Special Agent Field Reports: November, 2020

Secret Agent Avia Jiutai was sent to investigate an unregulated demolition derby outside an abandoned factory in northern India. Although the criminality is outside of SIU's purview, rumors of AI drivers appearing in social media clips required SIU attention. Thankfully, Agent Jiutai was (enthusiastically) able to sneak in, disguised as one of the drivers. Most of the drivers were very secretive and reclusive before the illegal event began, so Jiutai's investigation had to take place during the action. Throughout the dangerous street race course, that detoured through factory buildings, damage to other cars revealed that at least two of the drivers were advanced car-driving computers. When Agent Jiutai purposefully damaged the windscreen of another car, revealing the driver-less machinery inside, it caused an uproar through the crowd and the event runners quickly attempted to shut down the event. From a concealed garage, more cars drove out in response to the shut down: apparently all AI-driven. Though their motives were unclear, it is speculated some of the cars may have been trying to flee the scene, or perhaps chase Agent Jiutai off. Unable to contain the situation himself, the agent escaped in his car through an access tunnel and onto a busy highway nearby, before the chaos of the AI drivers caused an explosion that collapsed a nearby brickworks. Only minor injurieswere reported, and a thorough investigation into the source of the AIs is underway.

Senior Special Agent Gedat Rakkin was assigned to attend a scheduled visit from an alienrace. This delicate, translucent, spider-like race appears in Antarctica every 19 years, and is discretely transported to a more hospitable climate for care and exchange of communications. The race communicate entirely in music, using quickly-constructed webs as a sort of plucked instrument that Agent Rakkin was required to spend the past year learning in order to understand their musical language. The interstellar ambassadors this year were described as “more feisty" than past visitors, observers noted that Rakkin's communication with one of the ambassadors resembled a musical duel more than it did refined and respectful communication. This exchange apparently went very well, as the aliens have modified the terms of a trade contract to allow more of their rare galactic goods to be brought to the SIU. Several bootleg recordings of the musical conversation between Rakkin and the ambassador have been found circulating the base.

It cannot be recorded, for certain, what Senior Special Agent Fenix Blackpaw was assigned to do this past month. The agent was sent to a discrete location to retrieve an object. It is known that this object cannot be written about: all attempts at writing its name or description seem to be filtered out by the brain before it can be typed or handwritten. More disconcertingly, if the name or description is brute‑forced or machine‑written, it seems that the eye subconsciously filters out the name regardless of exposure to, or distance from, the object, or any understanding of what the name is supposed to mean. This means, naturally, that even machine‑written reports like this won't be able to communicate its name, despite that the name of the object has been used several times. Agent Blackpaw faced some resistance from someone, in his retrieval of the object, but the SIU now safely holds the object somewhere. Local agents must be either directly shown to wherever the object is or given relative directions, although these end with the agent getting lost at least half the time. Accidentally stumbling on the object seems to be the best way to find the object, which might lead to problems in the future.

Special Agent Neo took an American tailor under SIU custody after it was discovered he was stitching runic patterns into the clothing he sold. The erratic behavior of many locals in the area lead to Neo's discovery of intricate arcane runes stitched between layers of fabric in their clothes, sewn with a fine silver thread. The tailor surrendered without any trouble, and seemed more eager to discuss his craft with a knowledgeable audience than to defend himself against what aren't technically "crimes" in any public court. The runic pattern is highly advanced and complicated, seeming to react to the bodily energy and circulation of the wearer. The expected effects of the runes are yet to be established with the tailor, who admitted that this was his first time trying something like this: presumably "running pantless through the mall" was not his intention, despite that being the observed behavior of his many customers. Study of his work continues, and the tailor will be kept under SIU custody to establish how he learned this new part of his trade.

A sudden spike in ghost sightings sent Special Agent Kouroth to an English cemetery. Several gravestones installed between 2022 and 2026 were discretely modified by a now defunct company offering "Virtual Memories": holographicmemorials of those interred,projected by a code-locked device in the gravestones. As the company has since gone out of business, the virtual tours of the deceased's lives had been largely inaccessible for years, until this week, when it appeared that many of the holographic projectors set into the graves had begun to spontaneously activate, creating flickering, ghostly visions of the dead. Whether this was caused by accidental activation or an act of tech‑minded vandalism remains unknown. Until now, it was assumed that that the holographic devices would have entirely ceased function after the company's servers were taken offline and a final firmware update effectively "bricked" the emitters. There were, however, more troubling implications: Agent Kouroth's focus quickly shifted from this early 2020's gimmick, to investigating why these digital "ghosts" seemed to be interacting with one another. When two nearby figures are activated at the same time, they appear to greet each other and converse: although there is no sound available through the projection hardware, they often seem overjoyed and laugh in clear, free-form conversation. Some of the devices have been moved for study, but many remain activate (if closely monitored by SIU interns) for the sake of their families. Families claim to have never received a reaction like this when previously activating the devices (as expected, they simply played recorded messages and cycled a few pre-recorded scenes). Agent Kouroth is still working to acquire any code or relevant assets from the defunct company to further his investigation.

Special Agent Erik Fischer has been researching supposed proof of reincarnation. A young girl in Spain, whose mother died in childbirth, was caught attempting to board an international plane using her mother's name and passport; though she was assumed to have stolen the information, many of the legal travel papers were filed recently, using secure passwords and information that only her mother would have known. When interviewed by local police, the girl explained that she washer own mother: that she had woken up in the infant body of her own daughter, trapped in an essentially useless body for years with all her memories intact. Agent Fischer determined to travel to Spain and give the young woman a more open‑minded interview and determine the validity of her claimswhich had been largely ignored by local law enforcement. Fischer was able to confirm that the daughter had considerable knowledge and experience that was very unlikely at her age, including a slew of intimate information about her mother that seemed impossible for her to have learned. No journals or notes have been found, online or offline, that may have been the source of the information, which extends beyond passwords to memories that were easily confirmed to be accurate via the mother's friends and family. Further investigation is still pending. The girl's father, who may also be her widower husband, has refused to comment.

Fearing the worst after the Flatwoods Monster murder, Special Agent Chaz Gates rushed to Scotland after reports of an attempt to murder the Loch Ness Monster. Nessie was found injured but stable, though, as feared, she tried to attack Agent Gates on sight, claiming that it was the agent who had attacked her, while wearing a now notorious suit of metal armor. Agent Gates was able to follow a trail of blood from the scene to the home of a local resident, where she found a (literal) copy of herself inside, injured by a cryptid bite and holding the residents hostage. The exact details of the verbal exchange are being kept private by Agent Gates and her superiors.After the exchange Gates, and her copy, released the hostages and stepped outside. Now that close inspection was possible, Agent Gates was able to confirm that the clone was sealed in the set of metal and ivory armor created for Marquee du Pont, a cursed artifact stolen from the SIU some months ago. The clone was seemingly possessed by the armor, and by a sword and crown that the original Agent Gates had recovered from the Japanese Sea. Refusing to be taken in, or be separated from the cursed artifacts, a fight ensued: Gate's armored clone seemed impervious to gun fire and the agent was forced to resort to improvised weaponry to fend off the attack. Gates was seriously injured, and thought she was surely dead, when her clone was taken down in a surprise attack by, of all things, the animal-shaped dog sculpture Gates had been caring for, which had followed her across the ocean without her realizing. Knowing the sculpture only moved when not observed, Gates had no choice but to turn her back and merely listen to the sounds of her clone being, finally, slain by the sculpture. Agent Gates (and the Loch Ness Monster) are expected to make full recoveries; the body of her final rogue clone, and all the attached artifacts, have been stored in the SIU's most secure area for safety.

Special Agent Cat Zirkawas tasked to solve a seemingly impossible robbery. In 2029, the Saṭāra dī Akha, one of the largest and most valuable gems in the world was caught up in the famous nuclear accident in Amritsar, India. Experts agreed that it would take at least 250 years before it was considered safe to handle again, given the level of irradiation it received, and thus it was sealed in thick concrete and metal at a secret location in the Punjab state. With no windows or entrances at all, save for an entry port large enough for a single wire probe (to detect the radioactivity levels of the gem), when radiation readings suddenly dropped to zero, security on the site was alerted. The containment cell showed no signs of forced entry and the SIU was contacted when security footage of the area showed a man, dressed all in black, walk through the walls of the facility, through the wall of the containment cell, and out the other side with the gem in hand. Agent Zirka was able to track the culprit down and gave chase. Though he could pass through walls, he could not run very fast, which created a unique challenge for the agent. When the culprit's ability to pass through solid objects allowed him to pass unharmed through moving traffic, Zirka was stumped; that is until the culprit was suddenly stopped by a brick: which, however unlikely, was flung from an unrelated explosion at a nearby brickworks that collapsed in the midst of an AI revolt. Apparently, while the thief had stopped to gloat, the brick was thrown into traffic, collided with the hood of a passing van, and struck down the jewel thief. The gem has been safely quarantined and placed back into storage, but the wall-phasing culprit has since disappeared (literally disappearing through the ground, Agent Zirka reports).