SMILEs all 'round! Defense Program Update

Good news! If only the Director was here to witness the great leap forward that our defense program, something that I have long championed in the face of some determined conservative resistance, has made.*1 I've sent a telegram to her last known location (Bora-Bora, as it happens), but frankly I have little hope that she will receive it. In the event, the obvious next step was to broadcast a general media release.Please feel free to distribute the information below as widely as possible.

MEDIA RELEASE
Museum of Dust is proud to announce that its SMILE*2 Program has recently showed significant progress.

MoD's crack team of Slimes has cracked the mobility issue and produced a prototype slime-controlled all-terrain vehicle.

Although the six-legged machine (aka 'robot') can, at this stage, only be controlled by team scaredy-mould Physarum polycephalum, the next stage of development will see modifications that will make the machine driveable by any slime.

Image: Klaus-Peter Zauner

The deployment of, ultimately, millions of the vehicles will ensure Museum of Dust's border security for now and the foreseeable future.

As some territorially offensive would-be empires*3 have found to their cost, we have crack troops of some of the fastest moving and most voracious slime moulds know to humankind. This innovation will make them not only faster but also capable of carrying a modern payload.

Of course, WE only ever intend to use them for peaceful purposes, but their sheer technological sophistication and their capability to wreck catastrophic damage should give the most confident invader pause for thought.

For more on our research partners (What, you didn't think the slimes came up with this all by themselves, did you?! Sure, they're smart -- but they have problems with complex tool manipulation.)
Robot moved by a slime mould's fears >

Background to the program: Intelligent Slime

For more background >

*1 Yes Yes YES. So the program WAS initiated by Inky-Blinky. Your point is?
*2 Slime Mould Intelligence Leap Enterprise
*3 Yes, it IS Republic of Tinselman I'm talking about!

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General memo: re; Atlas Obscura

Dear museum staff,
Sure I should have written sooner. Yes, ALRIGHT! It’s been over a year since I have sent word, but that is absolutely no reason to let standards slip so badly.

Nobody’s done a thing around here since I left, perhaps a little precipitously, following a new and urgent clue as to the whereabouts of the Skin Armour. Yes, ALRIGHT, I may not have found it – at least not in the strict sense of the word, but this has not been time wasted. So, you might see me seem to follow a false lead, a fool’s errand, but I could see the feint within feint, the plan within the plan. I may now be no closer to tracking down the Armor, but I’m starting to get a feel for it.

But I must admit, I’m exhausted. I think you will agree, I need to revive my spirits, re-engage with the problems and my longterm plans here in MoD. So I’ll be leaving immediately on an extensive study tour of our sister institutions around the globe.

Imagine, I didn’t even know that some of them existed.

If it hadn’t been for Atlas Obscura, the collaborative guide to the “singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist.”, I would still be ignorant of them. Of course the Atlas includes many that are already enrolled in our Fellowship plan and have become fully signed up subsidiaries to MoD, but there are many that wait to be brought into our protection.

So could someone in admin start booking my steamer tickets soonest? I’ve got bone churches, miniature cities, anatomical Sleeping Beauties, architectural follies as well as numerous collections of the desirably odd kind to visit.

By the way... I’ll need money! Lots and lots and lots of money. I can feel a shopping spree coming on. Just reading the descriptions of some of the things on offer – ranging from philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s stuffed hide to Galileo’s finger bone and teetering pagodas – is inspiring me to start purchasing for several new collections.

Someone pack me a clean change of clothes and the necessities, and leave my trunks, money and tickets at the usual place. I’ll take it from there.

And when I get back, I want to see that there’s been a real change of attitude around here. I want to see the Diatom mural salvaged, the Oubliette thoroughly cleaned, and my new collection of shadows cataloged at the very minimum.

Jump to it.

Atlas Obscura >>

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