conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a story about Schaffner, Scarff, Mexico entitled Across the Bridge.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Across the Bridge (film): Carl Schaffner (Steiger) is a crooked English (previously German) businessman who flees to Mexico after stealing company funds.\nWhile travelling by train, Schaffner decides to evade authorities.\nHe drugs and switches identities with fellow train passenger Paul Scarff, who looks like him and has a Mexican passport.\nHe throws Paul Scarff off the train, injuring Scarff.\nCarl later discovers that Scarff is wanted in Mexico as a political assassin.\nCarl then tracks down Scarff, who is resting from his injuries, to get back his original passport.\nCarl arrives in Mexico and is captured by the local police, who mistake him for Scarff.\nCarl then fights to show his true identity to the local police.\nThe plan seems foolproof until he is forced to care for the dog of Scarff.\nThe local police chief and Scotland Yard inspector Hadden conspire to keep him trapped in the Mexican border town of Katrina in an effort to get him to cross the bridge back into theS.\nand face justice.\nThe misanthropic Schaffner has grown attached to Scarff's pet spaniel and is tricked into going across the dividing line of the bridge to get the dog.\nHe is accidentally killed trying to escape the authorities.\nThe final irony is that the discovery of his own humanity has cost the cynical, friendless Schaffner his life.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a story about Calloway, Mexican, Calloway\'s entitled Across the Bridge.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Across the Bridge (short story): The story is told first-person by an unnamed narrator who reveals little about himself, other than that he is a wandering stranger stranded in a small Mexican border village.\nThe narrator is fascinated by Joseph Calloway, a famous con-man believed to be extremely wealthy, who is in the Mexican village on the run from the law.\nThe narrator claims to feel sympathy not for Calloway but for Calloway\'s dog, an ugly creature that he repeatedly kicks.\nTwo detectives enter the village looking for Calloway, but though they have several conversations with the con-man, they never realize he is their quarry.\nMeanwhile, Calloway, overcome by homesickness for America, manages to get himself secreted across the border.\nIn the end, Calloway is killed by the detectives\' car, apparently while trying to save the dog\'s life.\nThe narrator claims to find something comic in the end of Calloway\'s life.\nHe writes "Death doesn\'t change comedy to tragedy".\nThe reader is left to evaluate the meaning of this statement and to weigh both the tragic and the comic elements of the story.\nThe story builds its tension on dramatic irony, with the narrator knowing more about the story than both Calloway and the detectives, and the Mexican natives knowing more than the narrator, who says, "Any man doing dusty business in any of the wooden booths in the town is better fitted by long observation to tell Mr Calloway\'s tale than I am".
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Across the Bridge
  Extracts from: Lost From View: A Study of Missing Persons in the UK by Nina Biehal, Fiona Mitchell and Jim Wade (Bristol: Policy Press, 2003), research undertaken by the University of York in partnership with the National Missing Persons Helpline
  When Ron was first released he discovered that prison had made him observant, as if he'd been reminded there, by its sudden absence, of the world's surfeit of objects, its over-abundance of things to look at. Not beautiful things. It wasn't a case of seeing the world's wonders anew or anything like that; rather, it was the opposite. Observation didn't sharpen his faculties, it stupefied them. He was dazed by the quantity and variety, the massive, compacted volume of it all; he noticed everything but had no idea what was worth his notice. People's faces and brick walls, town gutters and ploughed fields, church towers and shopfronts, all claimed his attention equally. He couldn't discriminate, nor could he find in himself a particular attitude to any of it beyond disorientation, sometimes mild alarm. He surveyed the burgeoning, seething material of other people's lives, and very little moved him.
  After a while, his alarm grew. He began to think there must be some invisible force at work in the world, some unstoppable law of accretion filling up every surface and corner with streets, office blocks, rivers, factories, houses. Only he seemed to see it, this chaotic, impossible density, all this hoarding and flowing over; was nobody else concerned? If it went on like this, some day the whole planet would clog up and there would not be enough room in the sky for all the criss-crossing exhaust trails of planes, or on the sea for the countless interweaving, frothy wakes of ships. Swirling lines of traffic would spill off the teeming highways. Already there was no such thing as an unfilled space; it was impossible to see nothing. However deserted or arbitrarily spacious, every inch of the world was a place taken up and touched in some way, claimed for one purpose or another, even if it was, as he found in Scotland, to be left bare so that people could see it empty. But there was no true emptiness, no real nothingness, no desert stillness, a phrase that came into his mind and he now wished were more than a phrase. Everywhere – crowded and disorderly, or deliberately pristine – was somewhere, laden with the paraphernalia and expectation of some human design, and in not one of these places was his presence relevant. He tried not to think about it. He tried not to panic, and to concentrate instead on tiny things, one at a time.
  He practised on people. In cafés and checkout queues he would study them and take in only physical details: the curve of an ear, a ridged fingernail, the asymmetric lift of one eyebrow. Every feature was odd in some way, once he focused on it – not that this disappointed him at all, since he was not looking for perfection or hoping to find a special value in the unique. He simply noticed and remembered. He filed every detail in his mind disjointedly and without cross-reference, each alone for its isolated, particular, frangible self. He welcomed this dullness of perception in himself; it would have been unbearable to dwell on anything more than how precious and how breakable were these vulnerable, separate, flawed parts of other people's bodies. Sometimes he knew he was staring at a stranger too hard and should apologize, but he didn't know what to be sorry for. For not knowing how his own mind worked? For not being sure he bore more than a trivial surface resemblance to other human beings any more?
  He would have liked someone to tell it all to. He called his sister. She told him it would be fine for him to come for a few days if it was up to her, but Derek wasn't ready to see him.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Some time after it was properly dark, one of the bonfires went out. Soon after that the other grew bigger, burning fiercely enough to send smoke high into the night air, where in the moonlight it drifted like a grey veil over the river. As the flames flew up I thought I caught the sound of faint voices raised in satisfaction, or triumph. Maybe some form of cooperation was at work and two groups had joined around one big fire, or maybe one group had overwhelmed the other. I couldn't tell. I stayed outside wrapped in wads of bedding, listening for anyone who might be approaching in the dark along the shore. From time to time I dozed.
  My first thought when I heard footsteps from the track and then Silva's voice, followed by a man's, was that she had found Stefan. But in an instant I knew it wasn't him. The voice was older and deeper, and she was speaking as if to a stranger.
  They came around the side of the trailer, and we all stood for a moment, trying to see one another in the dull moonlight. The man was solidly built, that was all I could make out. Then Silva gave a cry and rushed forwards to hug me. I felt my breath catch in my throat, and my eyes filled with tears, but over her shoulder I saw the man watching us steadily, as if trying to find something out. Would not a normal person have looked away at such a moment?
  He nodded at me. "You all right?" He spoke without smiling, though his words came through the dark as if he required an answer.
  We went in and lit candles. Silva used the gas ring to boil water and make tea. Ron and I watched her, and in between we watched each other. The trailer was cramped, and we settled onto seats and moved as little as possible, like tired roosting birds. We hardly spoke. It was too late – and our being all together too unexpected – for polite conversation among strangers. Besides, all the questions that came to mind (Why did you come here? Where do you live? Who are you?) would, out loud, have sounded not curious but distrustful. And the remarkable thing was that although I knew I should be wary, because everything about his sudden appearance here with Silva begged such questions, I felt I could trust him.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Soon after that the other grew bigger, burning fiercely enough to send smoke high into the night air, where in the moonlight it drifted like a grey veil over the river. As the flames flew up I thought I caught the sound of faint voices raised in satisfaction, or triumph. Maybe some form of cooperation was at work and two groups had joined around one big fire, or maybe one group had overwhelmed the other. I couldn't tell. I stayed outside wrapped in wads of bedding, listening for anyone who might be approaching in the dark along the shore. From time to time I dozed.
  My first thought when I heard footsteps from the track and then Silva's voice, followed by a man's, was that she had found Stefan. But in an instant I knew it wasn't him. The voice was older and deeper, and she was speaking as if to a stranger.
  They came around the side of the trailer, and we all stood for a moment, trying to see one another in the dull moonlight. The man was solidly built, that was all I could make out. Then Silva gave a cry and rushed forwards to hug me. I felt my breath catch in my throat, and my eyes filled with tears, but over her shoulder I saw the man watching us steadily, as if trying to find something out. Would not a normal person have looked away at such a moment?
  He nodded at me. "You all right?" He spoke without smiling, though his words came through the dark as if he required an answer.
  We went in and lit candles. Silva used the gas ring to boil water and make tea. Ron and I watched her, and in between we watched each other. The trailer was cramped, and we settled onto seats and moved as little as possible, like tired roosting birds. We hardly spoke. It was too late – and our being all together too unexpected – for polite conversation among strangers. Besides, all the questions that came to mind (Why did you come here? Where do you live? Who are you?) would, out loud, have sounded not curious but distrustful. And the remarkable thing was that although I knew I should be wary, because everything about his sudden appearance here with Silva begged such questions, I felt I could trust him.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: My thanks are due to Elisabetta Minervini and Alessandro Gallenzi, the owners of Alma Books; I am very proud to be published in Britain by one of the UK's newest, most successful and innovative stars in the firmament of independent, literary publishing houses. I'm grateful, specifically, to Alessandro for his meticulous editing and to Elisabetta for masterminding the promotion of this novel.
  I also owe an immense debt of gratitude to Kate Miciak at Random House, New York for her unfailing encouragement and brilliant editorship of this novel for its original USA publication.
  Dr Stafford Craig, who designs bridges all over the world, found time to check some of the technical details of the bridge in this novel. Thank you. Any errors are, of course, mine alone.
  While I worked on this novel I was a writer-in-residence at the Heinrich Böll Cottage on Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland. I offer my sincere thanks to the Achill Heinrich Böll Association for awarding me the residency, and to the hospitable Achill islanders who made my time there so much fun.
  And most of all, I'm grateful to my lovely daughter Hannah who, whenever she's around, makes me laugh and makes me lunch.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: And most of all, I'm grateful to my lovely daughter Hannah who, whenever she's around, makes me laugh and makes me lunch. I'm grateful, specifically, to Alessandro for his meticulous editing and to Elisabetta for masterminding the promotion of this novel.
  I also owe an immense debt of gratitude to Kate Miciak at Random House, New York for her unfailing encouragement and brilliant editorship of this novel for its original USA publication.
  Dr Stafford Craig, who designs bridges all over the world, found time to check some of the technical details of the bridge in this novel. Thank you. Any errors are, of course, mine alone.
  While I worked on this novel I was a writer-in-residence at the Heinrich Böll Cottage on Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland. I offer my sincere thanks to the Achill Heinrich Böll Association for awarding me the residency, and to the hospitable Achill islanders who made my time there so much fun.My thanks are due to Elisabetta Minervini and Alessandro Gallenzi, the owners of Alma Books; I am very proud to be published in Britain by one of the UK's newest, most successful and innovative stars in the firmament of independent, literary publishing houses.