conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America about em>The, Rumpus, NOON with the genre: Literature & Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author is a novelist and screenwriter. His work has appeared in <em>The Rumpus, NOON, Confrontation, B O D Y Literature, The Baltimore City Paper, VLAK</em> and <em>port.man.teau</em>. He was a co-winner of the 2002 Sherwood Anderson Award and was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize. His screenplay <em>Randle is Benign</em> was selected for the 2013 Black List. the author was a 2008 Shadow Senate candidate for Washington D.C. DOCTOR BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S DREAM AMERICA (Equus Press, 2014) is his debut novel.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first three paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America
  General Lachlan McIntosh stands on the other side of the table, full military regalia. He's got a limp when he moves now, always will. But he's alive, which is more than can be said for Button Gwinnett. "Reports on the uprising, sir." He holds a smartpad out over the map. "They want Internet."
  Middleton takes the smartpad with his non‐cane hand, leans the cane against his own leg, swipes a single extended finger across the touchscreen. Head shaking as he reads. "The fools are going to destroy what's left of this fledging country." Middleton hands back the pad, reaches out to add a few blue pins to the giant map. These mark the places where people, despite the national ban, are still accessing the leftover skeletons of the Cloud. "They'll start a third outbreak," Middleton says. "Just barely made it through the second. Now these Massachusetts men want to put the whole country back on the grid?" He points at different places on the map, "Tories and Loyalists in upper Maine. English landing in Canada as we speak." Middleton shakes his head. "Bodies, a million of them, just rotting in the cities and towns. No one wants to get close to them, much less clean them up. All that rot gets into the water, it'll cause diseases that make The Death look like a toe stubbing. Won't be a single human left."
  Middleton sighs, pokes some empty stretches of woods. "Indians, hiding somewhere probably. Hatching plots to take back their land. Or just waiting for us to finally die off and they'll stroll back in. A few‐hundred‐year nightmare over."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: When did I start breathing so hard? Thornton thinks. He has to stop to lean on the railing. "All this walking," he says. They help him down to a bench. Thornton thinks it's about fifty‐fifty he'll ever get up again. Not wanting to let on, he smiles and thanks Son‐in‐Law, watches the calming effect this has on his daughter. She rolls away, leans those bare forearms on the railing to gaze out at the bustling port.
  Thornton is reaching into the folds of his jacket, as a reflex, unaware he's even doing it. Suddenly, he's emerged from his pocket a twice‐folded piece of paper. "What is that?" his daughter asks.
  Thornton breathes shallow a few breaths. "He sent one to every Signer, the ones living, anyway. More than half of us are gone now, you know. And I'll be joining them soon." You can see the truth of it, and not just in his slack skin, not just in the way he moves. His actions, too. His plans. His mood. He is a man winding things down. This trip southward is for the express purpose of seeing his daughter one last time.
  Thornton rolls back one flap and looks at the words written there, in ink and everything. "It's not what he says that I am interested in. It's what he means by what he says. And what he wants by meaning it. And what he wants you to think he means by saying it." And Thornton reads to them a single segmented sentence, leaves even these true‐disbelievers swimming through Mr. Jefferson's clauses. "I don't know how much of this music of his is political veneer, messaging, bluster, or just plain old naiveté. But still."
  In the silence that follows, his daughter sweeps her whole self sideways to hang her uppermost pieces over the wooden rail. Damn, Thornton thinks, it is her mother.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Damn, Thornton thinks, it is her mother. He has to stop to lean on the railing. "All this walking," he says. They help him down to a bench. Thornton thinks it's about fifty‐fifty he'll ever get up again. Not wanting to let on, he smiles and thanks Son‐in‐Law, watches the calming effect this has on his daughter. She rolls away, leans those bare forearms on the railing to gaze out at the bustling port.
  Thornton is reaching into the folds of his jacket, as a reflex, unaware he's even doing it. Suddenly, he's emerged from his pocket a twice‐folded piece of paper. "What is that?" his daughter asks.
  Thornton breathes shallow a few breaths. "He sent one to every Signer, the ones living, anyway. More than half of us are gone now, you know. And I'll be joining them soon." You can see the truth of it, and not just in his slack skin, not just in the way he moves. His actions, too. His plans. His mood. He is a man winding things down. This trip southward is for the express purpose of seeing his daughter one last time.
  Thornton rolls back one flap and looks at the words written there, in ink and everything. "It's not what he says that I am interested in. It's what he means by what he says. And what he wants by meaning it. And what he wants you to think he means by saying it." And Thornton reads to them a single segmented sentence, leaves even these true‐disbelievers swimming through Mr. Jefferson's clauses. "I don't know how much of this music of his is political veneer, messaging, bluster, or just plain old naiveté. But still."
  In the silence that follows, his daughter sweeps her whole self sideways to hang her uppermost pieces over the wooden rail.When did I start breathing so hard? Thornton thinks.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: And his father, that Clay‐loving SOB, gives the kid a bop on the side of his head. "Some fucking teachers they got these days."
  But everybody else besides that Clay‐lover is listening. "Jackson had it right there, caught between the real and the Dream, and he shut the whole thing down. Not off the grid. No fucking grid. The monster, it was sliced clean in half. Half collapsing in the crash of the Dream and the other half falling dead at Old Hickory's feet.
  He killed the Millipus and The Death, too, because that's what that thing was. It was The Death come across."
  And here comes that Clay‐loving grandson‐in‐law. "Right, but no one can because there's no record it happened at all. A little convenient, don't you think?"
  Charles Carroll of Carrollton silences them by lifting one emaciated arm. The sleeve of his pajama shirt falls to reveal skin and bones and not much else left. Little strings of muscle that hang up there. "Whether it was The Death or not The Death, a sea monster climbed out of the ocean to swallow America. And a guy rode out there and killed it. On a horse. Now, if that guy wants to be President, maybe you better shut up and let him."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ". Now, if that guy wants to be President, maybe you better shut up and let him. On a horse. And a guy rode out there and killed it. "Whether it was The Death or not The Death, a sea monster climbed out of the ocean to swallow America. Little strings of muscle that hang up there. The sleeve of his pajama shirt falls to reveal skin and bones and not much else left. A little convenient, don't you think?"
  Charles Carroll of Carrollton silences them by lifting one emaciated arm. "Right, but no one can because there's no record it happened at all."
  And here comes that Clay‐loving grandson‐in‐law. It was The Death come across.
  He killed the Millipus and The Death, too, because that's what that thing was. Half collapsing in the crash of the Dream and the other half falling dead at Old Hickory's feet. The monster, it was sliced clean in half. No fucking grid. Not off the grid. "Jackson had it right there, caught between the real and the Dream, and he shut the whole thing down."
  But everybody else besides that Clay‐lover is listening. "Some fucking teachers they got these days.And his father, that Clay‐loving SOB, gives the kid a bop on the side of his head