conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'Tokyo Cancelled'?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Tokyo Cancelled
  Perhaps it needs to be said again: everything that has happened since makes it difficult almost to believe in the physical reality of the man Fareed, and near to impossible to retrieve the simplest details of those fateful last days of his life.
  We do know this, however: that on the thirteenth day of his singing, he sang a protracted meditation on the life and death of the body. His song described life as being divided into two parts, with death falling in the middle. Death was the midpoint of the body's life: for the amount of time it takes for a body to become fully itself is also the amount of time that it takes to decompose and become nothing again. The body generates a spirit that struggles with gravity as an air balloon tugs at its guys and, just at the moment that it takes off, it is dragged down again, struggling and complaining, by the death of the body; but the spirit has its own decomposition, too, as it continues to give life and memory to the world (rather as a dead man's clothes, given out to the homeless, continue to give warmth to a city). Fareed dwelt on this decomposition of the body and the spirit; and, in a trope that became very popular with his imitators, he turned it around in time and narrated it again: so that life began with the first fusion of two particles of dust that had been sundered, continued as they gathered more dust around them, and so built a skeleton on to which rotting flesh gradually fixed itself and became full and whole, and then – suddenly! – with a leap that was the reverse of its fall, the spirit soared high even as the body was still pale and deathly: it was at the summit of the human and looked down on all the landscape of life. Gradually, spirit descended to join the body that rose with pride to receive it, and there was childhood, and the diminution of both, and, at the very end, two cells that were sundered – and nothing.
  The song exhausted him. By this time Fareed was firmly rooted to the ground and surrounded by thick growth; his chest and back had burst completely open with branches growing through him that were thicker than his upper arm, and he could hardly breathe. He was in great pain. Night came. He said to Bernard:
  New shoots had grown entirely around him in the night, and he could not move. They grew around his neck and legs; they enfolded his upper body, pinning his arms to his sides. By this time there was sprouting from Fareed a mass of creepers and flowers that enchanted people in all the adjacent enclosures with their glorious scent.
  He tried to wake Fareed, but the old man was delirious and could not take any notice. Restricted as his arms were, and even though his hands were lashed tightly against his thighs, Bernard started to break roots with his finger tips; his heart was beating fast and there was a claustrophobic panic in him as he tried to free himself. The roots were thick and wiry and he needed to saw at them with his finger nails; he kicked his legs in ineffectual spasms and shouted for people who could not hear, did not come. Gradually, his hands became more free and he worked more quickly; he freed his arms and pulled the huge fibres from under him: they were longer than he was and lay discarded all about with sickening underground pallor. But still he could not move.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is two more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: And the men would close their eyes as Xiaosong carefully cleaned and rubbed. The sounds of the world fled far away and all they could hear was Xiaosong's intricate manoeuvrings inside their heads.
  Schoolgirls came in groups of three to look at him as he read. His good looks made them shy, and since their mothers cut their hair they did not have a good excuse to approach. But one day a girl plucked up her courage and asked to have her ears cleaned.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The sounds of the world fled far away and all they could hear was Xiaosong's intricate manoeuvrings inside their heads.
  Schoolgirls came in groups of three to look at him as he read. His good looks made them shy, and since their mothers cut their hair they did not have a good excuse to approach. But one day a girl plucked up her courage and asked to have her ears cleaned.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: And with that, he picked up his briefcase, turned his back on them, and went to stand at the back of the queue by Gate '.
  Everyone else was surprised. It was strange of him, after everything they had heard and told. It seemed to put an end to all their conversations – what could you say after that? Somebody started to gather up belongings, there was another call to board their flight, it was probably time to shift anyway, they all stood up together, gathered camera bags and briefcases and rucksacks and went and stood in silent single file behind the suddenly unapproachable Japanese man.
  Passports were checked again and a machine sucked up each boarding pass, flashed a name for an instant, and spat back a diminutive stump. They filed through a tunnel, the sounds of the outside reaching them for the first time. Actually, it was good to fly in the morning, the day felt so full of new things and the air was so fresh. The whole ridiculous fiasco – it really hadn't been so bad. A good story to tell, after all.
  They shuffled forward; the engines were roaring outside and men were loading their bags from a little truck. The Japanese man reached the entrance, flight attendants smiling more broadly than usual as if to compensate everyone for their troubled night. He nodded shyly as one of them greeted him, Good morning.