conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled The Omega Point about Acton, Ford, Denman with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The solar system's entry in 2020 into a supernova's atmosphere threatens the future of life on Earth in the author's over-the-top sequel to <I>2012: The War for Souls</I>. On arrival at West Virginia's Acton Clinic, Dr. David Ford, the clinic's new chief psychiatrist, learns from the woman who hired him, Aubrey Denman, that the job involves more than being a medical administrator. He must also protect the clinic's secret mission from its enemies, who include the members of the Seven Families who control the wealth of this planet. When Denman dies shortly thereafter in a car bomb explosion, Ford has to fend for himself. Ford's later researches in the Acton library lead him to conclude that Osiris, Moses, and Jesus, among others, were time travelers from a lost civilization. Ponderous prose (No doubt Goliath is many things, but one of them must be that violet light&mdash;the highest color of alchemical growth and also the color of ultimate death) does little to help the nonsensical plot. <I>(June)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Omega Point
  But what had happened? Well, truthfully, I'm not at all sure. It was as if I read a listing from August in June. Since then, this has happened to me three or four times.
  It is far from the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened to me involving time. The most amazing of these events took place in March of 1983, when we lived on LaGuardia Place in Manhattan. One rainy Saturday morning, I was crossing Houston Street on the way to the bank when I suddenly heard a terrific creaking and sloshing and clip-clopping in front of me. This symphony passed me and turned the corner, and I turned with it, to see an immense wagon come into view as if out of nowhere. It was stacked with barrels and there was a strong smell of pickles. High atop it sat a man wrapped in a black leather apron. It was being drawn by a huge horse, I assume a dray horse.
  Of course, I thought that it was one of the Budweiser Clydesdales, but it was worn and dirty, and the smell was very clearly not beer.
  As it passed up the street, I found that LaGuardia Place had changed entirely. Gone was the street I knew, with modern co-op towers on the northeast side of LaGuardia and Houston. Instead, a man in a derby stood across the street, much closer and in front of a row of smaller buildings. He shouted something, and at the same moment, there was movement to my right, and I turned to see a small woman dressed entirely in black go skittering away from me. Then I saw, coming up what in 1983 was West Broadway, a group of five or six riders on gorgeous horses, looking like some sort of equestrian team.
  I became aware of the fact that this was no longer the New York of 1983, but that, somehow, I was seeing the same street corner in the past. I noticed an odd, curved curb at my feet, then a bit of paper in it. I thought, if I get that paper, that'll prove what's happening. But as I bent down, something that felt like ice-cold water seemed to pour right through my body, and with it came a loneliness so intense that, had it persisted for more than a few moments, it might have driven me mad.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Of course, I thought that it was one of the Budweiser Clydesdales, but it was worn and dirty, and the smell was very clearly not beer.
  As it passed up the street, I found that LaGuardia Place had changed entirely. Gone was the street I knew, with modern co-op towers on the northeast side of LaGuardia and Houston. Instead, a man in a derby stood across the street, much closer and in front of a row of smaller buildings. He shouted something, and at the same moment, there was movement to my right, and I turned to see a small woman dressed entirely in black go skittering away from me. Then I saw, coming up what in 1983 was West Broadway, a group of five or six riders on gorgeous horses, looking like some sort of equestrian team.
  I became aware of the fact that this was no longer the New York of 1983, but that, somehow, I was seeing the same street corner in the past. I noticed an odd, curved curb at my feet, then a bit of paper in it. I thought, if I get that paper, that'll prove what's happening. But as I bent down, something that felt like ice-cold water seemed to pour right through my body, and with it came a loneliness so intense that, had it persisted for more than a few moments, it might have driven me mad.
  The thought came that, if I touched that paper, I would remain here forever, and I froze. Slowly, the sharp smell of coal and the denser stench of manure dissipated. Then the sound of cars returned. When I looked up, everything seemed normal.
  Forgetting about the bank, I rushed home, frightened that something was terribly wrong and I might never see my family again. This was before my 1985 close encounter, so I was totally unprepared for anything in the least unusual.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: This is because it is constructed using not the arid principles of modern science, but those of the lost science of the soul, which combines, in my novel and perhaps in reality, a rigorous physical technology with a carefully controlled and immeasurably potent emotional state, the love that Caroline Light needs so badly to succeed, and gets, after a struggle, when her beloved David finally remembers what they shared as children.
  I am not a conventional Christian, but I am certainly a believer in the intelligence and compassionate insights of Jesus, and the meaning of his resurrection. I reject the idea that it was done to free us from some sort of sin. It was an example of what happens when a person lives an ethical life that feeds the soul, and dies without attachment to life's hungers.
  To me, this is promise of some surcease from the ages-long torment that the ordinary human being has experienced at the hands of the more aggressive and powerful. In my story, the great of the world are left hiding in their holes to die, I suppose, a lingering death. The innocent majority ascend, as well as those chosen for the special work of constructing a new home for mankind to move forward in time and continue our ages-long journey toward ecstasy, but this time without the cruel, the avaricious, and the arrogant, only with those who are fully human.
  When I was a young man, I had the extraordinary privilege of being an occasional student of P. L. Travers, who was deeply involved in esoteric work. She taught a powerful ethics of the meek, whom she used to call "the little cottagers," and this ethic was present not only in her talks but also in the letters I received from her. It affected me profoundly, and I have never forgotten that it is, in the end, the humble man at the bottom of the world, the one who is entirely overlooked by the grand and the powerful, who is forced into war, starved, left to die, ignored, and broken on the wheel of the avarice of the great, who emerges into immortality while, as Jesus put it so succinctly, those who display their excellence receive their reward in life.
  Is there really a plan for us, one that brings justice to this unjust world? When one thinks of all the ages of oppression and injustice that define our history, one can only hope that, somewhere in time, the promise of the Sermon on the Mount will indeed be fulfilled. If so, then the earth will wind up in the hands of those who will cherish her, riding her in joy and respect, into the reaches of time.