CAEN, FRANCE. Finding one: an unidentified member of the dominant local primate composed electronic letters asserting the presence of explosive devices aboard several commercial flights. Within hours, the French and Italian air forces had launched fighter aircraft, and a Dublin-Rome service executed an emergency landing in Normandy, a region previously noted for cheese, not aviation incidents. The aircraft contained no device. The inbox contained the entire incident.
The mechanism rewards inspection, though not for long. A threat letter costs nothing to compose, travels instantly, requires no authentication, and obliges the recipient to commit trained pilots, interceptor aircraft, closed airspace and several tonnes of jet fuel to verify a paragraph. The species has built a system in which the marginal cost of causing a continental security response equals the marginal cost of typing one, and has priced the second option at zero without noticing it did so.
"We treat every communication as credible until proven otherwise," a Deputy Directorate spokesman for Civil Aviation told this desk, with the serenity of a man describing weather. "Each alert triggers the full interception sequence. It has to. Anyone can send one." He paused briefly. "That is rather the point of email."
The steelman is recorded here because it is genuine: the protocol exists precisely so the one alert among many that proves real is met with force, and a diverted aircraft with intact passengers is the system functioning, not failing. The Caen landing proceeded textbook-clean, the Airbus crew reported no panic among the 200-odd occupants, and all disembarked into rural Normandy onto what the locals call a waiting list: the queue assigned to those already queued, in this case for coaches, hotels and eventual compensation. No one on board described the experience as frightening. Several described it as the most interesting thing to happen to them since the cheese.
Finding two: recurrence risk is rated total, since the deterrent consists of replying promptly to messages that arrive free of charge, a loop the species shows no intention of closing. Remediation plan: none filed; both air forces declared the operation a success and requested further funding for aircraft whose primary peacetime mission is now correspondence handling. The desk grades the response exemplary and the loop permanent. The species has answered its mail with fighter jets, and calls the mail the problem.
