( Our Expert Guide at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, 12 May 1998).

Many of us Old Salts have heard of what is becoming known as “Mal-Mis-Dis Information.” Our Government has declared what goes on as a sort of domestic unpleasantness verging on something bigger. That is sort of an unusual place to find ourselves at this late date. DeMille tried to call us to order this morning on what promises to be a sort of acceptable day in Virginia’s placid Piedmont. He waved his tablet in the air that featured an image of what we used to know as a “newspaper.”

It was the local rag, a nice source of information for obituaries and road construction, augmented by some local experts on all sorts of old local things. We are sort of unique here at the farm, since an older generation dragged cannons around and fired them at other Americans right here. One of the local experts is a guy named Clarke Hall, who presented an account of a minor Civil War battle this morning- skirmish might be a better word- in which several dozen almost adult men were slaughtered down at the shores of the Rapidan River within walking distance of The Farm.

It is something we agreed would be worth following up without risk of misinformation if it ever gets warm again. We also know we are safe from interference by the Legal folks, who are anxious to protect the Chairman’s company from potential categorization by the Federal Government we all used to work for.

Strange times, these are, in which even talking about real insurrectionists in the past wrapped up in a state of constant change.

Still, it seems safer to talk about older things for the moment and stay away from the astonishing impact of the things going on. We will not comment on what appears to be an actual invasion of what we used to consider a fairly secure border of what was a fairly orderly nation. Now it appears to be something else. Reports this morning are that an overwhelmed Border Patrol is coordinating some of the invasion with the people doing the invasion. DeMille cut that short. “Why don’t we find one of the alphabet cities and do a story on that. Not involving anything in current affairs.”

“We wrote that book on the Seventy Days last year because it was so weird. We can’t comment on the changes still going on?”

“Nope. But we could be cute and talk about the last time we were in Moscow. That is one of the cities we need to include in the new travelogue book.”

“That would be the one from our year at college, at government expense. That was a riot!” Loma was clearly energized. “It was at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1998. That was a great year. The USSR had fallen, America was standing tall, and life was good.”

“Now we have a sprawling open border with- get this- millions of people flowing across it. And we are supposed to worry about the borders of a fairly nice country across an ocean.”

“Knock it off. No Mis-Mal-Dis stuff this morning.” Demille flicked a finger across the screen of his tablet. “I found this deep in the back-up external hard drive from the Chairman’s series of laptops over the years. It is something written with great sincerity almost a quarter century ago. It is about travel and has some of the strangest stuff his group saw over there.”

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“Space is back in the news, and it isn’t political as much as it is strange. The Chairman was in a Space Industry study back then, and they were interested in some of the things private industry was doing in space. Today, on this day, there is so much stuff flying around in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) that China just launched a clean-up satellite that can change orbits and knock old satellites into safe re-entry and clear some space.”

“Weren’t they saying that Elon Musk was going to get us broadband coverage out here in the country with a fleet of hundreds of small satellites?”

“That was to pass a larger bill with skads of dollars for other stuff they aren’t talking about,” said Splash. Buck nodded and seemed about to launch into a sensible discussion of the cost-benefit aspects of the commercial exploitation of international orbital space. Thankfully he was stopped as Splash passed around a Powerpoint presentation featuring a distinguished former Soviet Scientist in a cute low-cut top and short leather skirt, dressed in her scientific best.

Melissa snorted when she saw it. “You guys are chumps. I mean, really. That lady was involved in developing ballistic missiles to carry nuclear bombs to destroy all the alphabet cities in the book. She had her outfit selected by a panel of other experts who think visiting groups of mostly male Experts would be influenced by her figure.”

“Aren’t we also supposed to avoid gender-based old think?”

“That would hamper the effective sharing of Mal-Mis-Dis, and could complicate the compilation of lists of domestic enemies by the government we all support.”

“Wait, what country were we visiting? And didn’t the Chairman have some misgivings about what could happen to the USA Patriot Act when they passed it back then?”

“Be quiet. Just show pictures of former Soviet experts. That should get things sorted into a normal file with all the CNN stuff.”

DeMille smiled. “That is the sort of Mal-Mis-Dis we can all get behind.”

“We have to do our part.” There were an assortment of nods around the glowing iron stove. “In fact, we need to express our support to crushing Malmisdis. We could pretend it was a common word in the French language.”

“And that would get us into an entirely new list with different threat criteria. So this is quite a morning, n’est pas?”

Laughter followed, but then there was a short and earnest discussion of the nature of lunch.
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