the more well-known the agency confronting you is, the less trouble you're usually in. like if it's the cops at your door, it could just be a noise complaint. FBI might just be there for tweets. obviously, still bad, but... here, a comparison. if you have a run in with the CIA you're probably in trouble, but if you have a run in with the Office of Naval Intelligence then you've definitely fucked up. did you know the USPS has its own investigative force? and you might be thinking like, oh, as in some dudes in baby blue button-ups who search for missing mail - but no, these are uniformed, armed federal agents with all the authority that entails. they've got squad cars and such. and, like, these guys are serious. back in the late '80s to the early '90s, when electronic mail sorting first started to be rolled out, there were consistent issues with the machines having trouble scanning letters. it wasn't a super common problem, but it happened a lot, in multiple states. anyway, the USPS eventually realised two things - first, that the problems persisted even after the machines themselves were replaced (at great expense); and second, that they were really limited to michigan and some surrounding states, with only rare occurrences elsewhere which might be unrelated. anyway, that was enough to get the United States Postal Inspection Service to take interest. if somebody was sending dangerous materials though the mail which were messing with the scanning machines, it was probably endangering postal workers too. this was pre-9/11, so the idea it was terrorism wasn't taken too seriously, and the investigation didn't get much support. anyway, it takes months of waiting for machines to break down, cataloguing the mail they'd been handling, cross-referencing it, etc, to narrow down the source of the mail to somewhere south of detroit. kinda goes cold for a while, since the mail's scanned in big batches and finding the common link takes a *lot* of data and work. anyway it's like october '91 now and they think they've finally got it. they've found a specific batch that's tripping the machines up, and they're going over it with a fine-tooth comb when an agent's pager starts freaking out. after experimenting, they realise that whatever's fucked with the scanning machines has also fucked with the pager, and they realise it might be putting out radiation. biiig 'oh shit' moment. they isolate the whole batch and get a big medical checkup, but they're alright. geiger counter picks up nothing. what they *do* find, however, is that there are like 60 letters in there that are each putting out small amounts of non-ionising EM radiation. so, basically safe to handle, but together they're enough to flip some bits in the janky '80s tech they've got and cause occasional scanning errors. and, get this, they're all from the same address. they track this place down, and it's this guy running a sort of bird sanctuary in his backyard. he's australian, and sells like, courses for avoiding getting attacked by birds - and he spends a lot of time hanging around these birds, right? so they take the guy in for questioning, and they literally can't even have recording equipment on the table with him without it glitching, he's almost cooking popcorn here. they question him, and he tells them about his business, how he like, teaches people specific hand gestures to scare away birds and whatever, and they start grilling him on whether he's been exposed to any chemicals or anything, because of the letters. and the guy, when he hears about the letters, suddenly goes like 'ohhh', and explains. cus he gives people grades on their performance and sends them a handmade certificate after they complete the course, right? so they're like 'why the fuck are your letters irradiated' and he just tells them 'Thats My Crow Wave Gradiation'
