Hey, My character needs to steal a disguise in order to get to a location that's off-limits to "officials only." It's a dystopic, 1984-esque setting in which the government is hiding something, so my secondary character has to pretend to be one of them in order to saunter down there and try to figure out the conspiracy mystery without anyone noticing. Here is the thing...how would he realistically be able to get ahold of a disguise only worn by the top officials? There are cameras everywhere, so he still gets caught later on because the officials saw him stealing the disguise. But how would be be able to access and steal such a uniform in the first place? Keep in mind that my story's government is very fascist and non-transparent; they won't be selling their uniforms in a store or anything like that. Thanks! M
what about getting someone in uniform drunk/drugged and stealing it? Maybe a physical attraction or something similar. Could keep them hidden until after he had done what he needed to do.
There are lots of ways to accomplish this, depending on how sneaky your character can be. He could do something like in Indiana Jones the third one, Indy just knocks out a nazi who was lagging behind and takes his uniform, problem solved. Or you could do something more subtle like drug an officer or something.
I'm guessing your looking for something a little more original than just beating the guard unconscious and taking his outfit. If one of your characters is a female, she could seduce one of them into removing their clothes... Are there any showers/laundromats in this facility? You could swipe them from there. That's all I got, the drug comment above sounded good also.
Another solution? Have the character go to the dry cleaner's. Identification badges, patches of rank, and such are easy to forget and leave behind. If the character dresses up as much as possible and goes to various dry cleaners asking "Hey, is this where the employees found an Ident badge?" he'll eventually strike gold. Just have the name of another dry cleaner ready, so if they say "No, we didn't find one" he can reply, "Well, this is Name of Cleaner, isn't it?" and they can tell him "What? No, that's over on this other street." And then he can apologise and leave. With an Ident badge, he can probably "pick up an order of dry cleaning for a friend" and get his disguise that way.
"Officials" rarely wear uniforms. They tend to wear business suits (with clip on I.D. photo badges for secured areas). Exceptions would be things like police or military installations, were the "brass" wear highly decorated uniforms. Ways to obtain suitable attire would include: Buying a suit from a clothing store/buying a uniform from a military surplus store (with uniforms, you must purchase the insignias, rank badges, etc. separately and it usually requires a little research to make sure you get the insignia correct. Wearing the wrong insignia is a dead giveaway). Clip on I.D. Badges can be forged, pick pocketed or possibly obtained legally, if the nature of the facility allows the infiltrator to apply for a job there, get hired and be issued a real I.D. badge...of course once they are inside, the pretense of actually working is abandoned and the cloak and dagger stuff begins. Uniforms can be stolen from stock rooms, laundry mats, delivery trucks or off of the backs of employees (either by "taking out" one of the guards, or less James Bondish, you could simply follow an off duty guard home and take him out in his own kitchen without prying eyes seeing anything). Aside from the "bluff your way in" approach, you could alternately have your character try the "ninja" approach, dress in all black, sneak in under cover of darkness, stick to the shadows, sneak past sentries, "trip" (disarm) burglar alarms, time movements to slip past security cameras when they rotate to face the other way (or the old movie jewel thief trick of foiling a non-moving security camera by taking a photo of the room and placing it in a wire frame hanging in front of the camera, so that it looks like the room is empty - realism alert, that sort of thing almost NEVER works in real life). Aside from the "bluff" and "ninja" approach, there is always the "Rambo" approach, blasting your way in, killing a bunch of the bad guys and then fighting your way out, although that way is more action adventure and less mystery sleuth. In the real world, even fascist governments are full of people and people are always subject to human nature. There will always be criminal enterprises and black market sources for everything from narcotics, automatic weapons, explosives and fake I.D.s and even uniforms. Over the years of my experience with military and law enforcement, I've actually known people who could supply forged passports and driver's licenses, fully functional military helicopters (Older models that originally were part of military aid to various South American countries) and even assault rifles, grenades and rocket launchers with the famous three point guarantee...NO paperwork, NO taxes and NO stupid questions asked...cash and carry ONLY. Of course, unless you actually KNOW the people involved, you do business at your own risk when dealing with shady people in dark alleys. Just a few ideas tossed out for consideration
I get ideas for hooks like this by watching tv or reading books. When a character does something I want my character to do how do they pull it off? How can I change it and make it my characters action? How would my character do it differently? Leverage (tv show) is good if you are going for the change of identity hook. Then there's the traditional James Bond and Indiana Jones, they always get in where they don't belong.
Plus in todays enlightened society - with your dystopia being in the future you don't need to have woman to seduce a male official.
What if the characters contacts a specialist in clothing? They do some spying on how the uniform is, and they try to make a perfect replica, or something close enough for him to get to his objective. Maybe add a part where they couldn't complete the disguise in time, so the character has to constantly cover and hide this part while he is on his mission, and then gets caught, or not, your choice just an idea, hope it helps :]
