The Attorney stood in DeMille’s usual place at the apex of the circle- better said, an “oval” around what usually would have been a roaring fire. It was not this morning. It was dark and featureless. The black of the cast iron was amplified by the soot coating the interior of the glass panel on the front of the swinging door. It was nearly 50 degrees outside, and Splash had not bothered to pull the bunkhouse door fully closed when stepping out for a quick smoke before the Thursday production meeting.

The rest of the group was restive. Not squirming in their seats. Just a little movement that suggested unease. Loma was already caffeinated. Rocket’s throttle hand twitched as though he wanted to move something invisible to “forward,” and blow through the fight. Melissa had made an effort to be looking her best this early. Normally, a quick session with stiff bristles would have made her mane of gorgeous blonde-speckled hair lie properly to frame her face, suitably rouged, and let her mane hang gently to the impressive swell of her bosom. Buck was silent and looked grim.

The Attorney looked a little intimidated. She had hit the morning on the run, her chestnut hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, her face unadorned with anything except concern. “The Legal Team has asked me to start the meeting this morning with an important reminder. DeMille has been summoned to the Chairman’s Office for specific guidance, but they have asked me to spell thing out in plain and direct English they think you may understand.” She paused to see if anyone was actually listening. Splash had come back inside during her preparatory remarks holding his tablet. He sat down, holding it up so the screen could be seen in a small and indistinct glow. He carefully swept it around the circle to ensure we all could see something was glowing and festooned with with figures that could have been words.

When he was confident everyone had seen something they couldn’t read, he lowered it to his lap. “OK, the word this morning is that the war might have started.”

Loma was clearly cranky and unwilling to play. “Which war? The one we predicted last week or the other war that hasn’t started yet? Or at least we haven’t predicted the start of it. People are going to start wondering pretty soon about whether they ought to waste time reading this crap.”

Buck raised both hands. “I am the only one here who cannot be accused of violating Article 88 rules since I am not subject to the UCMJ. I will try to follow our Attorney’s careful guidance in a manner you can follow. The War started yesterday. It was just not the way you old timers think of it. There were massive DDOS attacks against Ukrainian cyber services.”

Rocket was suspicious. “What the hell is a dee-dee-oh-ess?”

Buck assumed a more professorial posture as he rose from his chair. “A Distributed Denial of Service attack is conducted by coordinated network of computers all attempting to access the target computer network and make it fail. If you recall the Dominion Pipeline attack last year that made it impossible to fill up the tank on the F-150 truck we use to go to the post office and the distillery, that is a technique to make life hard for people you do not like. Access to banks across Ukraine was denied for several hours. That is critical infrastructure taken out without bombs or kinetic destruction.”

“So it wasn’t a big deal?”

“Well, it was a very big deal if you needed cash or the ability to trade securities. But there were no broken bricks or shrapnel holes in anything.” That was from the Attorney, trying to impose some sort of patina of credibility to her place at the top of the oval.

Buck remained standing and waited for her words to die out. “I have observed the impact of these sorts of things and have discussed it with one of the featured reporters at our local newspaper. On the phone, not digital. The issue on which I sought guidance was the change in content in our local source of information. The reporter summed it up neatly, and provided the keys to deconstructing the news coverage. You have seen our local “paper” attempting to “go digital” in delivery. Usually, the feature story we click on doesn’t load on screen for a while, or redirects me to a story about local agricultural issues.”

“We care about that. How else would we keep track of what is happening?”

“Exactly. But to understand the war that is already in progress you have to know how the coordinated cyber attacks are related to the actions of the Russian State Duma- their version of a legislature. And how a local paper already stressed with preparations for Spring activity in the farms and fields reports it.”

“I let my attention drop on that. What on earth is reading a Russian version of The Hill or Politico going to tell us about that?”

“That was the introduction to Putin’s ‘Plan B,’ the interesting part. The Duma said two areas in East Ukraine are filled with Russians who need to be protected from their own Government. Presumably with Russian tanks and rockets. The reporter told me the story was not based on local need, but rather the need of the conglomerate that bought our paper. They are attempting to manage a dozen regional papers in a profitable manner. They are also confronted with a changing business model, which is to focus local reporting resources on local items. The national reporting? No one is left to translate for the locals. Instead, they have just decided to print the AP stories and leave it at that.”

“Well, the AP is a good unbiased source, right?”

Buck paused and looked at each member slowly. “The Associated Press just announced they had accepted $8 million dollars from philanthropists to accurately convey stories about the changing climate.”

“Which is a way to say that anything about the weather in the paper is going to have a touch of the philanthropist’s angle. Which means the news is from the groups who are making a ton of money on converting thousands of acres of farmland into solar arrays and gigantic non-recyclable windmills that collapse in a brisk breeze and chop up birds while they are still upright?”

The Attorney looked alarmed and waved frantically to get the group under control. “We cannot get into that. There is a positive role for renewable power, and just because there is no current way to store power collected when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing there is no reason to oppose turning our farmland into light industrial zoning.”

“Are we supposed to expect that the new model of journalism is to include the views of whoever sponsors them? That seems sort of…well, you know.”

“Precisely. Now, let’s get back to business. We have a journalistic enterprise to run here.”

“Why don’t we just find someone to donate stuff to print and we could do this from lunch at Belmont Farms.”

“We may already be there. Which suggests, for purposes of consistency, we just go to lunch now.”

The group was unable to produce an acceptable alternative. Except Splash, but the Attorney ruled him out of order. Buck concluded the meeting. “The reporter I talked to just said in a phone-shrug, “the business is changing and we don’t have the resources to do anything about it. And there we have the new journalism, Brothers and Sisters.”

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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