Thursday Jun 6

She slept fitfully and in the early morning, was having a dream that Alex was home and he’d just been on a long business trip… When she awoke suddenly to banging on her door. She was sleeping in her clothes from last night so she wiped her eyes and ran to the kitchen. It was an angry man she could only assume was Mr. Peabody.

He pushed his way in, ranting about his stupid geologist and the bloody Chinese and he was taking back his truck and his mountain and he was not going down without a fight. He turned and left. Bobbie peaked out of the window and saw his companion take the truck that Rick left.

She turned and saw Trixie leaving the guest room, slowly, staring down at her phone.

“Did you hear him? Ranting about Rick and the mine and the Chinese and…I think he’s unhinged.”

“The Chinese… Look, it’s all over social media that the Chinese have bought the rights to strip mine Rook Mountain and want to build an International seaport at the mouth of the Rocky River.”

“W What?” Stammered Bobbie. “A seaport?”

Then it dawned on Trixie that the Diplomat that Greg saw being interviewed the night before was Korean and Peabody must have heard the voice over the cheap phone. He thought a Chinese person was the foreign owner that claimed the mine.

Bobbie heard some faint pinging and walked towards the living room where her phone was blowing up. She had messages from her sons and her friends. Mary, the new director for Department of Mines sent a message and someone from the Harbour Authority had messaged her to call them.

“How did they get this number?”

Then the landline was ringing and Bobbie answered without thinking. It was a local news outlet and they wanted to talk to her about the Chinese takeover of her motel. Bobbie hung up the phone without replying.

“Jesus, they think I’ve sold the hotel to Chinese investors. This is crazy, who’s saying all this?”

“Who knows Bobbie, we can’t fight this we just have to carry on and get our stories straight and I don’t think we can talk to reporters.”

Johnny knocked at the door and came in. Mink and Chase were behind him. “What did you girls do?”

“A mining company is mad they can’t mine Rook Mountain and they are out for blood.”

Mink whistled. “Water Wheel Motel is trending, my followers are suggesting that I am funded by Chinese money.”

Trixie paled. “Mink, please don’t reply to those posts I’d like you to just delete them.”

“Oh yes Trixie, they are already quietly deleted and blocked. Mink knows how to deal with haters.”

“Thank you and of course you are the expert. I have a plan but if you have suggestions please tell me.”

“I don’t even think a spreadsheet is going to help me organize this mess.” Said Bobbie.

Trixie made coffee and they all agreed that they needed a nice shot of Baileys in it after all that was going on.

Trixie explained that the story had taken a life of it’s own and the best way to stop it was to ignore it. “Bobbie you can’t do any news interviews to give your side of the story. You can’t comment on social media about what is and isn’t true because the truth is meaningless right now. You’ll have to convince everyone to stay off social media. The more you try to set the record straight; the more legs this will have and the worse it will be.”

“Even the best websites have to get their clicks and right now these lies are getting shared and are getting clicks. If we deny this or share other information that relate to this story; it will only add fuel to the fire. Remember it is just not true and there’s nothing to get upset about. Them repeating it over and over won’t ever make it true.”

She continued. “You need to call the rest of your staff and family up here and let them know what’s what and to stay off all social media with what they know. This story must go away and Peabody doesn’t know it was us but he will implicate the motel anyway and we will suffer dearly if this story doesn’t die.

“Well the show must go on. Chase and I will go to work in the dining room and will talk to Mark and Rose and the rest of the kitchen and wait staff about keeping their cool. We still need to serve breakfast”

Johnny said. “I’ll track down Effie and Drey then we can explain it to Roger. I don’t want him to be confused. He won’t likely talk to any reporters after last month when that reporter tricked him.”

Well I’m going over to the office and I’ll call Greg and Joe and Quinn and Lacey. Oh and I’ll let Derek, the lawyer, know what’s going on. I’ll come back after I’ve talked to everyone. We have to decide what we’re going to say when people ask questions.”

Bobbie did make a spreadsheet. She made a list of people who contacted her and their info and their connection to what news outlets and how social media shared the story. After about an hour she decided she really should stop obsessing but she came out of her office with interesting news. Trixie was back on the couch and sipping coffee. “I think the story about the Chinese investors started with a press release by a local MP.”

Trixie sat up. “Oh, that makes sense Peabody has a lot of influence in that office, and that’s how he got the head of Natural Resources and Mining fired, and probably how he controlled him in the first place.”

“Does that make a difference to how we handle it?”

“Not really Bobbie, The corrupt politician may have started it but it’s full on conspiracy now.”

“I almost believe there is a plot to build an international container port at the mouth of the Rocky River.”

“Conspiracy theories are dangerous because they prey on fears and contain a fragment of truth. 3 attempts to get a port in that location failed because it was just too expensive, due to the rocky riverbed. Now, foreign ownership, a worst case scenario is the fear and the grain of truth is that someone tried to build it before. All the sharing to social media and the pushing to all kinds of websites is a form of social media fracking. They see the original story and then try to mine more outrage with continuous repetition, for more clicks. They will have web crawlers hunting for places that get comments about this story. It will help anyone who wants clicks, spread more lies.”

“What if we contact that politician’s office and try to get them to set the record straight. Or we contact Navigable Waters and Harbours and have them explain again that a port can’t be built at the mouth of the river?” Asked Bobbie.

“The danger there, is it will become even more political and people are so partisan these days it will mean more arguments not less.”

“Maybe I’ll get some lunch traffic to SPOKES with all the environmental protesters that will be camped by the river. Oh, I should get porta pottys down there.” Joked Bobbie glumly. “It sucks that we can’t fix this.”

“If nobody comments, it will die eventually. People will lose interest.” assure Trixie.

Bobbie called Mary and they agreed to tell no one, about who actually has the Rook Mountain mining rights. They knew Peabody would go ballistic. Mary could lose her new job and Bobbie and didn’t want to be in Peabody’s bad books either. Right now he thought they were just an insignificant little motel.

Bobbie called her mom. “I need to talk to you all. There is some fake news going around. Is it OK that I asked Eddy and Charlie and their families along to meet there after work. I can bring a big batch of Chinese food? I’ll call Jamie too.”

Florence replied. “That would be lovely, I haven’t see you all in a couple of weeks, be sure to bring enough for my roommates and get lots of those fried wanton thingies, Lorne really likes them. A big order of Chinese food would support our favourite restaurant too.”

Bobbie hoped nobody was getting bullied because of her fake news.

She went into her den and logged on to her laptop. She did in fact have a spreadsheet for ordering Chinese food. She had everyone’s name, their favourite food, their least favourite. She had a the formula that would calculate how much to order and the price. She placed their order and updated her spreadsheet and went to freshen up thinking she’d pushed her sleeplessness and slight hangover headache totally to the side with adrenaline and was hoping she wouldn’t crash.

She met Lorne and they picked up the food and drove to her Mom’s.

“That story story about the motel is crazy Bobbie. Who would start a rumor like that?”

“Well talk about more when we get to Mom’s”

She explained things to her mom and Lorne before anyone else got there and then she repeated the story several more times as her family arrived. She zoned in on her twin grandsons. “Boys all you need to know is that the story is not true no matter what anyone says. You can’t make any comment about it or talk about it to anyone, under any circumstance.” Honestly, she may have scared them a little.

Bobbie had to hand it to Trixie and Mink, after about a week, the story about the motel, almost died. There were still a couple comments on the Motel website but they were moderated and simply deleted.