Special Agent Field Reports: October, 2020

Secret Agent Avia Jiutai was tasked with protecting one of the most important hoaxes deliberately perpetuatedby the SIU. The supposed existence of mermaids has long been a method to encourage oceanic conservation and wildlife study in the general populace, along with several other fictional animals (such as the mapinguari, the Hawaiian yeti, and the manatee). A recent large-scale study of environmental DNA threatened to cast serious scientific doubts on the existence of mermaids, as such it was Agent Jiutai's mission to create another sighting to encourage the belief. Through the traditional use of animatronics and holograms, the agent staged a successful sighting near a busy cruise ship packed with tourists in the South Pacific. Although nearly caught himself, and apparently badgered and pursued by an especially curious octopus, the agent's mission has been considered a success. Based on the number of articles and videos interpreting the footage that have been spread online by cryptozoological circles, the sighting has once again captured public imagination and curiosity about the mysteries of the ocean.

Tool use has been observed in many wild animals, such as crows and octopuses, but Senior Agent Gedat Rakkinwas present for the first example of deliberate tool use found in lions. A small Sub‑Saharan town had been finding the gates of their newly built town walls repeatedly broken open, with the damage indicative of the use of lock picks or pry bars. Assuming that it was the work of vandals, a network of security cameras was established to catch the crimes in the act: it was these cameras that captured footage of a lion breaking through the doors. When on the scene, Agent Rakkin hid overnight near the town boundary and saw, first hand, that a small pride of lions were using broken bones, split into splinters, to pick the locks of the gates, holding the bone tools in their mouths and adjusting with forepaws. With the help of experts, who were reluctant to be flown in overnight for such an outlandish claim, Rakkin was able to track down the pride's rest area and discovered more hints of tool use, and one potential example of art made from crushed berries mixed with blood (although this is debated). Study of this pride of lions and its unique behavior will likely continue for years.

Senior Special Agent Fenix Blackpaw spent the month tracking down an alleged "super hero" who went rogue in Germany. "Sternensoldat", an anonymous, star-themed vigilante, achieved local fame after her controversial intervention in several minor crimes, which led to her uncovering evidence that aided in prosecuting a major crime boss. Public opinion soured, however, when she was spotted vandalizing public spaces with strange graffiti. While this would usually be firmly within the jurisdiction of local police, SIU intervention was requested after several break-ins, thought to be perpetrated by the hero, underlined the police department's inability to uncover her identity or track down the hero-turned-criminal. Agent Blackpaw tracked the hero down, after great effort combing through city-wide surveillance, audio signal triangulation, and an interview with a local “super villain”. Inside the star themed secret base, ironically located within an abandoned, underground subway station, Sternensoldat was found in a delirious state and had to be subdued after a long fight. Interviewed by Agent Blackpaw, the young woman explained that all her heroics were instructed, and overseen, by voices she heard "from the stars", and that the recent strings of crimes were also commanded by celestial voices. After being taken into custody, the unusual hero was given a medical exam where metal shrapnel was found embedded in her skull from an accident years prior. The SIU's working theory is that the metal may be forming a make-shift receiving array, which may be responding to strong wireless signals; the source, and nature, of the signal, if it exists, has yet to be determined.

Special Agent Neopurchased a house well known for being haunted, and uncovered a secret within its walls. Built in 1729, its owner was found guilty of piracy and treason, and was hanged on his own property. This death was a very public affair and is often said to have symbolized the end of the Golden Age of Piracy in the region. Ever since that time, it is almost inevitable that ghost sightings and minor poltergeist activity has been reported in the home. Agent Neo, well-trained in ghost interpretation (as are all SIU agents), spent several nights in his new home interacting with the ghost and examining the fine detail of the house itself, which was surprisingly well preserved. One night, the agent followed clues that only appeared under dim lighting in many of the vintage paintings, and was led to a secret door apparently left undiscovered for 300 years. The door led Agent Neo down a stairwell into a large, unrecorded underground lake. There, half-submerged in the lake, was a small wooden ship which matched descriptions of a mysterious pirate ship sometimes spotted in the 1700s. Historians have been invited to the site in an attempt to retrieve and catalog the ship and all it contains, with talk of a local museum to be founded on the site (though who would construct a ship in an underground lake is still yet to be determined). Neo himself has shifted focus to the study of ghost photography, in hopes of recording evidence of the pirate ghost in his new home that has, according to him, become quite friendly.

Special Agent Chaz Gates intervened in a fifteen year old kidnapping case. In 2023, one of a pair of identical twins (age ten at the time) was reported missing from their Cairo home, with no clear evidence of who was responsible. Three years later, the missing twin (now a teenager) re-appeared in the family's living room with no apparent memory of the disappearance, and no evidence of mistreatment. Years later, Agent Gates was prompted to investigate the situation after a police raid of a local building revealed a second pair of twins, also identical to those in the 2023 case who still lived nearby, who were found squatting in the building illegally and were recognized by a detective on the original case. Gates' interviews with the four men, all 25 and all identical, revealed that they were actually quadruplets who had been accidentally split up at a hospital in Turkey when their Egyptian mother went into labor early while on vacation. A clerical error caused a nurse to give only two of the children to their parents, with the other two raised at a local orphanage who believed the children had been abandoned by the Cairo natives. The "kidnapping" in 2023 was actually a botched attempt for the Turkish pair of twins to swap lives with their Egyptian siblings, which caused three of the siblings to be detained at a shipping port in Gaza by Israeli child services, where they bonded and became friends. After the reappearance of the kidnapped sibling in Cairo, the four made a plan to repeatedly trade places with each other, without the knowledge of their parents or school officials, essentially sharing two lives between the four of them. Agent Gates has determined no supernatural foul play in what threatened to be a case of teleportation, time skipping, or person duplication — as to how these four people got away with it so cleanly, Gates offers no suggestion, nor does the local police official now in charge of the case, age 26, who bore a striking resemblance to the four siblings.

Special Agent Kouroth had his mind read by a dog. Tulipán, a pet xoloitzcuintle living in a small Mexican village, has local notoriety for the ability to predict the weather and even local elections to a level of accuracy that piqued SIU interest. Agent Kouroth investigated and finally got to meet the dog, which he described as very healthy and friendly. His owners declined an invitation for the dog to be more thoroughly examined at a nearby SIU site equipped with psychic energy detection machines, but a cursory scan with the agent's hand-held device showed no unusual peaks in mental wavelengths during his apparent “predictions”. The agent reports that, after extensive testing and an afternoon spent with the dog, random chance and sheer coincidence could account for the bulk of the dog's precognition abilities, and that the unconscious humming of a song the agent had stuck in his head could explain how the dog knew which record to pick from the family's collection — but, Tulipán's ability to spell the agent's original name in children's toy blocks, when it was legally expunged from the record upon SIU induction, has yet to be explained, and may require a re-evaluation of Agent Kouroth.

Special Agent Erik Fischer investigated a sudden spike in radiation beneath a Russian city. Due to nuclear weapon restrictions, the city was already under close surveillance, and as such the increase in background radiation was quickly noticed. Governmental officials, however, swore that there had been no new development in nuclear technology or tests in the area. Despite widespread skepticism, the Russian government itself reached out to the SIU for assistance in at least confirming local safety. Agent Fischer was sent to hone in on the source of the radiation, which lead him underground into a network of access tunnels and subway lines in the affected area. A heavy amount of steam was found leaking through cracks in a wall and, after a simple breach, a network of tiny, flooded insect tunnels were discovered to be the source of the radioactive material. Agent Fischer discovered that many of the rocks that had been piled up in these tunnels were full of natural Uranium. It appeared, as strange as it seems, that a subterranean colony of unremarkable harvester ants had accidentally created a natural nuclear reactor by breaking apart radioactive rocks and piling them up, in the process of expanding their colony after a flood in their tunnels. A team was sent to clean up this natural reactor for the sake of the city's safety: many samples of the surviving ants have been collected for study.

Although the SIU has no evidence that time travel is possible, all claims are taken very seriously: Special Agent Cat Zirkawas tasked to investigate one such claim in Chile. The alleged time traveler was a very charismatic Coquimbo Marked Gecko who had been selling what they claimed were artifacts from people's individual pasts. For a large, but reasonable, price, they claimed to have the ability to travel back in time to retrieve a duplicate of any object from someone's personal history. Happy customers they had served showed Agent Zirka lost books, phones, jewelry, and rare band shirts that the time traveler was able to “retrieve” from as far back as four decades. The agent, eager to test the traveler's abilities, requested an action figure from her youth and was asked to describe it in the clearest detail she could. She claims the results were remarkable: the traveler disappeared into a private room and returned with what seemed to be the exact figure from the agent's memory, including certain specific damages done to it in her youth, some that she had not even mentioned to the traveler. The traveler declined requests for further investigation so, in true SIU fashion, she merely broke into the building later that night and discovered a very advanced 3D printer prototype stolen from an Indian manufacturer. Based on the trademark tools and extensive personal journals, Agent Zirka reasons that they are not a time traveler but are, in fact, a psychic who is also incredibly skilled with modern 3D modeling programs, able to read memories and replicate the mental image of the objects via 3D printing. SIU has decided to not publicly unveil the scam, but the psychic will be brought in on criminal charges related to the theft: charges likely to be lessened if they agree to participate in SIU psychic studies.