conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a plot for a book about Machine, Vashti, Kuno entitled The Machine Stops.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Machine Stops: The story describes a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth.\nEach individual now lives in isolation below ground in a standard room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine.\nTravel is permitted, but is unpopular and rarely necessary.\nCommunication is made via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine with which people conduct their only activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge.\nThe two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, live on opposite sides of the world.\nVashti is content with her life, which, like most inhabitants of the world, she spends producing and endlessly discussing secondhand \'ideas\'.\nKuno, however, is a sensualist and a rebel.\nHe persuades a reluctant Vashti to endure the journey (and the resultant unwelcome personal interaction) to his room.\nThere, he tells her of his disenchantment with the sanitised, mechanical world.\nHe confides to her that he has visited the surface of the Earth without permission, and that he saw other humans living outside the world of the Machine.\nHowever, the Machine recaptured him, and he has been threatened with \'Homelessness\', that is, expulsion from the underground environment and presumed death.\nVashti, however, dismisses her son\'s concerns as dangerous madness and returns to her part of the world.\nAs time passes, and Vashti continues the routine of her daily life, there are two important developments.\nFirst, the life support apparatus required to visit the outer world is abolished.\nMost welcome this development, as they are skeptical and fearful of first-hand experience and of those who desire it.\nSecondly, a kind of religion is re-established, in which the Machine is the object of worship.\nPeople forget that humans created the Machine, and treat it as a mystical entity whose needs supersede their own.\nThose who do not accept the deity of the Machine are viewed as \'unmechanical\' and threatened with Homelessness.\nThe Mending Apparatus—the system charged with repairing defects that appear in the Machine proper—has also failed by this time, but concerns about this are dismissed in the context of the supposed omnipotence of the Machine itself.\nDuring this time, Kuno is transferred to a room near Vashti\'s.\nHe comes to believe that the Machine is breaking down, and tells her cryptically "The Machine stops".\nVashti continues with her life, but eventually defects begin to appear in the Machine.\nAt first, humans accept the deteriorations as the whim of the Machine, to which they are now wholly subservient, but the situation continues to deteriorate, as the knowledge of how to repair the Machine has been lost.\nFinally, the Machine apocalyptically collapses, bringing \'civilization\' down with it.\nKuno comes to Vashti\'s ruined room.\nBefore they perish, they realise that Man and his connection to the natural world are what truly matter, and that it will fall to the surface-dwellers who still exist to rebuild the human race and to prevent the mistake of the Machine from being repeated.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: \nEach individual now lives in isolation below ground in a standard room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine.\nTravel is permitted, but is unpopular and rarely necessary.\nCommunication is made via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine with which people conduct their only activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge.\nThe two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, live on opposite sides of the world.\nVashti is content with her life, which, like most inhabitants of the world, she spends producing and endlessly discussing secondhand \'ideas\'.\nKuno, however, is a sensualist and a rebel.\nHe persuades a reluctant Vashti to endure the journey (and the resultant unwelcome personal interaction) to his room.\nThere, he tells her of his disenchantment with the sanitised, mechanical world.\nHe confides to her that he has visited the surface of the Earth without permission, and that he saw other humans living outside the world of the Machine.\nHowever, the Machine recaptured him, and he has been threatened with \'Homelessness\', that is, expulsion from the underground environment and presumed death.\nVashti, however, dismisses her son\'s concerns as dangerous madness and returns to her part of the world.\nAs time passes, and Vashti continues the routine of her daily life, there are two important developments.\nFirst, the life support apparatus required to visit the outer world is abolished.\nMost welcome this development, as they are skeptical and fearful of first-hand experience and of those who desire it.\nSecondly, a kind of religion is re-established, in which the Machine is the object of worship.\nPeople forget that humans created the Machine, and treat it as a mystical entity whose needs supersede their own.\nThose who do not accept the deity of the Machine are viewed as \'unmechanical\' and threatened with Homelessness.\nThe Mending Apparatus—the system charged with repairing defects that appear in the Machine proper—has also failed by this time, but concerns about this are dismissed in the context of the supposed omnipotence of the Machine itself.\nDuring this time, Kuno is transferred to a room near Vashti\'s.\nHe comes to believe that the Machine is breaking down, and tells her cryptically "The Machine stops".\nVashti continues with her life, but eventually defects begin to appear in the Machine.\nAt first, humans accept the deteriorations as the whim of the Machine, to which they are now wholly subservient, but the situation continues to deteriorate, as the knowledge of how to repair the Machine has been lost.\nFinally, the Machine apocalyptically collapses, bringing \'civilization\' down with it.\nKuno comes to Vashti\'s ruined room.\nBefore they perish, they realise that Man and his connection to the natural world are what truly matter, and that it will fall to the surface-dwellers who still exist to rebuild the human race and to prevent the mistake of the Machine from being repeated.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first two paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Machine Stops
  To attribute these two great developments to the Central Committee, is to take a very narrow view of civilization. The Central Committee announced the developments, it is true, but they were no more the cause of them than were the kings of the imperialistic period the cause of war. Rather did they yield to some invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which, when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible. To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
  As for Vashti, her life went peacefully forward until the final disaster. She made her room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light. She lectured and attended lectures. She exchanged ideas with her innumerable friends and believed she was growing more spiritual. At times a friend was granted Euthanasia, and left his or her room for the homelessness that is beyond all human conception. Vashti did not much mind. After an unsuccessful lecture, she would sometimes ask for Euthanasia herself. But the death-rate was not permitted to exceed the birth-rate, and the Machine had hitherto refused it to her.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Time passed, and they resented the defects no longer. The defects had not been remedied, but the human tissues in that latter day had become so subservient, that they readily adapted themselves to every caprice of the Machine. The sigh at the crises of the Brisbane symphony no longer irritated Vashti; she accepted it as part of the melody. The jarring noise, whether in the head or in the wall, was no longer resented by her friend. And so with the mouldy artificial fruit, so with the bath water that began to stink, so with the defective rhymes that the poetry machine had taken to emit, all were bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten. Things went from bad to worse unchallenged.
  It was otherwise with the failure of the sleeping apparatus. That was a more serious stoppage. There came a day when over the whole world--in Sumatra, in Wessex, in the innumerable cities of Courland and Brazil--the beds, when summoned by their tired owners, failed to appear. It may seem a ludicrous matter, but from it we may date the collapse of humanity. The Committee responsible for the failure was assailed by complainants, whom it referred, as usual, to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus, who in its turn assured them that their complaints would be forwarded to the Central Committee. But the discontent grew, for mankind was not yet sufficiently adaptable to do without sleeping.
  But the Committee of the Mending Apparatus now came forward, and allayed the panic with well-chosen words. It confessed that the Mending Apparatus was itself in need of repair.
  Thousands of miles away his audience applauded. The Machine still linked them. Under the seas, beneath the roots of the mountains, ran the wires through which they saw and heard, the enormous eyes and ears that were their heritage, and the hum of many workings clothed their thoughts in one garment of subserviency. Only the old and the sick remained ungrateful, for it was rumoured that Euthanasia, too, was out of order, and that pain had reappeared among men.
  It became difficult to read. A blight entered the atmosphere and dulled its luminosity. At times Vashti could scarcely see across her room. The air, too, was foul. Loud were the complaints, impotent the remedies, heroic the tone of the lecturer as he cried: "Courage! courage! What matter so long as the Machine goes on ? To it the darkness and the light are one." And though things improved again after a time, the old brilliancy was never recaptured, and humanity never recovered from its entrance into twilight. There was an hysterical talk of "measures," of "provisional dictatorship," and the inhabitants of Sumatra were asked to familiarize themselves with the workings of the central power station, the said power station being situated in France. But for the most part panic reigned, and men spent their strength praying to their Books, tangible proofs of the Machine's omnipotence. There were gradations of terror--at times came rumours of hope--the Mending Apparatus was almost mended--the enemies of the Machine had been got under--new "nerve-centres" were evolving which would do the work even more magnificently than before. But there came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hint of feebleness, the entire communication-system broke down, all over the world, and the world, as they understood it, ended.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: As he spoke, the whole city was broken like a honeycomb. An air-ship had sailed in through the vomitory into a ruined wharf. For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about crashed, exploding, rending.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: As he spoke, the whole city was broken like a honeycomb. An air-ship had sailed in through the vomitory into a ruined wharf. It crashed downwards, exploding as it went, rending gallery after gallery with its wings of steel. For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky.