complete a genome, or reject samples for those whose genome is already captured. The entire facility is contained in a natural cave system which has not yet been discovered by humans. It is powered by geothermal means, with the other devices being powered by solar energy.

This entire project is the work of an alien race. On completion of the facility, they seized you. The aliens explained the project to you. They explained that they would have to leave the planet, but they would return when the facility sends them a signal that its work is complete. ETC is currently around 20 years. The aliens will be satisfied if they capture the profiles of more than 95% of living human beings over the time period.

In the mean time, they have decided to appoint you to be the caretaker of the facility. If certain trigger thresholds are met (say, humanity appears to have discovered the nanobots and is destroying them, or the facility is discovered) the main computer operating the facility will alert you, wherever you are in the world. You are then instructed to inform governments of the facility's purpose, and then warn them that any attempt to destroy the facility or stop the project will be met with retaliation by the aliens when they return. If you take part in any efforts, retaliation will embrace you personally. If you die, the aliens will also return as soon as they can to investigate.

When the aliens will return, they will remove the facility, including the samples and data, to their home planet. They refuse to say what they intend to do with them. But they do say they do not intend to visit Earth for at least a century after collection.

In return, you have been given an interface for interacting with the facility's master computer. This interface is in English. It is designed to allow no one but you to access it, using a variety of techniques, including analysis of your biological signature. You can access the samples and the database. You can also use the master computer to carry out experiments using the data, if you can structure and design potentially successful research.

In general, the aliens want you to be compensated by monetising their work.

Would you collaborate with the aliens, or look for a way of frustrating their work?

This is your problem because your parents were fans of the celebrity, and brought you up in their way of thinking.

Your given names directly reference the celebrity. Your parents, were members of his fan club; you joined it too.

You met this celebrity on more than one occasion, and you have signed photos as mementos of the occasions, alongside various memorabilia you and your parents acquired over the years. The celebrity was always pleasant and generous when he met you and your parents. All this was known to all your social circle before the allegations came to light. You are still personally fond of the work of this celebrity.

What do you do now? Do you change your name, get rid of anything connecting you to the celebrity, and pretend he never existed? Do you defend the work, but not the man? Or do you try and look for anything which might mitigate the crimes he has been accused of, which can never be fully proven now that he is dead?