conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a plot for a book about Fisher, Malcolm, Wotan entitled Expecting Someone Taller?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Expecting Someone Taller: The story involves Malcolm Fisher, a hapless auction clerk in modern-day England, who runs over a badger one night.\nThe badger turns out to be the giant Ingolf, brother of Fafnir, and Fisher becomes the new owner of the Ring of the Nibelung and the Tarnhelm, and, thereby, ruler of the world.\nHe also drinks some of the Ingolf's blood, which gives him the ability to understand the language of the birds.\nHe finds that if he allows himself any negative emotions such as anger or frustration, he will cause various catastrophes worldwide.\nThus Malcolm tries to be as positive as possible in his day-to-day life.\nHe uses the ring to gain enough gold to buy a mansion and tries to live a quiet life.\nHowever, Wotan, king of the gods, still wants the ring, as do others, and Fisher finds himself pursued by numerous characters from Wagner's opera: Wotan and Loge (also known as Odin and Loki in Norse mythology), the Rhinemaidens (who want their gold back), and Alberich (who stole the gold, made the ring and still wants it).\nHe also becomes romantically entangled, first with the Rhinemaiden Flosshilde, and later with one of the Valkyries, Ortlinde.\nMalcolm is unaware of the Valkyrie's true identity and does intend to give the ring to her, but a bird reveals to him who she truly is.\nIt is then revealed that his housekeeper is actually Erde (Mother Earth), mother of the Valkyries.\nDespite this, he continues to believe himself in love with Ortlinde.\nMalcolm still intends to give her the ring, but she leaves.\nWotan then resorts to sending an army.\nMalcolm faces the army and destroys it as well as all the high gods, by force of will and the power of The Ring.\nMalcolm fears that he has also destroyed Flosshilde whom he now knows he loves, but it turns out she was just visiting her cousins.\nWhen she returns he gives her the ring, believing she will do a better job—and because he thinks that the ring is now merely a token of his love and not the all important Ruling Ring.\nHe keeps the tarnhelm which gives him immortality.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Expecting Someone Taller
  Loge had been nodding his head and making sympathetic noises until he felt quite dizzy. He didn't want to hear any of this, but Wotan seemed determined to tell him. A combination of schnapps and relief was making him unwind, although whether he would be any safer to be employed by unwound than tensed up remained to be seen. Rattlesnakes, Loge remembered, usually unwind just before they bite.
  Loge wiped his forehead with his hand, and wished that he could go away and do something less stressful for a change, such as drive the chariot of the Sun or make the crops grow. But that was out of the question.
  The rain had stopped, and Loge deduced that Wotan was in a good mood for once. That removed the immediate threat of transformation, but he still felt uneasy. Over the last few thousand years, Loge had found that Wotan's good moods always tended to come before periods of universal misery.
  Love, the songwriter says, is the sweetest thing, and too many sweet things can make you feel slightly sick. But Malcolm had got through the endearments and sweet nothings stage quite safely, and had finally got the girl to tell him all about herself. She had not wanted to, and as he listened to the story that eventually came pouring out, he could quite understand why. Not that he was bored; but an overdose of tragedy can cause roughly the same symptoms as boredom, such as a strong desire to change the subject. That, however, would not be tactful. He only hoped that he would not be called upon to give an equally full account of himself, which might call for more inventiveness than he felt himself capable of.
  The girl looked startled, as if she had made a mistake. 'Well, sort of,' she said. 'But it's not a proper one.'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: With magical speed he crossed the continents, and the further he went the more profoundly depressed he became. Admittedly, the concept of love took on some strange forms (especially in California), but by and large the human race was horribly consistent in its belief in its value.
  No matter how confused, oppressed, famished or embattled they were, the inhabitants of the planet tended to regard it as being the most important thing they could think of, and even the most cynical of mortals preferred it to a visit to the dentist. Not that they were all equally prepared to admit it; but Malcolm was able to read thoughts, and could see what was often hidden from the bearers of those thoughts themselves. Furthermore, with very few exceptions, the human race seemed to find its favourite obsession infuriatingly and inexplicably difficult, and considered it to be the greatest single source of misery in existence.
  Not that that was an unreasonable view these days. Human beings, as is well known, cannot be really happy unless they are thoroughly miserable, and as a result of Malcolm's work as Ring-Bearer, there was little else for them to be miserable about. Wherever he went, Malcolm saw ordered prosperity, fertility and abundance. Just the right amount of rain was falling at just the right time in exactly the right places, and at precisely the best moment armies of combine harvesters, supplied free to the less developed nations by their guiltily prosperous industrial brothers, rolled through wheat-fields and paddy-fields to scoop up the bounty of the black earth. Even the major armament manufacturers had given up their lawsuits against the United Nations (they had been suing that worthy institution in the American courts for restraint of trade, arguing that World Peace was a conspiracy to send them all out of business) and turned over their entire capacity to the production of agricultural machinery. The whole planet was happily, stupidly content and, in order to rectify this situation, mankind had fallen back on the one source of unhappiness that even the Ring could do very little about.
  Actually seeing the results of his work made Malcolm feel unsteady, and at first he did not know what to make of it all. The world was happy, safe and in love, all except a certain M. Fisher who controlled the whole thing, and a small number of supernatural entities, who were out to stop him. There seemed to be an indefinable connection between everyone else's happiness and his own misery, and he began to feel distinctly resentful. This resentment was foolish and wrong, but he could not help it. He had never wanted to take away the sins of the world. Once again, the old pattern was being fulfilled. Everyone else but him was having a thoroughly good time, and he wasn't allowed to join in. His subjects didn't deserve to be happy; what had they done, compared to him, to earn this golden age? Before he realised it, he was muttering something to himself about wiping the silly grins off their faces, and the clouds around the globe began to gather.
  The first drop of rain hit the back of his hand as he sat in Central Park, watching the ludicrously happy New Yorkers gambolling by moonlight in what had recently been declared the Safest Place in the USA. A group of street musicians, dressed in frock-coats with their faces painted in black and white squares, were playing the Brandenburg concertos to an appreciative audience of young couples and unarmed policemen, and Malcolm began to feel that enough was enough. He wanted to see these idiots getting rained on, and his wish was granted. As the musicians dived for cover among the trees and rocky outcrops, a tiny Japanese gentleman saw that Malcolm was getting wet and ran across to him with an umbrella. Smiling, he pressed it into Malcolm's hand, said 'Present', and hurried away. Malcolm threw the umbrella from him in disgust.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They walked into the house, and the two ravens who had been eavesdropping from the branches of the oak tree looked at each other.
  They glided down and started to peck. It was a good, meaty rabbit, and they were both hungry. When he had finished, Memory wiped his beak neatly on his leg and stood thoughtfully for a while.
  Thought shook his head. 'Don't like happy endings,' he said. 'They're a cop-out. Life's not like that.'
  They sailed up into the sky, and began their day's patrol. Wherever life was stirring and brains were working they flew, their bright round eyes missing nothing, their ears constantly alert. But today was going to be another quiet day in the best of all possible worlds. After a while they grew bored, and turned back. As they flew over the little village of Ralegh's Cross, they saw three workmen with pickaxes trying to break up a strange outcrop of rock which had appeared in the middle of the road some months earlier. But their tools would not bite on the hard stone, and they had given it up for a while.
  Memory dived down and perched on the rock which had once been the Giant Ingolf. 'It's a long story,' he said.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They glided down and started to peck. It was a good, meaty rabbit, and they were both hungry. When he had finished, Memory wiped his beak neatly on his leg and stood thoughtfully for a while.
  Thought shook his head. 'Don't like happy endings,' he said. 'They're a cop-out. Life's not like that.'
  They sailed up into the sky, and began their day's patrol. Wherever life was stirring and brains were working they flew, their bright round eyes missing nothing, their ears constantly alert. But today was going to be another quiet day in the best of all possible worlds. After a while they grew bored, and turned back. As they flew over the little village of Ralegh's Cross, they saw three workmen with pickaxes trying to break up a strange outcrop of rock which had appeared in the middle of the road some months earlier. But their tools would not bite on the hard stone, and they had given it up for a while.
  Memory dived down and perched on the rock which had once been the Giant Ingolf. 'It's a long story,' he said.