Chapter 6: Lady Ruth – her north Toronto penthouse – later that same evening
Lady Ruth Clarkson-Smythe had just watched the first reports of her press conference on the Internet. She decided to take a short break after having listened to a sound byte that featured Dr. Ferengson sounding falsely sincere. It had irritated her that this ingenuous comment had by far the most hits. She sat back and sighed.
She knew that while Ferengson surely considered his remark as gold: Ruth knew it was as pyrite. It was fool's gold. Thinking about precious metal, Ruth suddenly spotted the silver coloured bells that adorned her poinsettia, which sat a few inches from her on her desk. She took a moment to appreciate how the festive red plant enhanced the visual profile of her exquisite mahogany wood table – itself positioned perfectly within her spacious, tastefully decorated uptown North York penthouse with such a deft touch that Canadian House and Garden had featured two magazine layouts of it to date.
Her condominium was her tasteful palace of solitude, the Internet her tawdry tower of lunacy. She thought about the way things used to be. In olden days – near the end of the 20th century – Ruth would have read the earliest morning edition of a national newspaper to find out first what happened the day before.
In recent olden days – the end of the 20th century – Ruth caught up with technology by watching tomorrow morning's first edition the night before on television. Ruth recognized that television had defeated print media by getting the last word in first. TV news producers learned they could report tomorrow morning's newspaper reports at 11 o'clock the night before. For years thereafter, television ruled the news, but then the Internet arrived.
Even though Ruth was proud of her successful adaptation from television to Internet, her secret reality was that she immensely preferred newsprint. Ruth agreed with the writer who once said, 'If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter'. She felt that this quote described perfectly print media's strengths.
After having watched televised evening news regularly for several years, Ruth had long since determined that its writers frequently relied on visual images to promote a more sensationalistic or sentimental angle to stories than newspaper's writers did. The crafty creators who assembled televised news material did not worry Ruth, but the impressionable public did. A picture is worth a thousand faulty opinions!
In addition, Ruth had noticed that she slept poorly after watching the 11 o'clock news. She attributed this to the horrific images she viewed just before bedtime. She decided that she preferred hearing about bad news earlier in the day so that she could adjust to it as the day ensued. Chin up! Best foot forward!
This thought reminded her of her family's routines back in Britain. Although they were English, her family did not watch much news on the telly. Instead, they read the morning newspapers while sipping tea and eating biscuits. Although she preferred reading in the morning to watching in the evening, now the Internet allowed her to watch or read at any time. Ruth preferred this compromise: now she could have her tea and biscuits at any time of day.
She glanced down at the remaining chocolate biscuit on the plate beside her digital tablet, and realized that she had eaten two already. As she reached for the third biscuit, she recalled her father's voice telling her, "Gluttony is a sin!" She missed his companionship, his council, and especially his expert handling of the press.
Ruth glanced at the picture of her parents that sat on her desk. In it, her mother appeared beautiful as ever, and Ruth missed her calm and logical demeanour at times like this. A day had not passed she had not thought of them – and thousands had passed.
Snapping out of it, Ruth focused on the issue at hand which concerned the Nazca Lines in Peru. Ruth considered herself fortunate to be able to fund the noble cause of ensuring their preservation. This was her latest philanthropic venture.
Her intention was to alert the entire planet's population to the environmental and archaeological risks of expanding the mining activity in Nazca, Peru. Two miles from where Malevcon was digging were the Nazca Lines. These ancient lines were an important archaeological site that needed protection. They were not a portable piece of history like the kind of artefact Indiana Jones insisted curators display in a museum.
Ruth clicked on her tablet until she was at her favourite Nazca website. She reread that the Nazca Lines occupy almost 200 square miles of ground etchings created by an ancient culture about 1,500 years ago: they are immovable. Ruth was determined to raise international awareness to help the world heritage organization, UNESCO, to protect the Nazca site.
Ruth wanted to raise general awareness beyond the 'creation controversy' that many laypeople and even some scholars believed, which is that an alien culture created the lines. The fact was that recent scientists' carbon dating, and scholars' comprehension of the ancient civilization that lived there, had collectively proved that humans created the etchings.
Ruth did not care who made the lines, she believed people should simply want to preserve them. They are part of our living history even if they are a mostly forgotten thing from our past. The past was important to Ruth because she understood very clearly that so much of history was lost to us now. Whether it was Crusaders sacking the Great Library of Alexandria centuries ago or Taliban dynamiting ancient Buddhist statues recently, Ruth hoped that humanity would evolve from destroyer to protector. She would use her substantial fortune to ensure that humans did.
Specific to this act of preservation, humanity needed to be wary that well-spoken charmers like former-archaeology-PhD student-turned-geologist, Dr. Sven Ferengson, might no longer have interest in the preservation of history, ecology, or the practicing of fair business ethics.
Ruth glanced at her home page and spotted a story about a Greek restaurant newly opened on the Danforth in downtown Toronto. The story did not interest her, but it did recall for Ruth that she equated the Earth with the mythological Greek goddess Gaia. Ruth viewed the Earth as a temple that we should respect and worship.
She was wary that the majority of people did not share her specific view, but they appreciated the protective and conserving aspects of it. She also recognized that they lacked the funds to protect the Earth. Ruth was thankful that she could use her family fortune of $22 billion to assist in her latest planet-saving venture – protecting the Nazca Lines.
She decided it was time to be brave and keep reading the online reports about her press conference. The first one she found accused her of 'stifling progress in an economically-challenged region'. She read a second report stating that she was 'telling unemployed Peruvians that they could not mine for what rich socialites flaunted around their necks'. By the time she finished, Ruth had decided that the dirtiest attack read as 'the self-aggrandizing, filthy rich socialite, Ruth Clarkson-Smythe, with her chronic guilty conscience'.
By defaming her character in print, the last writer exposed himself to a lawsuit. Ruth had encountered libel suits in the past and knew that such cases remained in the public eye for months. Ruth understood how to use this to her advantage: in the future, she would always find a way to mention the Nazca Lines when addressing the media about the libel. Instead of harming her with his remarks, that reporter had helped her Nazca cause.
Feeling confident, Ruth turned on her stereo system and adjusted her Bose surround sound speakers to low, and slipped in a Christmas CD. She was about to turn off her tablet but as she went to do this, she noticed a news headline on the homepage that stated an Asian nation she was unfamiliar with had just indicted one of its prominent government officials on corruption charges.
As the bells in the song chimed, so did the ones in her head, and they alerted her that she recalled a past Peruvian government had experienced similar problems. Ruth realized she should research the current Peruvian government who would be the vendor of the land that Malevcon sought.
She intended that her study would require 10 minutes of research; instead, it took another hour. She discovered that the Peruvian government also
had corruption issues: her Nazca challenges increased!
The most recent, and previous three Peruvian governments, had criminal charges proven against them including graft, corruption, embezzlement, bribery, nepotism, bodily harm, kidnapping and murder. Ruth understood that the Peruvian government was not likely to be an honest, well-intended business partner to anyone.
She read that since 1997, three different governments had sold 12 different mining companies drilling rights. The most recent government announced a few weeks back that 'relations with all companies had been cordial and all stringent environmental issues obeyed' since 1997, and so now it was again accepting financial offers in exchange for drilling rights at different sites closer to the Nazca Lines.
To Ruth, combining the Peruvian government's offer with a company like Malevcon and its dubious record of accomplishment was like providing a recovering arsonist with a pack of matches and an oily rag in a dry forest: it was a recipe for an uncontrollable fire.
The Nazca Lines could eventually experience an environmental disaster of sizable proportions resulting in irreparable damage. She might require more help than the press could provide her.
By the time Ruth finished surfing and jotting down response ideas, the time approached 10 PM. She was tired of dutifully playing 'Ruth, Protector of Gaia, and Mistress of Antiquities' for the evening, although she did wonder for a fleeting moment what colour she would use for her imaginary superhero outfit. I think I should prefer a pastel!
She realized she could not solve any more problems that evening. She boiled water for a half measure of meditative decaf tea and cooled it with milk. She did not mind that no one would pay her a wage for her work because she had plenty of money already. She also did not care that the common folk would not praise her for protecting the Nazca Lines – protecting them would be its own reward. Ruth drank her tea and went to bed.