conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a plot for a book about Thomas, Lull, India\'s entitled River of Gods?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: River of Gods: The novel follows a number of different characters\' viewpoints on and around the date of 15 August 2047, the centenary of India\'s partition and independence from the colonial British Raj.\nThis future India has become balkanized into a number of smaller competing states, such as Awadh, Bharat, and Bangla.\nThe global information network is now inhabited by artificial intelligences, phonetically called aeais in the novel, of varying levels of intelligence.\nAeais higher than level 25 (able to pass the Turing test and imitate humans) are banned, and their destruction ("excommunication") is the responsibility of "Krishna Cops", like mr Nandha.\nWhile some pockets of the subcontinent are still steeped in ancient tradition and values, mainstream culture is replete with aeais in TV entertainment and robotic swarms in defense.\nDuring such a time, Ranjit Ray steps down from his control of Ray Power, a key energy company, and the responsibility falls on his son Vishram Ray.\nThe playboy Vishram is struggling to make it on his own as a stand-up comedian in Scotland when he is flown back to Varanasi to assume this role, for which he finds himself terribly ill-equipped but eventually surprisingly effective.\nHe learns that his company is working on harvesting zero-point energy from other universes, and sees the particle collider built by his father with the help of Odeco, a clandestine investment firm.\nAfter a prolonged drought, a severe water shortage threatens to jeopardize the peace between the subcontinental states.\nTo avert this crisis, governments are melting glaciers and modifying natural systems.\nHe starts releasing key information to the press via Najia Askarzadah, an ambitious Swedish-Afghan reporter with a desire to be part of history as it is being made.\nLisa Durnau notices an apocalyptic crisis brewing in Alterre, a simulated evolution of earth created by AI scientist Thomas Lull, who is currently hiding in a South Indian coastal village.\nWhile Lisa is sent into space to investigate an asteroid, Thomas Lull runs into Aj, a girl with mysterious powers that allow her to see into people\'s lives, pasts and futures.\nHe decides to follow her and protect her during her quest to find her own true identity, but it is soon revealed that Aj\'s powers extend beyond mere mortals, when she brings a robot army to a halt with the raise of a hand.\nTal is a beautiful nute (of neutral gender) involved in the designing team of India\'s greatest "soapi", Town & Country, some of the main stars of which are not human actors, but aeais.\nTal falls prey to a conspiracy that compromises the career of Shaheen Badoor Khan, Private Secretary to the Prime Minister Sajida Rana, leading to her assassination and the fall of the government.\nAll this leads to riots and popular fury against Muslims and transsexuals across Varanasi.\nLisa Durnau discovers that at the center of the mysterious asteroid is an 8-billion-year-old grey sphere, possibly a black hole remnant, or an alien artifact from another civilization.\nThis "Tabernacle" communicates a message to the scientists, and this leads Lisa to India to find Thomas Lull, who alone can explain this phenomenon.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about \nTo, Hindu, Jeevanji.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: River of Gods: The novel follows a number of different characters\' viewpoints on and around the date of 15 August 2047, the centenary of India\'s partition and independence from the colonial British Raj. \nThis future India has become balkanized into a number of smaller competing states, such as Awadh, Bharat, and Bangla. \nThe global information network is now inhabited by artificial intelligences, phonetically called aeais in the novel, of varying levels of intelligence. \nAeais higher than level 25 (able to pass the Turing test and imitate humans) are banned, and their destruction ("excommunication") is the responsibility of "Krishna Cops", like mr Nandha. \nWhile some pockets of the subcontinent are still steeped in ancient tradition and values, mainstream culture is replete with aeais in TV entertainment and robotic swarms in defense. \nDuring such a time, Ranjit Ray steps down from his control of Ray Power, a key energy company, and the responsibility falls on his son Vishram Ray. \nThe playboy Vishram is struggling to make it on his own as a stand-up comedian in Scotland when he is flown back to Varanasi to assume this role, for which he finds himself terribly ill-equipped but eventually surprisingly effective. \nHe learns that his company is working on harvesting zero-point energy from other universes, and sees the particle collider built by his father with the help of Odeco, a clandestine investment firm. \nAfter a prolonged drought, a severe water shortage threatens to jeopardize the peace between the subcontinental states. \nTo avert this crisis, governments are melting glaciers and modifying natural systems. \nTo take advantage of the unrest, a Hindu fundamentalist leader namedK Jeevanji organises a "rath yatra" on a spectacular juggernaut. \nHe starts releasing key information to the press via Najia Askarzadah, an ambitious Swedish-Afghan reporter with a desire to be part of history as it is being made. \nLisa Durnau notices an apocalyptic crisis brewing in Alterre, a simulated evolution of earth created by AI scientist Thomas Lull, who is currently hiding in a South Indian coastal village. \nWhile Lisa is sent into space to investigate an asteroid, Thomas Lull runs into Aj, a girl with mysterious powers that allow her to see into people\'s lives, pasts and futures. \nHe decides to follow her and protect her during her quest to find her own true identity, but it is soon revealed that Aj\'s powers extend beyond mere mortals, when she brings a robot army to a halt with the raise of a hand. \nTal is a beautiful nute (of neutral gender) involved in the designing team of India\'s greatest "soapi", Town & Country, some of the main stars of which are not human actors, but aeais. \nTal falls prey to a conspiracy that compromises the career of Shaheen Badoor Khan, Private Secretary to the Prime Minister Sajida Rana, leading to her assassination and the fall of the government. \nAll this leads to riots and popular fury against Muslims and transsexuals across Varanasi. \nLisa Durnau discovers that at the center of the mysterious asteroid is an 8-billion-year-old grey sphere, possibly a black hole remnant, or an alien artifact from another civilization. \nThis "Tabernacle" communicates a message to the scientists, and this leads Lisa to India to find Thomas Lull, who alone can explain this phenomenon.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: River of Gods
  Kumarmangalam translated. Heads nodded. She took her new lieutenant aside and gave him the wad of notes.
  The rain added a new glaze of dismal to the upstairs bars and dance clubs. The Westerners who were stupid enough to have been caught in town by the big rain were all corporate or political spooks. The club owners and barristas and restaurateurs who shook their heads and pursed their lips over her photographs were a hundred Lulls-that-might-have-been; overweight and balding in XL beach-shirts that hung off their bellies like square-rigging. The local bar boys stirred from their stools and came round for the chat and an attempted slip of the hand into her V-string. She worked twenty bars and could take no more. Humming home in the phatphat she sat half-hypnotised by the rhythm of the rain through the headlights and wondered how it was that clouds never rained themselves dry. In the hotel she attempted to watch CNN but it seemed as alien and irrelevant as Alterre. One image lodged with her; warm monsoon rain falling on an iceberg in the Bay of Bengal.
  Kumarmangalam was circling on his rickshaw when she ventured out the next morning. He swung her out through the traffic in a big U-turn to an internet shop on the other side of the street. Nobody walked in this country. Just like home.
  July 22, 2043. Ten-metre kettuvallam/houseboat conversion with fixtures and fittings and ten horsepower alcofuel engines last serviced 18/08/42, moored at Alumkadavu. Sold to J. Noble Boyd, US citizen, passport number... A true Lull touch; using the name of the Kansas pastor who had made it his religious duty to oppose the evolutionist heresies of Alterre on his false ID. Lisa Durnau jotted the boat's registration details into the Tablet.
  That was the question she must put to Thomas Lull. She found she was dreading that meeting. When his disappearance had crossed the subtle but distinct boundary between temporary and permanent, Lisa Durnau had often imagined what she might say if, Elvis-like, she bumped into Thomas Lull in some hypermarket aisle or airport duty-free. It was easy to come up with smart lines when you knew you would never have to use them. Now every kilometre through the rain and dripping palm trees brought that impossible meeting closer and she did not know what she was going to say. She put it away from her while she found a phatphat in the sodden whirl of people and vehicles at the wide spot in the road that was Thekkady's bus station. But as she bounced around the lagoon-sized puddles on the long straight road past the backwater the dread returned, became a fearful sickness in her stomach. She sped past an elderly man labouring through the rain on an enormous red tricycle. The phatphat driver let her off at the mooring. Lisa Durnau stood in the rain, paralysed. Then the red tricycle creaked past her, executed a right-angle turn and bounced down the gangplank on to the rear deck.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Priya's little helpers are making Shiv feel ballsy and immortal and don't-give-a-fuck. He shakes his head at his apprentice and balls a fist to smack him off his bike. Yogendra's blade flashes in the floodlight.
  Yogendra spins his bike, throttles and takes off left up through the dark, muddy back streets of Chunar. Shiv follows past yapping pi-dogs and the skeletal spines of papaya trees. Yogendra stands up on the foot-pegs as he bumps the bike up flights of shallow steps, scanning the dark walls rising above the shops and lean-tos for weakness. They follow the twine of streets up on to the flank of the bluff. Yogendra's instinct is true. Like a Cantonment society bibi, Chunar Port maintains an imposing elevated front but it's all gone to shit round the back. The dirt road skirts the foot of the crumbling masonry revetments; rusting tin signs and sagging wire mesh mark this section of the fort as an old Indian army base, abandoned since nationhood. Finally the walls give way altogether into a gaping entrance, once the main access to the military camp, now roughly seated with corrugated iron and barbed wire. Yogendra kicks his bike to a stop and examines the metal. He rattles a sheet, tugs a corner. Steel screeches and gives way. Shiv helps, they heave, together they bend and tear a raja-sized gap. Inside Yogendra flips open his palmer to check GPS readings against Anand's map. The Warren Hastings Pavilion glows like a Christian wedding cake in the distance. The badmashes crouch by the foot of the wall while Shiv breaks out nightwatch goggles. The dark dark night turns into an antique black and white movie like one of those worthy Satyajit Ray things about poor people and trains. The Pavilion is as bright as the sun. Yogendra locates the nearest security camera. It's on a stanchion on the wall against the base of the well tower in the south, a good two hundred-metre dash through the rain-dripping black and white world. The roofless shells of the former Indian Army barracks give fine cover. Lightning still breaks to the west, over the sangam of Allahabad where three sacred rivers, Yamuna, Ganga and invisible Saraswati come together and armies confront each on the dark plains. Each flash blinds the nightwatch visor's circuits but Shiv just freezes in position. While the camera is looking the other way Shiv and Yogendra sneak up into its blind spot. Shiv pulls the emp grenade and arms it. He flexes his fingers one at a time on the firing pin: no time now for cramp. Shiv drops the grenade. He squeezes his eyes shut as the pulse overloads his nightwatch but even so painful tears start. Purple paisley patterns swirl inside his lids. Yogendra shins up the stanchion like a monkey and patches the special palmer into the com feed.
  The ground drops underneath the tower to the southern path. Below it is a small overgrown graveyard; Christian from the shape of the grave markers. The resting place of the Angreez soldiers who once held this fort. Fool them, Shiv thinks. Worthless place to die. Beneath the little wooded cemetery are a couple of hardscrabble houses, dhobi ghats and the river curving out of sight. The climb down to the tourist gate is treacherous, the sandstone slippery in the rain. Most fool of all; Bill Gates for dreaming his money can beat death.
  The plan calls for Shiv and Yogendra to double back along the wall over the main gate to the northern parapet overlooking the bridge, from where it is an easy drop down to the Hastings Pavilion, but as the two raiders crouch beneath the battlement listening through the distant thunder for sounds of security, Yogendra taps Shiv on the arm, makes a screwing gesture by the side of his visor. Shiv ratchets up the magnification, breathes a small curse in the name of his small gods. In monochrome vision he can clearly see two security bots flank the main entrance, gatling turrets slung between their two legs. Behind the killing machines is a dazzlingly-lit security post. Shiv can make out the military grade assault rifles slung on the wall behind the dozing sentry, boots on the desk, television screen a plane of white. It is defiantly not a girli in a red catsuit.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The light is almost gone now, deep indigo has settled across the river. The air is cool, the far clouds carry an edge of luminosity, they seem huge and improbable as dreams. The musicians have picked up the pace, the devotees take up the song to Mother Ganga. The Brahmins descend through the crowd. Father and child are gone.
  They never forgot us, thinks Lisa Durnau. In all the billions—trillions—of subjective years of their experience and history, they always remembered this act of betrayal on the banks of the Ganga, and they compelled us to enact it. The burning chakra of regeneration is endless. The Tabernacle is a prophecy, and an oracle. The answer to everything we need to know is in there, if we only know how to ask.
  He whips his finger to his lips, no, hush, don't speak. Thomas Lull gets stiffly to his feet. For the first time Lisa Durnau sees the old man he will be, the lonely man he wishes to become. Where he goes this time, not even the Tablet can see.
  The musicians ratchet up a gear, the crowd gives a vast, incoherent sigh and leans towards the five platforms where the priests offer puja. Flames whirl up from the Brahmins' aarti lamps, momentarily dazzling Lisa Dumau. When her vision clears, Lull is gone.
  Out on the water, a flaw of wind, a current catches the garland of marigolds and turns it and carries it out into the dark river.