conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first four paragraphs for a book with the title 'Mendoza in Hollywood'?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Mendoza in Hollywood
  Ah, but a cross-reference in the text indicated the conservancy's involvement with a twentieth-century holding company for Dr. Zeus.
  Here were the records for the twenty-first century, and the UFO sightings that would begin on Catalina Island—over the Silver Canyon area, by the way. We all know, of course, that UFO sightings will be a gigantic hoax, costumed nonsense to conceal Company experiments in some cases and mass hysteria in all others. We know that, because the Company told us so. Although nobody ever bothered to explain to me about those little pale men I ran into back in 1860, or why all the material I collected on that job was confiscated. But doubt the Company's word? Inconceivable.
  In any case, the Company was surely responsible for those sightings on the island, because here was name after corporate name becoming entangled in the conservancy's affairs, and nearly every one of them was some pseudonym of Dr. Zeus. And it was undoubtedly Dr. Zeus who would provide the islanders with the armament enabling them to close their harbor to mainland vessels after the Second Civil War broke out in mid century, Dr. Zeus who would patrol their waters for them, Dr. Zeus who would develop the advanced agrarian technology that would make them self-sufficient when foodstuffs could no longer be imported from the poisoned mainland.
  And it would be Dr. Zeus who established the secret libraries and archives there. When Los Angeles is the toxic, riot-ridden hell it will become, Catalina Island, like sixth-century Ireland, will be a peaceful and remote sanctuary beyond the sea, where knowledge is preserved and research conducted.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Yes, I know, it was murder he was talking about, but of tobacco-chewing bastards who trafficked in black slaves and had the temerity to dress up their shame in plumes and epaulets. I'd seen those belligerent Southern boys in the bar of the Bella Union. Someone might urge mercy for their kind, but it wouldn't be me. I nodded for him to continue.
  I had no doubt Edward could talk Confederate privateers into supporting the cause of Britain, or persuade Benito Juarez that Her Majesty desired to assist him. The mystery, to me, was why a man with his abilities hadn't gone further. But being illegitimate put the wrong sort of stripe on his old school tie, and that carried so much negative weight with the English. It meant that superb men like Edward lived and died in obscurity, while their nation was run by second-rate boobs who'd lose that empire he was working so hard for. Eventually. Years from now.
  Damn. I sped through reference files. Any old farrago of nonsense would do to get the conversational ball rolling.
  Ha, Edward reacted to that, if only in the pulse of his blood. His face showed nothing, however. "What an extraordinary story," he said. "I suppose it's all nonsense, though."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs? End with the sentence ' I'm patient; I can wait.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I'm to watch for them, though. This is very, very secret. Really I shouldn't be writing it down here, but who the hell will ever see? I'm to watch for certain people, odd-looking people with pale skins, who will arrive one day. They will not be Ancient Lemurians. It is expected they will arrive in well-designed oared galleys or perhaps even in gliders of some kind. It is expected they will settle in the Silver Canyon region. It is expected they will dig themselves in under a mountain and hide there, safe from marauding Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon primitives. I'm to report their arrival to the Company at once, and then I'm to monitor them unobtrusively for the next few centuries. When they've reached a certain level of technological development, when a certain energy signature begins to appear, I'm to alert Dr. Zeus. I suspect the Company will come in and slaughter them, then, and make off with their peculiar inventions.
  Talk about piracy. But the Company won't take everything. Something will be deliberately left for the British to find in 1862 or whenever, some bit of machinery that will be hidden away in a military laboratory for decades, until some Briton finally discovers how to make it work, and gains thereby insight into certain dimensional principles that enable him to solve the problem of time travel. Dr. Zeus will have guaranteed its own birth, built the foundation of its empire. And Edward will have been the sacrificed hero whose blood mortared its cornerstone.
  Who knows? We may have been in this dance since time began, and could never see the pattern until Dr. Zeus made me an immortal, unable to die or to forget. When Nicholas died, I was still too young to see what was going on. This last time with Edward gave them away, however. I don't believe in reincarnation, but surely even the Hindus don't imagine it works like this. What's the point? The same man circling through lives like a blazing comet, always returning on the same course, meeting the same inevitable doom before he vanishes into darkness, serving somebody's purpose with his death but never his own. The game is fixed. Whoever is running it—and I can guess at the identity, though not the reason—it's fixed.
  I don't expect I'll see him again for a while. But I will see him again. He will come back and set me free, because he said he would. And it may not be on our next encounter, or the next, but one day the pattern of his sacrifice and death will be broken. We will make something better than this, he and I, and God help our masters if they try to prevent us.
  In the meanwhile I tend my rows of corn and tomatoes, or wander on this narrow cobblestone crescent and admire the blue sea, or sit outside my shelter at night and watch the sky. I'm patient; I can wait.