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[ { "from": "system", "value": "help write? five sentences more, same character context, Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica genre thx" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's not who I saw,\" Onyx said in slow awe. She and Molly looked on with wide eyes at Alex and the blonde in white crawling on top of him. A janitor yelled at them to get up off of the pile of leaves. He stood two feet away from them, seeing only an ordinary if very pretty blonde girl cuddling with a guy in a leather jacket. Yet the couple appeared to be utterly oblivious to the poor janitor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well, the book said a succubus could change shape,\" Molly suggested." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like Onyx, she could read auras and pierce supernatural concealments. It was all just a matter of practicing the right enchantments. Unlike Onyx, though, this was her first direct observation.\n\n\"The woman I saw had a tail but no wings. This chick's got wings but no tail.\"\n\n\"Pretty wings,\" Molly noted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But she can't really be what she looks like, right?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to seamlessly include 'Yeah, but he's worried. I can't read her aura, though. It's too bright.' in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They look happy together,\" Onyx murmured.\n\n\"Yeah, but he's worried. I can't read her aura, though. It's too bright.\"\n\n\"You think that's weird?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I've never seen a chick with invisible wings and an aura this bright before.\"\n\n\"Maybe it's that bright to make it hard to read?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Maybe. Like you said, they seem happy. But he also seems worried.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He worries. He does that. I think that's normal,\" Onyx thought aloud. She still hadn't taken her eyes off the blonde as she made out in the big pile of leaves with the only guy Onyx had ever gone to bed with. Onyx didn't want to feel jealous; she knew he had someone else. So did she, and her lover sat right beside her. Even seeing him with his lover shouldn't have been a bother." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "help write? five sentences more, same character context, Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica genre thx" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Y'know, I've never been to his house before,\" Taylor thought aloud. She sat behind the wheel of her car as Lorelei retrieved her keys. They were parked just outside the entrance to the building. \"I knew it was here, because Drew lives right over there, but... huh. Weird.\"\n\n\"How long would it take you to get from here to your next class?\" grinned Lorelei." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh no,\" Taylor said with unconvincing reluctance." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I couldn't. This has been crazy and wonderful already, I just...\"\n\nShe felt a hand on her leg. Taylor looked down at it. That shapely, sexy woman's hand slid up her leg toward her crotch. \"What possible reason do you have to deny yourself, Taylor?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You've already been so good to me...\" Her eyes slowly closed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And I have been happy to be of service,\" Lorelei whispered into her ear. \"I am made for this, Taylor. It is no inconvenience. Alex offered me to you.\"\n\n\"Mmmhh. He told you?\" Taylor's words were almost dreamy.\n\nLorelei tilted her head curiously. \"Told me what?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fingers brushed up against the material of Taylor's jeans between her legs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That I could borrow you sometime.\"\n\nLorelei's grin became a broad, hungry smile. \"No, he did not. Did he say when?\"\n\n\"No,\" Taylor shook her head. She held Lorelei's wrist with one hand to make sure it wouldn't go anywhere." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He just promised not to ask questions.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This is intriguing. Are you sure you won't come inside to discuss this?\"\n\n\"Does discussing... involve being naked?\"\n\n\"All the best discussions in that home do,\" the succubus chuckled.\n\n\"Okay,\" Taylor surrendered. As she followed Lorelei through the gate, Taylor figured there was something admirable about the way Alex put aside these pleasures to go to class. Admirable and downright silly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had lingered in the honeymoon suite for two active, intimate hours already." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet here Taylor was, sticking around for more.\n\n\"He gave you keys already?\" Taylor asked at the door.\n\n\"I may have found a spare key and had a copy made while he was at school last week,\" Lorelei shrugged. \"You should be warned that I am a demon prone to all sorts of mischief.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You're not using some sort of sexy mind control on me right now, are you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Taylor asked. She didn't sound like she'd be all that mad about it.\n\nLorelei drew her inside to close the door behind her. \"I confess that I calmed you so that you might hear me out a couple of times,\" she said. Lorelei moved close, putting one arm around her while the other hand trailed up Taylor's leg. \"But I'm not exactly capable of mind control. I've used little upon you that could be called magic.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Taylor gasped, melting in her arms." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You don't call this magic?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" Lorelei whispered into Taylor's ear. She unfastened Taylor's pants and slipped her hand inside. \"But I have tasted your desires. I know you want to have other men.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Is this what you would like my help with?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ye-yes,\" Taylor managed. Her breath was hot against Lorelei's neck. \"Alex said you could... help me... keep things, um... consequence-free?\"\n\n\"I could,\" Lorelei smiled. \"Of all my love's friends, you are easily my favorite.\"\n\n\"God, I'm getting so dirty.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ssshhh. Think nothing of it. Just between us girls.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lorelei's touch continued to roam. \"I can help you find and properly prepare a couple of attractive young men deserving of a night or two as your devoted toys. We can ensure they'll later go their separate ways with smiles on their faces and no strings attached.\"\n\n\"You could be there with me?\"\n\n\"Yes, though I will not betray Alex's wishes. I can be there for you, but you'll have to remember that the rest of the entertainment is there only for you, too.\"\n\n\"Seems kind of... unfair... oh wow...\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Alex is young yet. I am his first real love. In ten or twenty years, he may slacken my leash a little more with regards to other—Ooohhh!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lorelei tensed, suddenly pressing in bodily on Taylor." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'lorelei' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The younger woman blinked, providing some measure of support for the trembling succubus. \"Alex,\" Lorelei whispered hoarsely against Taylor's shoulder. \"Oh, my love.\"\n\nTaylor helped her take a seat on the stairs. \"What is it? Is something wrong?\"\n\n\"No,\" Lorelei breathed, her gaze seeming far away. \"Something wonderful.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode: Collab writing\nContext: May reference existing characters/world\nAmount: nine sentences\nVoice: Elliot Kay" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Carlos collapsed behind Lydia, unable to hold himself upright anymore. She shifted from her hands and knees to help him lay on his back with his head on the pillows. Carlos breathed heavily. He'd been in frenzy for hours, with his orgasms frustratingly further and further apart.\n\nFor Lydia, that was delicious progress.\n\n\"Baby,\" he whispered hoarsely, \"I need water. I need...\"\n\n\"I know what you need,\" Lydia said, straddling him. She shuddered with the pleasure, enjoying both the sex and the rapid deterioration of his strength.\n\n\"Can't we rest?\" he asked weakly. With some effort, he raised his hands to her hips, wanting to urge her off." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She grabbed his wrists and flung them up and over his head as if his arms were just limp objects attached to his shoulders." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You rest, Carlos,\" Lydia reassured him. \"Relax. Let me take care of the rest from here.\"\n\n\"That's... 's not what I mean...\"\n\n\"I know, Carlos,\" Lydia grinned. \"I know.\"\n\nIt wouldn't be long now. She loved this part." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing a segment of a larger work\n\nLength:\n10 sentences\n\nStyle:\nElliot Kay\nGenre:\nParanormal Fantasy, Erotica\nNote: Characters may be pre-established" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Three layers. Triple checked. It'll hold,\" Molly said. She found no cracks in their summoning circle. No gaps broke the wax of the ritual circle beyond it, or the salt within it that enacted the summoning circle, or the circle of ash added to provide extra resilience. Satisfied, Molly put the magnifying glass down on the table.\n\n\"You know your lines?\" Onyx asked.\n\n\"I do,\" Molly winked.\n\nThey were back to their normal clothing and back to their apartment. The upstairs neighbors were out for the evening and the guy next door was at work. Heavy curtains blocked the windows. The pair enacted charms of discretion and disinterest around their apartment." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was all the privacy they could manage.\n\nNot for the first time, the young couple longed for an acceptable way to make some money with their Practice. For one thing, they needed better digs.\n\n\"I still figure this is gonna take a couple hours. You ready?\" Molly asked. She held a circlet of vines and stems. Interwoven within them were the strands of blonde hair Molly had found.\n\n\"I love you, Molly,\" Onyx answered simply.\n\nMolly grinned, took Onyx in her arms and kissed her guilty look away. She leaned her forehead against her lover's. \"This is why I'm with you,\" the redhead reminded her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There's no point to all this if we can't help our friends. It's not about you sleeping with him. I like him, too.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Onyx nodded. She let Molly pull away, then turned to light the last candle. Then she frowned. \"Wait, like him how?\"\n\n\"Oh please. You knew I was a tramp when you brought me home,\" Molly laughed." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: The user will write a bit then you need to write around one sentence continuing directly from the user's text. Note: Characters may be introduced as if already known - maintain any existing context or treat as new if unclear.\n\nGenre: Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lorelei was, in fact, out of her mind with pleasure." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had felt the first rush of Alex's desire when Rachel tackled him at school." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She felt his longing for her rise in a spiral throughout the day." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lorelei recognized the taste of love in his desire from the beginning." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rachel played her part beautifully." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lorelei could probably have done better herself, but there was no need to criticize." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No need to worry about technique or artistic flourish when sincerity, consistency and intensity alone could get the job done." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Who cared if Lorelei would have chosen a scalpel for a task that Rachel accomplished with a steamroller?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alex was wildly, deeply in love with someone who felt the same about him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Taylor saw Lorelei through the first throes of flirtation, but Lorelei knew enough to politely and affectionately—very affectionately—usher Taylor out in anticipation of the blissful insanity yet to come." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This wasn't something Lorelei could share with Taylor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She suspected, rightly, that she would barely be able to interact with her environment when her prey and the angel made love for the first time, let alone acknowledge and involve another person." }, { "from": "human", "value": "By the time Alex and Rachel headed to the hotel, Lorelei had the house to herself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She lay in her lover's bed, clad only in the short, slinky black nightgown she'd thrown on to see Taylor out, and rode the waves of ecstasy the bond provided." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With only the first coupling between Alex and Rachel, Lorelei was left writhing on her side while bone, sinew and red skin sprouted from her back at the shoulder blades." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lorelei had hoped to share that particular moment with Alex." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It might have disturbed him, but at the same time, he knew her for what she was." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The growth of her demon's wings might not have been such a pleasant sight, but he would have been thrilled at the sign of her final recovery." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'wanted' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lorelei wanted to fly, but more than that, she wanted to enjoy Alex's touch in his bed, even with him miles away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was every bit as good as having Alex herself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not better, but not worse." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lorelei felt not a shred of jealousy, especially in light of this shared pleasure." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With the ritual binding of Rachel to Alex complete, Lorelei expected the angel would share the same attitude." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She glanced at the clock, only to laugh when she saw that the night was still young." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They would be at this for hours." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lorelei was in for a long, wonderful night of—" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Monstrous white hands crashed through the bedroom window." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They seized Lorelei by her arm and leg, pulling her like a rag doll out of the broken window." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The hands flung her to the sidewalk two floors below." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A cacophony of attacks fell upon her all at once: a longsword, an axe, a flail." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She felt a baton and pepper spray and a searing pain that could only come from sorcery." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The blades broke skin and the rougher blows cracked bone, but none went so deep as to cripple her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A flesh-bound demon of Lorelei's stature enjoyed inhuman resilience, though not invulnerability." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But for the steady torrent of power drawn even now from Alex, the assault surely would leave her incapacitated—if not worse." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lorelei was disoriented and wounded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The blows continued. Most of them fell with inhuman strength." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She tried to use her wings to block them, but she couldn't escape them all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instinct and determination took over." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her tail lashed out, grabbing an attacker behind her and flinging him onto his back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lorelei caught the baton before it fell again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She slashed with her other hand, nails growing to form talons." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fire erupted from the scars she left in the vampire; he fell back and burned." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was all eerily, unnaturally quiet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The street was engulfed in fog." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "More sorcery at work." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The longsword came down across her back again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She buckled, but withstood it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Something small and immensely forceful struck her in the cheek, sending her reeling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A bullet, she realized, fired from only a few feet away by someone in a cowboy hat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The shot didn't penetrate her skin, but the pain was immense." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another figure stepped between Lorelei and the shooter, hulking and brutish, wielding the flail." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lorelei spewed flames all over him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He shrieked in pain and fell back, but someone behind the circling corpses stood ready with a fire extinguisher." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Two people, actually. One of them blasted the burning man." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The other blasted Lorelei." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She twisted and moved, trying to get her bearings." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The blows continued. Lorelei did her best to dodge what she could and shrug off what she could not. The pain mounted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She needed an escape." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her wings spread out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lorelei looked up to see Harrow clinging to the side of Alex's building." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His fist came down on her head, knocking her to her knees." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He slashed across the bare skin of her shoulders with his claws, drawing from her a shriek of agony that didn't carry out into the street." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His fist stopped coming." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All the other blows resumed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like every succubus, Lorelei was born to lead mortals to their destruction." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her victims were never men or women of benevolence or even indifference; few would argue that those Lorelei destroyed deserved to be treated with kindness." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Lorelei had been born to act without mercy, to feel neither affection nor pity, and to serve those who worked tirelessly to thwart the will of the divine in the mortal world and beyond." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her last thoughts were a silent plea to that divine presence to ensure the safety of the young man she so sincerely loved." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hell's most accomplished succubus knew she had no right to pray." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She knew, but did it anyway." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The last thing she saw, just as the cacophony of blows to her body ended, was a pale man in a pin-striped suit with the sort of machinegun Lorelei hadn't seen in decades." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He leveled it at her." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fire and smoke and lead erupted from the gun.\n\nHer world went black." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "The user will write a segment from a longer work then you need to write around eight sentences continuing directly from it. Try to mimic the style of Elliot Kay in the Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica genre. Note that characters may appear without introduction." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Wow... hhh... I love you,\" Alex gasped." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Tell me again,\" Rachel said, looking down at him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She glistened with sweat and beamed in the afterglow of another lustful frenzy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I love you,\" he repeated breathlessly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But I need... I need...\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I know what you need,\" the angel straddling his hips said enticingly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"... water.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Water? Bah. You don't need water. You need more of me.\"\n\n\"I need that, too. But no. Need water.\" He reached up to gesture randomly with one hand. \"It's this whole cellular respiration thing that we mere mortals have to do.\"\n\n\"Pff. That sounds like more of your silly science.\"\n\n\"Can't have sex without it.\"\n\n\"Oh. That's a problem,\" Rachel conceded. She pushed him back down as he tried to rise." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Stay. I'll get it for you.\"\n\n\"Oh my God,\" Alex said as she stepped toward the refrigerator.\n\n\"What?\" Rachel asked, looking back over her shoulder. It required her to turn one of her wings down.\n\n\"That ass,\" he answered, looking amazed.\n\nShe made sure her wings didn't block his view. \"You like?\"\n\nAlex smiled back at her. \"It's amazing.\"\n\nShe sauntered over to the refrigerator, making sure to sway for him as she walked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She posed and tossed him a sultry glance as she opened the refrigerator, posed again to pull out a water bottle, and then came strutting back. To her delight, he was plainly more fascinated by the view of her from the front.\n\nRachel twisted the cap off of the bottle. \"No one's ever made me feel this beautif—\"\n\nShe vanished in a puff of scented smoke. The water bottle fell to the floor.\n\nAlex was bolt upright in an instant. \"Rachel!?\" He quickly slipped out of bed, looking around frantically." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The scent of the smoke reminded him of the cemetery chapel." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He rushed over to his leather jacket on the chair near the door. Alex tore out his cell phone, dialed Lorelei's number and waited in near panic. He heard no answer." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "help write? five sentences more, same character context, Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica genre thx" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm off work and home all alone. What're you up to?\"\n\n\"Just leaving my friend Drew's house. Me an' him an' our friend Taylor were hangin' out. Playin' Xbox. Chillin'.\" Jason adjusted the cell phone earpiece as he walked down the steps from Drew's apartment building and headed for his car. The odd fog that had rolled in had already rolled out again.\n\n\"Taylor? That girl from the party?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"She'd better not have any designs on you.\" Britney sounded more playful than jealous, but Jason hadn't known her long. He had no idea if she was psycho or not. Nor did he have any experience with psycho girls." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or sane ones, for that matter... last weekend aside, of course.\n\n\"Oh, I think she's got her plate kinda full right now,\" he said. His eyes went wide at his own understatement. Taylor had wandered over to Drew's place sometime after sunset looking for someone to talk to. It was easy to forget that Drew, having been pretty popular in high school, had hung out with Taylor and her usual crowd... but not so much that Drew was the first person Taylor turned to when she needed bro counseling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jason had never imagined Taylor would need bro counseling at all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Specifically, Taylor needed someone to hear her wide-eyed, breathless, can't-believe-I-just-did-that confession of her lesbian demon sexcapades." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She turned up looking a little tired and bewildered and hotter than hell." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then she just lied down on the couch and dropped the bombshells about her weekend while she stared up at the ceiling. Drew's game character died instantly as he looked toward Taylor in shock. Jason's controller fell right out of his hands.\n\nIt turned out that Taylor had an awful lot to say.\n\nPetty or not, Jason felt a little irked that someone had already one-upped the glory of his double-blonde loss of virginity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The phone call from one of his guides into the awesomeness of sex had him feeling much better, though." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wanna coming over here?\"\n\n\"Um. I was headed home, actually.\"\n\n\"Aw. Come see me, Jason. I'm lonely and scantily clad.\"\n\n\"You—um, what?\" Jason blinked. He stopped in his tracks." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Brittany won't mind if I steal a little one-on-one time.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'didn't' 2 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His sensibilities quickly went into all-out war. He had already caught hell over all this just yesterday from his parents. Still, Taylor's unexpected too-much-information dump had Jason feeling more than a little anxious. He didn't plan to call either of the Brits tonight; he didn't want to blow it by looking desperate, and he couldn't figure out whether or not one would be offended if he called the other first. But Britney had just resolved all that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"C'mon, Jason. I haven't been able to think of anything but you since you went home. Get over here and unleash the beast again.\"\n\nThat made up his mind. He inserted the key into the slot on his car door, smirked at the horrible symbolism there, and then heard the thump and the curse from down the block.\n\nJason looked over. That was Alex's building. That was a limousine." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'jason' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And that was a limp body being thrown into the trunk. He quickly crouched down. Through the windows of the parked cars, Jason spotted several men: one in a cowboy hat and duster, another in a pin striped suit with an old Thompson machinegun, and a third with a longsword strapped to his back. All three of them stepped into the limo.\n\nJason jumped into his car, started the engine, and pulled out with a gutsier turn than he would ever make under any other circumstances." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He hauled ass after the limo, slowing only to look up at the side of Alex's building to note that, yes, his window was smashed out. That was more than suspicious enough for him.\n\n\"Britney, I gotta go,\" Jason said firmly.\n\n\"What? What's wrong?\"\n\nHe was following men with guns who had just kidnapped or killed one of his best friends." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had no experience with this sort of thing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He didn't know where it would lead, or what the hell he could possibly do about it, or what he would be able to do if they spotted him. There was a lot wrong right then.\n\n\"I'll tell you later. Look, I swear to God, there's nothing I want to do more than come over and hit that like the hammer of Thor, but right now I just can't. I'll hook up with you and wreck you as soon as I possibly can, okay?\"\n\nJason kept his eyes on the road, but as he drove he realized to his horror what had just come out of his mouth. His jaw dropped at his own sheer stupidity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The hammer of Thor?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Wreck you? Who says that!? Jesus fucking Christ, why would I actually say that? !\n\nHe heard silence, and then a single word: \"... Promise?\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Job: User writes start, you add ~three sentences sentences. Style: Elliot Kay. Note: May include established characters" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How come we never hung out much before?\" Taylor asked aloud. She still lay on the couch in Drew's living room staring at the ceiling.\n\nDrew sat on the arm of the couch near Taylor's feet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You and me did hang out in high school. Ain't the first time you've been on the therapy couch.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, I mean everyone. I always liked Wade. I always liked Jason. And Alex was... I didn't want to date him, but of course I liked him.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're here now. We all love you. An' it sounds like whatever you and Alex got going on is fine for the both of you. The three of you,\" he corrected teasingly, swatting her foot.\n\nTaylor put her hands over her face, laughing a bit. \"God, I'm a total skank.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hey, if you're a skank, we're all skanks.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, whatever,\" Taylor said, waving off his comment. She stared at the spackling on his ceiling. \"Do you... I don't know how to ask this...\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Just do it,\" Drew shrugged helpfully." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do you get jealous?\"\n\n\"Of what?\"\n\n\"Alex. Look at what he's got. He's slept with three women this weekend alone. Four, apparently, if you count whoever he was with Friday afternoon. And Lorelei's loaded and devoted to him and she's just so... she's amazing, you know?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Add this exact quote somewhere appropriate: \"Who the fuck else has he been with?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Shit, you'd know that better than I would, apparently. Skank,\" he grinned. \"Who the fuck else has he been with?\"\n\n\"Some Goth chick from North Seattle. And he got it on with Jocelyn at the party.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Drew's eyebrows shot up, and then he laughed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Okay, now I am jealous. That bastard.\"\n\n\"I'm serious! You didn't know? He didn't say anything?\"\n\n\"I think Alex isn't the kind to brag about this stuff. I mean, yeah, he had one motherfucker of a shit-eating grin when he first showed up with Lorelei, know what I'm sayin'? But he ain't one for giving play-by-plays. You've told me and Jason a lot more than he has.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Drew gave her a teasing grin. \"But it ain't like we didn't know he's getting all freaky. You haven't seen the angel, either. Damn. Just damn.\"\n\nTaylor looked over at him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had seen her, actually, but couldn't remember much." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Is she prettier than Lorelei?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Nah, I wouldn't say that. She's crazy hot, but there's something... I dunno. They're different. Both put your jaw on the floor, though.\"\n\n\"But you don't get jealous? All that, and you don't feel any envy at all? Not the other guys?\"\n\n\"Well, I guess there's envy and there's jealousy. I mean, any guy who looks at that woman and doesn't wanna hit that is, like, one hundred percent gay, right? Like not even a little bit into girls. So she's cool, but... man, you didn't see him when we were drivin' around with that demon guy in the minivan. Alex had this look on his face like he was just fucked. He was like, 'That's it. That's what I get to do from now on. Just hella crazy guys kickin' my ass an' tryin' to take my girl an' all my friends getting' hurt.' That's gotta be some heavy shit there.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"See, that's what I'm saying, though. You defend him. And look what he's got.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Look what I got, though. We told you earlier about the pool hall. The only complication there is figurin' out how to tell our families and make sure it don't look dirty, but man... four days ago I felt like I'd never be able to afford to go to college. Now I've got that licked. Hell, I'm probably gonna finally buy a car or move out of my mom's place here. Maybe both, if I keep workin'. An' Jason's talkin' about maybe selling his share if we can figure out how to swing that fairly, 'cause he doesn't want to be in business with friends. Says it's bad juju.\"\n\nTaylor nodded. \"I didn't mean money, though. I mean women. Sex.\"\n\n\"Hey, Alex and Jason were the ones who never had girlfriends. Sherri's all over me. You can tell me grass is greener for Alex, but I wouldn't know, 'cause I'm busy takin' care of my own. And Wade ain't even been lookin' for a girl, but I think he picked one up the other night.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I know Trish. She's a sweetheart.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Drew nodded. \"I think Wade's just lookin' for someone to talk to after all the shit he's been through. So no. No jealousy there. And, Jason...\" he tried to go on, but just laughed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What?\" Taylor grinned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Jason... oh, man, that fool. Taylor, you aren't the only one who's been...\" He gave up trying to talk and laughed more.\n\n\"What? Tell me!\" Taylor said, nudging his leg with her foot.\n\n\"He went home with two of those blonde Britney girls from the party.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Taylor's jaw dropped. \"Jason did?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Drew nodded. \"He came over and plopped down on the couch just like you did like he was still in shock. I guess those girls are freaky. He's all blown away, his hickeys haven't all faded yet, and he's getting texts from both of 'em like crazy. An' his parents found out like immediately. I guess one of 'em slipped her panties in his pocket an' they fell out when he got home an' his parents flipped the fuck out. So he drops all that on me, and then finally we're cool and shit, and then you come over an' plop down on the couch, and I'm just like, 'Oh, what the fuck now,' know what I mean?\"\n\nThe thought gave Taylor a good laugh." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Wow, I saw those two. They were hot.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No shit. He showed me a couple of the pics they sent him. Nothin' nude, but freaky.\"\n\nHer eyes went wide with interest. \"Did he share them?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, but I bet if I asked him,\" Drew suggested, reaching for his phone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As he did, it went off with the chorus of \"Pretty Fly for a White Guy.\" \"Oh, hey, speak of the devil,\" he chuckled. Drew flipped the phone open." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yo' momma so dumb she-–\" he fell silent as Jason barked at him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then his face grew serious." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What is it?\" Taylor asked.\n\n\"Someone just grabbed Alex,\" Drew scowled. \"Maybe Lorelei, too. Jason's following 'em.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh shit,\" Taylor gasped." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Wait. Did he see them? Were they all dressed in black?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jason heard her over the phone. Drew listened and told her, \"Yeah, said they all looked like a costume party for emo kids.\"\n\n\"They're probably vampires,\" Taylor thought aloud. \"Dammit.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Drew blinked. \"What?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We gotta get after him!\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'we're' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We're on it. Jason's following. We can't exactly call the cops for this. We're gonna call Wade and get him–\"\n\n\"We'll call him on the way,\" Taylor said, already up and grabbing her jacket.\n\n\"Wait, on the way? What? You're coming, too?\"\n\n\"Last I checked, you don't have a car.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Write 7 sentences sentences in the style of Elliot Kay spawning from what the user wrote. Note: Characters and worldbuilding may appear mid-story." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wow, who knew angels swear so much?\" Molly mumbled. It was an attempt to break the silence between them, but it didn't get far. She flicked her eyes to Onyx, then back to the road. Finally she put her hand on Onyx's leg. \"It's okay, love.\"\n\n\"I'm so sorry about all this,\" Onyx said softly. Her eyes were still turned out the passenger side window.\n\n\"No. Don't. We could've walked away and ignored it all if we wanted to. And we don't even know if that chick's story is gonna check out, right?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Doesn't make me feel like any less of a moron,\" Onyx shrugged." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Doesn't make me feel any better for putting you at risk.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Onyx, if those assholes grabbed him, we're as loaded for bear tonight as we're ever gonna be. The Brotherhood's a problem we'll have to deal with sooner or later. Might as well do it when we've potentially got an angel and a freakin' demon on our side. Potentially,\" she repeated." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Or if she's lying, then we go back home and kick her lying, shapechanging ass.\"\n\n\"I don't think she's lying,\" Onyx said. \"It's up here. Turn left. Three buildings up. There. I don't see anyone out there... probably long gone already.\"\n\nMolly nodded, parking a couple of houses away. \"Still ready with the contingency plans?\"\n\nAs if in answer, Onyx simply held out a snapdragon petal. \"Bullshit first, run like hell second,\" she repeated." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Molly began murmuring the words of the spell as Onyx retrieved a petal for herself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As Molly finished, she said, \"Maybe I got paid forward for casting this last time.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Onyx. Seriously. Let's say Rachel's story is legit. He couldn't have known you're an honest-to-goddess witch. What was he going to tell you?\"\n\nOnyx sighed, murmured the words, and put the petal under her tongue. \"I'll pry an explanation out of him when we see him,\" she grumbled as she got out of the car.\n\nMolly followed. \"I'll hold him down for you.\"\n\nThe pair walked together toward Alex's townhouse building with their eyes scanning their surroundings. They didn't get far before spotting trouble. Onyx enjoyed a particular talent for magical perception." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She found malevolence and wariness here, lurking in the shadows of the building across from Alex's." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The debris of the fighting earlier had all been cleared away, with Alex's window looking intact and normal, but the concealed presence of two figures nearby was a dead giveaway.\n\nFortunately, they had their act ready to go. \"Aw, motherfucker,\" Onyx grunted with feigned frustration. She looked directly at the lurking pair. \"Did you guys already grab him?\"\n\n\"Do I know you?\" asked a female voice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Probably not. We just got invited to the party yesterday. So to speak,\" Onyx shrugged." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"By whom?\"\n\n\"That's a little sticky,\" Molly said. \"His name's Kenneth, and, uh... while his invitation was interesting, Kenneth was, uh...\"\n\n\"An arrogant little pig with no social skills, who deserves to have his ass handed to him on a regular basis?\" the woman offered.\n\nOnyx and Molly both made a show of fighting down grins. \"We were hoping the invitation was still open even if things didn't go so well with the messenger,\" Onyx explained. \"Particularly if we could deliver the guy you're looking for.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was a long moment of silence." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What are your names?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm Molly. She's Onyx.\" It wasn't worth lying about that. The Brotherhood had clearly done some homework on them.\n\nThe woman stepped out of the shadows. She was perhaps in her mid-thirties, dressed in a darkly toned pantsuit. Her ethnicity was entirely undeterminable. The necklace around her neck hung beneath her top, so it was impossible to see what sort of charm she wore on it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You can call me Ms. Black for now.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'thought' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She turned her head to look over her shoulder at her companion. \"This is... Talon,\" she added with a note of dry humor.\n\n\"I thought you people were supposed to be subtle,\" the man in the darkness snapped quietly.\n\n\"I thought yours were supposed to be frightening yet seductive,\" Ms. Black shrugged. \"Failure on both counts, I suppose.\" She looked back to Molly and Onyx. \"As it happens, there is a party of a more literal sort tonight. I'll be happy to introduce you to the Brotherhood, if you would like to attend. It may be a bit of an overwhelming night, but if you delay you may feel that you missed out on something remarkable. I can guarantee your safety for the night as long as you take no actions against the Brotherhood or their hosts.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Will this count as our formal induction?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Molly asked with just the right amount of reluctance." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Heavens no. This isn't a night for commitments on your part. However I think it will be a good time to see how and why it's in your best interests to join us. As I said, I guarantee safe passage.\" She held up her hands, reciting something ancient in Greek. Onyx and Molly saw the telltale signs of magic at work, recognizing the invocation of spirits and fate. All the right words were there.\n\n\"There's also the thing with Kenneth,\" Molly pointed out.\n\n\"That can be hashed out. If the two of you acted in self-defense, Kenneth will have no real recourse. You could smooth it over with an exchange of favors or gifts, as is custom,\" Ms. Black suggested. \"I'm told he was injured, but I have no trouble believing that it was a response to his utter lack of tact rather than an intentional strike against the Brotherhood. Still interested?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We're game,\" Onyx said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She didn't need to look at Molly.\n\n\"Are you sure of this?\" Talon murmured audibly from behind Ms. Black.\n\nThe sorceress shrugged. \"Nothing risked, nothing gained. I'm not worried about the trouble any two witches might make tonight given the power we have assembled. There couldn't be a safer time to give them this opportunity.\" She didn't do anything to conceal the statement from the pair of women before her.\n\n\"We have room in our vehicle for you both,\" Ms. Black said. \"In fact, for security reasons, I must insist we drive together. Don't worry, you won't be searched or anything. The right to self-defense and to tend to one's own matters are at the core of the Brotherhood's creed.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'molly' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She beckoned for the pair to follow. They did so, sharing a glance that said volumes: of course, they didn't remotely trust this woman; of course, Ms. Black didn't trust them; and of course, this was likely their only option other than naked violence.\n\nMolly got a good look at Talon as he appeared from the shadows to follow behind them. He was deathly pale, with slicked-back black hair and a black trench coat. From under the collar of his black silk shirt, Molly caught the gleam of chain mail. He also did a poor job of concealing the underarm holsters beneath the trench coat and the short sword on his belt reminiscent of ancient Rome. The vampire's hands were both decorated with claw rings." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Nice jewelry,\" Molly noted." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Cool to see one of you guys who doesn't get everything from Goth 'n' Go.\"\n\nTalon opened his mouth to say something sharp and biting, but promptly closed it with a hint of embarrassment. He checked to make sure his fifteen-dollar iron cross necklace wasn't showing." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\n11 sentences\nGenre:\nParanormal Fantasy, Erotica" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Y'all can't carry us both, fool. I'm gutshot an' bleedin' out. Take Cracker Carlisle an' go.\"\n\n\"I'm not gonna just leave you!\" Darren protested. He tugged at the corporal's sleeve, only to have it slip away because of the blood. Will fell back against the thin tree trunk and jungle grass with a grunt.\n\n\"Darren,\" Will choked, \"Charlie ain't waitin' on a long goodbye. We didn't come back for Carlisle for nothin'. I ain't lettin' 'em get me. Now drop the sixty an' your ammo and fuckin' go, man. I've got this.\"\n\n\"Fuckin' bigoted asshole doesn't deserve this,\" Darren grumbled, but he quickly obeyed. He threw his last belt of ammunition for the M-60 off of his shoulders. Then the machine gunner hauled the half-conscious soldier lying in the bush next to him to his feet.\n\n\"Yeah, don't I know,\" Will winced. He stuck a bundle of gauze over his wound and put his towel over it, hoping to staunch the flow of blood from his belly. He'd probably need to put something else in there for added pressure. Something thick." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Will peeked out from behind his cover to look down the slight slope of the valley." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All he saw was bush." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All he ever saw anymore was bush. But the Viet Cong were still out there, surely, regrouping for a counterattack. It was only luck and a little misdirection that bought even this much time.\n\nDarren paused to grasp Will's shoulder. \"If there was any way, brother.\"\n\n\"I know. I know. Don't mean nothin'.\" Will gasped at the pain in his belly. \"Anyway. 'Tell my momma I done my best,' right?\"\n\n\"I will,\" Darren nodded. He heaved Carlisle up and hustled away.\n\n\"Or better yet, tell his cracker wife an' daughter!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Will shouted, then muttered, \"Yeah. Tell 'em you owe your ass to a darkie.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Will pulled up the M-60, then laid the M-16 next to it. If he could keep both of them going for just a little while when the Cong made their next move, he could hopefully give the impression he wasn't alone. That had already worked once when he and Darren rushed back, guns blazing and grenades going everywhere in their ploy to rescue Carlisle. Maybe he could keep the gag going.\n\nNone of this would've happened if Sergeant Haffner hadn't lost his cool, calling a full retreat without stopping for shit. The six-man team became too spread out trying to keep up. Haffner vanished, Jimenez got wasted from behind, and everything went to hell.\n\nLong Range Recon Patrols used to be more together than this. Will couldn't dwell on that. He dug through his pack, through rations and his poncho and other gear to find the spare Claymore mine. Along the way, the letter from Stephanie fell out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a waste of precious seconds, but he thumbed it open." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It wasn't one she sent during his first tour." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instead, it was the one she'd sent just after his second tour began, angrily justifying her infidelity. He didn't understand why she bothered. It was dirt simple: he went off to war, she said she loved him and she'd wait for him, said she needed him to send money because she couldn't find work... and then he came home after a year in the 'Nam to find her four months pregnant and engaged to whatshisname.\n\nWhy in the fuck he was humping that letter through the bush after a whole 'nother tour was beyond him. He'd meant to bring the one from his younger brother, who wouldn't have to go to 'Nam while Will was in country... or at all now, since Will wouldn't be leaving. Will never would have re-upped for 'Nam if Stephanie hadn't been cheating on him, but at least something good came out of the whole mess.\n\n\"Third tour, my ass,\" Will hissed. Then he heard the snap off to his left. Will raised his M-16 one-handed and started firing off rounds. He didn't care about aim; he just needed to make a ruckus and keep some heads down.\n\nBig Darren could haul ass through the bush." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He'd make good time even while weighed down by that jackass redneck." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Darren was cool. West coast kid. Will liked him, particularly for a white boy. Maybe in his next life Will would have to live on the west coast. It'd be nice if a body could have another chance.\n\nHe saw a head pop up and blew it away with the sixty. He blew away everything around it, too. Every tree branch, every blade of grass. Every nasty little bug.\n\nWill heard shrieks of pain. He poured it on.\n\nThey flanked him, of course." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They shot him twice, in the leg and the small of his back, causing him to jerk and crunch up. Almost over." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They'd want a prisoner. They dug taking prisoners.\n\nWill had hidden the detonator to the Claymore mine right under his backpack. They didn't see it in time. The three Viet Cong that came up on him and turned him over onto his back didn't see the Claymore where it was stuffed under his shirt, either.\n\nNot until he set it off.\n\nTeasing fingers and an indulgent hand slid across his groin. His body would never take such wake-up calls for granted, but such treatment was now less of a surprise. It felt so good that it briefly distracted him from the burning feeling in his closed eyes.\n\nAwareness came with sensations of discomfort: cold, hard metal around his ankles and wrists, with his arms and legs stretched out. This was no bed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His eyes burned painfully, so much that his enjoyment at being groped was quickly disregarded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This was very wrong. His smile faded.\n\nTwo hands grabbed his head to hold it still. Someone else pried his eyes open. A third person poured a cold, clear liquid into his eyes to take away most of the burning sensation. The hands pulled away, allowing him to turn his head and blink away the solution, the blurriness, and the fading pain. The hand didn't leave his groin.\n\nAlex thrashed his head a bit to clear it. The last thing on his mind right now was sex. Lorelei was in danger. Rachel vanished. He had been attacked at his home. For all he knew, his mother had been there, too, and now... now he was in a cold, dimly-lit room, chained to a table." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Regardless of how his flesh reacted to that hand at his groin, Alex didn't feel aroused. He felt afraid." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'couple' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Strange people stood around the table. A couple of them were very pale, specifically a man in an all-black suit and a woman in an elaborate black dress fit for a medieval queen. Alex saw other strange folk, too, like the dark cowboy, and the man in black robes with his hood drawn to hide his face. The only normal-looking person was a distinguished, well-groomed, older man, also in a sharp suit, only his clothes had some color. A pentagram on a chain rested over his red power tie.\n\n\"Not complaining about me being on your dick now, are you?\" Lydia asked Alex with a venomous smile and feigned affection. She loomed over him dressed in an elegant green gown. She gave him a lewd squeeze.\n\nAlex pulled against the restraints, but he could move only a couple of inches. The way his body reacted to Lydia filled him with revulsion." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It would appear you were right, Lord Stefan,\" said a deep, relaxed voice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Lorelei here reacts to Lydia touching him just as you suspected.\"\n\nAlex twisted to look to his right. He saw Lorelei muzzled and chained to the floor. Standing over her was Lydia's date from the restaurant... only different. He looked more imposing now. He wore a purple dress shirt and black slacks, but no tie or jacket. His eyes had gone black.\n\nLorelei's eyes conveyed a swirl of emotions. The muzzle prevented her from giving voice to any of them.\n\n\"Your name is Alexander Carlisle,\" said the distinguished-looking man in the suit. \"You are roughly a month short of your twentieth birthday. You are a student at North Seattle Community College and a part-time file clerk for Keating and Rose. You live with your mother, Michelle Carlisle. You were rejected for military service. Need I go on?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alex remained silent. He glared at the speaker in part to avoid looking at Lydia." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: Your response must contain: \"Ah. I see. You do not, at least not personally, but you fought with him the night you met Lorelei and—\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No, I need not. You rightly fear for your mother's safety. However, she is not a part of this. I need you to focus instead on Lorelei and how the two of you came together.\" He pulled a picture out of his pocket and showed it to him. \"Do you know this man?\"\n\nAlex wondered if he should answer. Instead, the choice was taken away from him.\n\n\"Ah. I see. You do not, at least not personally, but you fought with him the night you met Lorelei and—\" Stefan cut himself off. He fell silent as if watching something unfold on a television. \"And you watched him die,\" Stefan finished. \"Lorelei killed him. His assistants died, too. Everything burned.\"\n\nThe pit in Alex's stomach deepened. Stefan seemed to read things straight from his mind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He also realized that Stefan gave only an edited account." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I was correct,\" Stefan said, looking from Lydia to Baal. \"Our exiled former Brother pursued his research. He summoned up Lorelei in an attempt to enslave her. Carlisle stumbled upon him while pursuing some unrelated foolishness. He saw what he thought was a bizarre gang rape about to occur and so he intervened. In the process, he was connected to the succubus. He is currently both her victim and her master.\"\n\n\"Curious,\" Baal replied. \"What else?\"\n\nStefan frowned. He stared at Alex, who wondered why Stefan didn't mention Rachel. Stefan's eyebrows rose. \"I am unsure of the efficacy of our former Brother's ritual, but I can confirm that Carlisle is not a Practitioner, as we suspected. Examining the details of the incident through his recollection will require enhancement of his memory's accuracy and reach. Warren here is an expert in such things,\" he added, gesturing to the man in robes.\n\n\"How good of you to share all of your suspicions with the rest of us, Lord Stefan,\" murmured the pale woman in the regal dress.\n\n\"Does our bargain hold, Lord Baal?\" asked Stefan.\n\n\"It does,\" said the man with the smoky eyes, \"if Lydia feels it appropriate.\"\n\n\"And ours?\" asked the other woman.\n\n\"Lady Anastacia,\" Lydia smiled, clearly enjoying her moment of glory, \"I will happily fulfill all agreements when my business here is completed. Would you mind waiting for me upstairs? This will all likely become a bit... visceral and crude.\"\n\nLady Anastacia stiffened, but gave a polite nod." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She held out her hand for the man in the black suit." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They walked out together with the cowboy in tow.\n\n\"Warren?\" asked Lord Stefan. \"What more do you need?\"\n\n\"I have blood and hair and flesh,\" the man in the robes said. \"All I need now is a few tears.\"\n\n\"I'd hate to make you wait,\" Lydia shrugged. She promptly reached to Alex's face, forcing one eye open and then rubbing a finger over it. Alex tried to fight it, but she was too strong. The robed man held a vial against the side of his irritated eye until the tears flowed.\n\n\"With this,\" Warren said, \"I will only need a short time and some privacy to complete my work. I will return immediately upon its completion.\"\n\n\"Then let not another moment of my master's time be wasted,\" Lydia shrugged." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I will keep our prisoners occupied until you are ready.\"\n\n\"Lord Stefan,\" said Baal, \"might I speak with you upstairs?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Stefan nodded. He pulled Warren aside, conferring with him in a language Alex didn't recognize and could barely hear anyway. They both turned to leave.\n\nBefore he followed, Baal lingered to stare at Alex. The young man and Lorelei looked to one another with mutual concern.\n\n\"You know,\" Baal mused, \"he looks oddly familiar.\"\n\n\"I thought as much myself,\" Lydia shrugged. She indulged herself in a slap across Alex's face... and then another, and then another. Her open hand didn't injure him, but it delivered more stinging pain than any punch Alex had suffered all week." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Still intent on killing him with kindness?\" Baal smiled." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Later, master,\" Lydia smiled. \"That will wait until I haven't so many cats to herd. Lorelei deserves to feel him go. I would hate to rush it.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "help write? five sentences more, same character context, Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica genre thx" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rachel felt the first sensations of pleasure forced upon her lover. For a brief moment, it lifted her hopes. Then she felt the accompanying revulsion that replaced any feeling of enjoyment. The sensations continued while the revulsion grew.\n\nRevulsion, and fear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She stood in the summoning circle, staring off into space and trying to control her worries." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sensations she received from Alex—sexy, hopeful, then the polar opposite of both—gave her all too good an idea of who had him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She couldn't see him, though." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She saw only her surroundings. Just pagan décor, yard-sale shelving and candles.\n\nRachel tried to break through the summoning circle many times after Molly and Onyx left her there. The pair had done their job all too well. She was good and stuck here, until either their summoning ritual wore off—and Heaven only knew how long that would be—or until they released the spell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He couldn't die like this." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not now. Not after so many lonely and painful lifetimes. Not when that whole pattern seemed to have been broken... except it was entirely possible that this was just another tragic ending.\n\nOverwhelmed with fear for her new love, only so recently consummated in her heart as well as physically, Rachel sank to her knees. Even angels prayed." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\n11 sentences\nGenre:\nParanormal Fantasy, Erotica" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The suburban woods and hills northeast of Seattle along the shores of Lake Washington could conceal much. Urban development competed with natural scenery over the years as the city and its neighbors expanded. With enough money, connections and planning, one could take advantage of the sorts of obstructing hillsides thick tree lines that most locals took for granted.\n\nNot long after joining Ms. Black and Talon in their dark SUV, Molly and Onyx felt that they were out in the middle of nowhere. They both knew that couldn't actually be the case. Yet the tall, seemingly thick woods lining both sides of the empty road created an air of isolation.\n\nThey finally turned off to a side road, where a pair of pale men in black trench coats and dark-toned clothes tended a tall wrought-iron gate. Talon, behind the wheel, leaned out and said something in Russian. One guard walked a full circle around the vehicle, casually holding a rifle of some sort under his coat. The other waited until the circling guard gave a nod. Then he opened the gate by hand." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Up ahead, not entirely obstructed by trees and a rising landscape from the gate, waited a huge home reminiscent of a southern plantation manor. Numerous cars sat parked in a small lot off to one side. The grounds were spacious, with the trees cleared away from the house for a good fifty yards in any direction.\n\nAs the SUV rolled up to the manor, Ms. Black leaned over from the front seat. \"This is a highly unusual assemblage,\" she said. \"We don't normally associate so openly with the, erm, nightlife. Tonight's a special occasion, though. The Brotherhood has been invited here to establish peaceful ties with their society.\"\n\n\"Anyone else invited?\" Molly asked. \"We gonna get to meet our first werewolves?\"\n\nTalon hissed. \"Don't even joke about that.\"\n\nMolly blinked. \"Wait, for real? I thought that was just a cheap movie gimmick. You guys really don't get along?\"\n\n\"Few supernaturals get along with others as a general rule. But I wouldn't worry about them,\" Talon said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He seemed to glance up at them through the mirror, but as he cast no reflection they couldn't be sure. \"They have incentives to stay away. Still, do yourselves a favor and don't bring it up. It's the only advice I will give. That, and... should you in any way violate the hospitality of the Lady or our host, Lord Blackthorne, you will discover the sorts of torments one learns to inflict over the course of a few hundred years of practice.\"\n\nMolly held back from telling Talon how frightening he wasn't. She had to be nice. Tact and deference were vital to their cover story. She and Onyx could only afford to show the bare minimum of contempt for vampires expected within the Practicing community.\n\n\"Seems like a pretty random Monday night to have such a party,\" Onyx observed.\n\nTalon pulled the SUV up to the front steps of the manor. Several men waited to open doors, take coats and provide other simple assistance. \"It was short notice for all of us, but the Lady's invitations are not to be ignored,\" Talon said. \"Much of the Puget Sound is here tonight—all who could possibly make it. The Lady promises to explain all before the hour grows late.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ms. Black glanced at his back as he got out, then rolled her eyes for the benefit of her new associates. \"Pretentious douchebags, all of them,\" she muttered. \"Not as powerful as pop culture would have us believe, but they are still very dangerous. And numerous." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Watch yourselves in there. The vampires don't want to piss us off, but many are letting their freak flags fly to intimidate us. Naturally, the Brotherhood doesn't feel like being cowed. You're bound to see some wild sights tonight. If anything appalls you, come talk to one of us before you do anything rash. This is a diplomatically sensitive event. Lord Stefan warned us that the precious Lady Anastacia has made some... otherworldly allies as well. Live and let live is the rule tonight.\" With that, she exited.\n\n\"I'm almost ready to cut our guest loose right now,\" Molly murmured.\n\n\"This doesn't prove anything about her story,\" Onyx countered. They glanced at one another, silently agreeing not to speak of Rachel again. Instead, they both took a deep breath and got out of the SUV. The attendants bowed, but made no approach.\n\nAs they followed Ms. Black up the steps, they shared another of their near-telepathic looks. They both felt the powerful sorcerous ward over the building when they crossed it. It would surely block out any clairvoyance or other magical perception from outside. Within their own wards, the Brotherhood would hold a significant advantage of power in any sorcerous conflict." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Neither Molly nor Onyx expected they would be allowed to attune themselves to the ward." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That sort of trust wouldn't be extended easily or quickly. The raw numbers here were more than enough of a deterrent to any trouble, but the ward redoubled the importance of subterfuge and guile as their only feasible tools here. If the ward fell, both Molly and Onyx would be able to employ much more power... but breaking it would require significant physical damage to a casting circle they couldn't even see, or to the building itself. Even then, there were still an awful lot of potential enemies present.\n\nAs if they needed the reminder, they found Talon at the top of the steps, speaking with another pair of vampires. \"I'm available to help, Lucien,\" Talon offered to a thuggish vampire in an all-black suit. With him was a pale blonde woman in black slacks, a black bustier and a leather jacket.\n\nThe other vampire gave a subtle, dismissive wave. \"It's likely just college kids looking for a place to go party off in the woods. Natalia and I can handle it. We'll just add them to the party favors. The Lady is honored that you have relocated here from the Old World. Stay and enjoy yourself.\" He laid a hand on Talon's shoulder, nodded, and then descended the steps with the blonde in tow.\n\nOnyx and Molly shared yet another pensive, curious glance, along with the same resultant frown." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They could do little but press forward. Ms. Black returned to the pair, bringing along a waiter with a tray of champagne glasses. She wasn't surprised when they turned down the drinks. \"Can I show you around, then?\" she offered. \"Introduce you to a few people?\"\n\nInside, the lighting was predictably dim. Opulence reigned throughout the interior, with vaulted ceilings, handcrafted staircases, immaculate carpets, statues and other artwork everywhere. It was much more a mansion than a house.\n\nHushed conversations were heard from the corners. Pale figures in all manner of black or at least darkly colored costumes mingled together. Weapons were evident from a number of eras: daggers, swords, even a few black-powder pistols could be seen amid the fashion show." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Mr. Woods,\" Ms. Black called, beckoning to a dashing man in his mid-thirties. \"Do you have a moment to spare?\" He graciously excused himself from his conversation with a markedly pale couple in Victorian dress to join the three women. \"I want you to meet a pair of prospective new members. This is Onyx and Molly.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Mr. Woods smiled, offering his hand. \"It's a pleasure to meet you both, particularly in a nice, sociable environment. We're all terribly sorry about the incident with Kenneth.\"\n\nOnyx took his hand, but only warily. \"News travels that fast?\"\n\n\"I had to see to his release from both the emergency room and police custody. He gave me a complete description of the two of you, though he forgot to mention how lovely you both are. He was more than a little irate, of course, but I can't say I have any sympathy for him. He knows he should be polite whenever he's recruiting.\"\n\nMolly also shook hands with Mr. Woods. \"Might want to get a different recruiter,\" she suggested with a grin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, certainly,\" Mr. Woods agreed. \"Ultimately Kenneth was well out of bounds in the whole matter. Regardless, you showed both skill and discretion in response. We'd prefer chalk it up to an impressive audition and an awkward misunderstanding rather than hostility. So, by way of saying bygones on behalf of the Brotherhood, welcome to the party.\"\n\n\"Some party,\" Onyx noted, looking around meaningfully.\n\nAs expected, Ms. Black had understated the oddities of the party. Here and there wandered shapely young men and women in little clothing, mostly either a pair of black silk shorts for the men or tiny strapless black dresses for the women. None of them looked particularly thin, yet they were not at all out of shape. The women wore their hair up; the men had theirs cut short. None of them spoke, or even seemed to be entirely all there mentally. They lingered near the vampires, who would occasionally reach out to draw one of them close for a brief bite. Mostly they bit at the neck or the wrists, but a few of the vampires just had to be kinky about it and bite elsewhere. The seemingly mesmerized young man or woman would wait patiently, even with some degree of pleasure on his or her face, while the vampire took his or her fill." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then the well-groomed snacks moved on about the party.\n\nThe Brotherhood would not be outdone. While their numbers were notably fewer, and while their styles generally held to business casual—with one or two robed exceptions—they seemed pointedly unfazed by the undead festivities. The sorcerers showed off in their own way: an impossibly glowing trinket here, a bit of telekinesis or illusory companionship there. A couple of them even had small, almost feral red imps riding on their shoulders, who took full advantage of every hors d'ourves tray that wandered close enough for their lashing tails to reach.\n\n\"Ah. Yes. I'll go out on a limb and guess that this is your first social experience among supernaturals in any significant numbers, yes?\" Mr. Woods mused.\n\n\"You could say that,\" Onyx nodded.\n\nHis friendly smile never wavered. \"Then I'll also hazard a guess that the both of you come by your youthful beauty legitimately, rather than through magic.\"\n\n\"I'm right here, Woods,\" Ms. Black scowled playfully, giving his arm a slap. \"He's saying I got a cheap magic facelift and boob job.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm saying you got a remarkable magic facelift and boob job, among other things,\" Mr. Woods bowed with equal joviality." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'there' 2 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But back to my point: the nightlife have a penchant for reminding themselves how far removed they are from ordinary folk. They like to feel they're above conventional morality—can't say I don't sympathize there—and so they go to great lengths to reinforce that premise when among their own. Depending on how adventurous you feel, you could find any number of much more licentious scenes behind the closed doors of this mansion. Some would gladly show you around if you're interested in that sort of thing.\"\n\nMolly frowned a bit. Inside, she suspected that she would be nothing short of appalled, but she had a cover to maintain. \"I think we'll take things a bit slow, thanks. We're still hoping to get to know the rest of our fellow Practitioners better.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Woods shrugged. \"I'm just saying, bring together a gathering of people with power and knowledge beyond ordinary mortals, add in the thrills of a secret society, then provide demonstrable proof that they're all above the law, and the result will be...\" he gestured grandly with his open hand and with the one holding his champagne glass. \"... us.\" His smile broadened. \"I am therefore reluctant to pass judgment on our hosts.\"\n\n\"I find it all a bit gross, to be honest,\" Ms. Black confessed in a conspiratorial tone. \"There are a couple of men here I've met before from my other social functions. I used to think they were charming and attractive, but now that I know what I'm looking at? Ugh.\"\n\n\"And there it is, ladies,\" Woods said as if drawing a lesson to its conclusion. \"The vaunted charm and sexual allure of the undead crumbles once you see past the façade." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "help write? five sentences more, same character context, Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica genre thx" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Has she told you she loves you?\"\n\nAlex kept his mouth shut. He stared at the ceiling. He hated himself for the way his body reacted to the lithe, sensuous woman laying on him, speaking in such an adoring yet venomous voice. He wanted to look at Lorelei, but he couldn't meet her eyes while this woman had him so mortifyingly aroused." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was grateful he was still dressed, and terrified at the thought that he probably wouldn't be so for much longer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lydia rose to straddle his hips. She slowly rocked back and forth on her knees. \"I imagine she lets you feel like you're in charge... lets you feel like a big, strong, masterful man. Does she call you master? Does it help you feel like you're in charge? Like you can trust her?\"\n\nAlex remained silent. Lydia grabbed at his hair, turning him to one side to lick the side of his neck, much as Rachel had greeted him hours before, only without any of the warmth.\n\n\"Why won't you talk to me?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "she cooed in his ear. \"Don't you have anything to say at all?\"\n\n\"Nothing you won't just use against me,\" he grunted.\n\n\"Oh, sweet Alex,\" Lydia cooed, \"I thought you'd be used to that already? Admit it. You love being dominated by a succubus. Lorelei has you wrapped around her finger. Don't you know that? Haven't you already seen? She plays you like an instrument, and you only want her to play more and more.\" Her face loomed over his, split by an animalistic grin." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Doesn't it get you off? You have no worries. You can just lay there and let her take care of everything.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her hands slipped under his shirt. They were soft. Tantalizing. His mind and body fought over whether her touch excited him or if it made his skin crawl.\n\n\"You know I'm going to give you more than she has, right?\" Lydia asked, still swaying against his body." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Lorelei has held back on you, Alex. I can tell. I won't hold back at all.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Find a natural way to mention that I mean I will give you pleasures any man would die for," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You mean you're going to kill me,\" he sneered.\n\n\"I mean I will give you pleasures any man would die for,\" Lydia smiled. \"Don't worry about Lorelei. She'll get to share. Believe me, I want her to feel every moment of you and I together, right to the very last. I'm nothing if not generous.\"\n\n\"You're a wretch.\"\n\nLydia let out delighted squeal." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He fights! Oh, how he fights. It's nice to be called something other than a whore for once.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why would I insult whores like that?\"\n\nThe succubus laughed. She lowered her breasts against Alex's chin as she writhed on top of him. \"Lorelei, you've taught him well,\" Lydia taunted. Then she looked back down at Alex, who would have bitten her if he wasn't sure it would just be another thing to mock him about. \"Don't try to goad me into ending your life quickly, Alex,\" she said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I won't have it. You will leave this world with my name falling gratefully from your lips.\"\n\nShe sounded so sure of it. He was chained here, and so was Lorelei. There was nothing either of them could do. Alex tried not to despair, but he knew she was right." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He probably couldn't hold out against this. Revolted as he was by Lydia and the situation, chances were that she'd probably just drive him out of his mind before long. Maybe with drugs, maybe with sleep deprivation. Though he resolved not to give in to Lydia, he just couldn't see a way out.\n\nHer tongue curled around his ear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alex turned his face away, roughly trying to bump her head aside in some small show of contempt and resistance, but Lydia just smiled at that, too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She smiled at everything.\n\n\"Where's Rachel?\" he finally asked in a hushed voice.\n\nLydia raised her head up again, looking down at him with an arched eyebrow. \"Ah yes. Your foul-mouthed angel friend. She gave me quite the talking to,\" Lydia chuckled. \"Almost had me crying and cowering in a corner.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lydia looked here and there in the room, making a show of gazing over her shoulder. Then she laid back down against him. \"Stefan told Warren that their lost 'brother' summoned an angel as well as Lorelei,\" she whispered. \"He thought I couldn't hear, or maybe thought I couldn't understand the language." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Turns out I've gotten around over the centuries. Clearly, he hopes to try all this for himself. Silly mortal.\n\n\"Anyway, don't worry about Rachel interrupting us, Alex,\" Lydia smiled. \"She's already dead.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode: Collab writing\nContext: May reference existing characters/world\nAmount: nine sentences\nVoice: Elliot Kay" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We ain't fuckin' torturin' nobody,\" Wade said firmly.\n\n\"Then how do we get this guy to talk?\" Taylor asked, waving at the vampire still pinned under her car.\n\n\"You don't,\" Lucien grunted. He tried again to gain leverage. Again, Drew kicked the legs out from under him. Lucien growled in pain as the car once more settled down on his back. \"You just die in agony. Your families die in agony. You all spend your last moments on this Earth begging for death!\"\n\n\"Bitch, you gonna spend your last moments on this Earth with that mouth duct taped shut if you don't shut the fuck up,\" Drew warned him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Look, torture only works on television an' in the wet dreams of chairborne rangers,\" Wade scowled. \"All you get is whatever sort'a confession's gonna stop the pain. Maybe y'all get the guy to talk, but that don't make what he says accurate.\"\n\nLucien let out a bitter laugh. His eyes darted between the group. The only one who was not part of the conversation was Jason, who busily looked through the SUV. Off to the side, the gas station attendant sat on the curb bound with duct tape. Drew and Jason had less sympathy for the guy when they found out he hadn't been calling 911.\n\n\"I don't suppose your people in that mansion up the road would be open to a prisoner swap instead?\" Taylor asked. \"You for Alex and Lorelei?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They might,\" Lucien ventured, \"if you move quickly.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: Your response must contain: \"Well, there's that, at least,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well, there's that, at least,\" Taylor said, looking back to Wade. \"Obviously they'd just try to kill all of us rather than doing a prisoner swap, so we'd be stupid to try. But that at least confirms they've got Alex and Lorelei.\"\n\nLucien growled in frustration. The girl was clever. \"The Lady will be good to her word! She is always good to her word! Approach under a flag of truce and it will be honored.\"\n\nJason came back carefully holding a large sub-machinegun. It bore all sorts of accessories, from a flash suppressor to a folding stock. \"They've got a couple other guns back there, too,\" Jason noted as he offered the weapon to Wade, who took it with interest.\n\n\"Yeah, prisoner swaps ain't happenin',\" Wade decided." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Your people are likely to jus' figure they're all way too tricksy for us simple mortal folk, so they'll jus' do somethin' shady to screw us.\" He pulled the magazine out of the weapon with some familiarity. He wasn't an expert with this particular piece, but he at least knew the basics. The odd red rings around the tips of the bullets made his eyebrows rise. \"What's up with these bullets?\" Wade asked.\n\nLucien only scowled.\n\n\"Oh, right, y'all ain't gonna talk.\" Wade reloaded the weapon, slung it over his shoulder and then went to his pick-up truck. He pulled the spare gas canister out of the back and walked in the direction of the gas pumps." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do you think this bit of theater frightens me?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lucien snapped. \"I tortured warriors twice your size back when this land bore only savages! I've seen all these games before! You don't have it in you, and neither do your friends!\"\n\n\"Yeah?\" the young veteran asked. \"So after all that experience, tell me this: How long y' reckon it takes f'r a guy to learn that some folks just need killin'?\"\n\nLucien's aggressive demeanor lessened as Wade kept moving. For the first moment in all of this, the vampire seemed a touch unnerved.\n\n\"Man, we can't just light him on fire,\" Drew protested.\n\n\"You better start talking,\" Jason told the vampire in what was half a warning and half a plea.\n\nTaylor just watched, crossing her arms uncomfortably across her chest as Wade started filling the container.\n\n\"Wade,\" Drew said, \"you serious about this?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Folks, this dude is runnin' around armed and dangerous, answerin' to no law or authority we know. Ah bet y'all ain't even an American citizen, am I right?\" Wade asked, looking at Lucien pointedly as he brought the gas canister over. \"Yeah, figured as much. So he's answerin' to some boss who ain't no legal power, runnin' around in mah country with illegal military weapons, kidnappin' and assaultin' mah fellow citizens... y'all get what ah'm sayin' here? Ah'm good an' pissed 'bout Alex an' Lorelei, but it ain't just about mah friends now.\"\n\n\"You're saying he's a terrorist?\" Taylor blinked.\n\n\"Maybe not by definition, but it's the same sort'a problem,\" Wade nodded. \"We're lookin' at a dude who makes war on our country without bein' part o' any nation. He ain't gonna accept nothin' short o' total dominance, an' he'll obviously kill anyone who gets in his way. He ain't gonna back down. An' we can't put him on trial.\" Wade set the gas canister down on the ground next to him. He threw the safety on the sub-machinegun.\n\nLucien fumed. \"You still won't get into that mansion to save your friends if you kill me. No mortal can cross that threshold tonight.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Wade cocked his head curiously. \"Now, why's that?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "/insert_quote: \"The home is mystically warded. As I say, no mortal can cross the threshold uninvited—or any of its other portals. Unless you've some way of walking through walls, you'd best reconsider a prisoner exchange.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The home is mystically warded. As I say, no mortal can cross the threshold uninvited—or any of its other portals. Unless you've some way of walking through walls, you'd best reconsider a prisoner exchange.\"\n\n\"How do we know that the people we want are still alive?\" Taylor asked.\n\n\"They are both to be kept alive for... for the purposes of other bargains,\" Lucien admitted.\n\n\"Not as party favors for you to munch on?\" Drew pressed.\n\n\"No. Certainly not the demon. Your friend is being kept away from the festivities in part to prevent just such a waste. He is in the basement, safe from accidental harm.\"\n\n\"Good to know,\" Wade nodded. He put a three-round burst from the sub-machinegun into the vampire.\n\n\"What the fuck?!\" Drew burst.\n\n\"Woah!\" Jason protested." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Taylor looked on in shock." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lucien quickly crumbled to ash." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Somewhere in your response, you need to say: \"We didn't agree to killin' him!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Soon only clothes and ashes remained under Taylor's car.\n\n\"Yup. 's what ah figured,\" Wade said. \"Some sorta anti-vampire bullets.\"\n\n\"We didn't agree to killin' him!\" Drew shouted, shoving Wade back.\n\n\"Ah know,\" Wade nodded. He set the gun on the ground and put his hands up. \"Ah know we didn't wanna just kill 'im. Ah'm not big on that sorta shit mahself, an' ah never let it happen like that in the Army. But ah ain't in the Army now, Drew. We ain't got no back-up, an' we got no place to put a captured vampire who just said two minutes ago he was gonna kill all of us an' all our families. You think he didn't mean that?\"\n\nTaylor just stared at the remains." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I feel like I'm supposed to be sick,\" she thought aloud." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You prob'ly would be, if'n y'all were lookin' at a real dead body. But that ain't. That's some monster that should'a been killed a long time ago.\"\n\n\"In cold blood?\" Jason shot back. \"While he's helpless?\"\n\n\"Ah know,\" Wade admitted. \"Ah know that. But ah didn't see no other option. If'n' y'all never talk to me again, ah'm gonna be sad, but ah un'erstand. But right now we ain't got no other options. They got our friends an' they're gonna come after us unless we do somethin' about it.\"\n\n\"Well, what the fuck do you suggest?\" Drew snapped. \"Our only source of information's dead now! An' we don't even know if what he said is true!\"\n\n\"We don't, but we gotta go with it,\" Wade shrugged. \"Ah got an idea. Need y'all to help, though. Ah'm sorry, Drew. Ah'm sorry for all of this. Ah'm prob'ly gonna be sorry for the rest of mah life, an' if ah saw another option, ah would'a taken it. But our boy's in trouble an' we're his only shot right now. Alright? Y'all wanna whup mah ass, you're the guy t' do it, an' it ain't like I don't have it comin' for this. But let's go get our friends first, alright?\"\n\nDrew looked at him for a long, hard moment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You got a plan?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ah got half a plan,\" Wade nodded. \"Th' rest we gotta make up as we go. An' ah gotta say, we're prob'ly just all gonna get killed.\"\n\n\"He already took a bullet for me,\" Taylor said. \"I won't just let him go.\"\n\nJason shrugged. \"I was gonna bomb my mid-terms anyway.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Write 12 sentences sentences in the style of Elliot Kay spawning from what the user wrote, within the Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica genre. This is part of a longer narrative where characters and events may have prior context." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Don't Cry" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He remembered walking to Opilio's house, feeling cheated, feeling bitter, just knowing that this would destroy any chance at building a decent life again. He'd been right, too. The abrupt end to his memories bore that out. It was the same feeling he'd had when the slavers clubbed him over the head. After this second blackout, though, nothing else followed.\n\nHe remembered sitting in the recruiter's office in Detroit, giving his name, rank and serial number and requesting to go back into that stinking bush, trying all the while not to weep. The recruiter didn't even ask why. His tears didn't flow then, but they flowed now.\n\nHe remembered Marie in the rearview mirror of the truck as he returned to the front, back to where 2nd Armored would go right back into the thick of it with the Germans. She waved, then hung her head and turned away. They exchanged letters right to the end, but that was the last he ever saw of her.\n\nHe remembered all the awful, thoughtless, stupid things he said to Siobhan." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He hadn't meant any of it, hadn't meant to say anything but \"I'm hurt\" and \"this is hard for me\" and \"I love you.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 8 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The hurtful things came out of his mouth and crushed her feelings like so many slaps in her beautiful, wounded face. He remembered desperately wanting to take them all back, and he remembered the moment when he found out that it was too late.\n\nHe remembered building Halla's funeral pyre and lighting it, the morning after he had spent all night cradling her bloodied body in his arms.\n\nHe remembered dying alone and afraid in a dirty street in a Holy Land that seemed less and less holy every day since he left home.\n\nHe remembered all that, and so much more: finding his wife slain by Shaka's warriors for failing to show proper grief for Nandi's passing. Finding his wife bent over his dinner table by the very priest who had officiated the wedding, and her snarling demand that he leave her alone despite the flowers in his hand and the horror in his eyes. All that, and so much more.\n\nIt was too much to bear all alone." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: The user will write a bit then you need to write around one sentence continuing directly from the user's text. Note: Characters may be introduced as if already known - maintain any existing context or treat as new if unclear.\n\nGenre: Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This oughta make 'em shit their pants,\" Wade declared." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He looked over their collective handiwork on the vampires' SUV." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The interior behind the driver's seat was absolutely soaked with oil and gasoline." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gas-soaked newspapers and other combustibles were stuffed into the back and everything useful to the crew had been stripped from its insides." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If we can get it close enough,\" Jason scowled." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We'll get in. Only two guards at the front gate from the looks of things. It's damn easy t' get complacent when you're guardin' someone else's party in whut should be a quiet area.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Anyone still not down with this?\" Drew asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm down,\" Taylor put in, \"but I've got a question. You aren't driving this thing in, 'cause you've gotta be ready to follow in and cover with the gun, right?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yup,\" Wade nodded. \"It's gotta be Jason or Drew.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Rock paper scissors for it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Drew asked Jason. The other shrugged in consent." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Uh, guys,\" Taylor broke in, \"Drew hardly ever drives.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"She's got a point,\" Jason frowned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Guess it's gotta be me.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yeah, but Jason—do you know how to drive stick?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jason blinked. \"Oh no,\" he groaned." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His eyes darted between Drew's and Wade's, and then he covered his face in his hands." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No. Seriously, Taylor, you can't.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No way,\" Wade shook his head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Uh-uh. No. Not doin' it, girl,\" Drew said firmly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's gotta be me, guys,\" Taylor pressed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It can't be Wade and it can't be Drew, and Jason would break his neck anyway.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I would not!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You would, too. You've never done anything like this. And you're the only one besides Wade who's ever even handled a gun. The only two of us who can even maybe handle something like this are Drew and I, and we don't have time to get Drew used to driving this thing.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, like you have done something like this before?\" Jason countered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I've got the closest skill set anyone else here, yes,\" Taylor said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm not calling you a wimp, Jason. I wouldn't do that. I know better. But we've gotta roll with what we've got, and that means I'm the best candidate.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Wade,\" said Drew, \"this plan sucks ass all of a sudden. We need a new plan.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You got one? Ah'm listenin'.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Drew scowled, looking warily at Taylor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's a lot to do all in a heartbeat, and you're gonna be exposed.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I know,\" Taylor swallowed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He'd do it for any of us. We wouldn't be here otherwise.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Alex doesn't know how to drive stick, either,\" Jason muttered bitterly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Okay,\" Drew said after a deep breath. \"Okay, but I'm goin' in with you.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: The user will write a bit then you need to write around one sentence continuing directly from the user's text. Note: Characters may be introduced as if already known - maintain any existing context or treat as new if unclear.\n\nGenre: Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rachel saw the brilliant flash of orange light from miles away in the sky above." }, { "from": "human", "value": "By the time the sound reached her, she realized she could see Alex again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She dove toward the fire without a second thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The crash distracted Lydia badly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was just the break Alex needed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He pulled the .45 from his underarm holster and fired straight into Lydia's chest." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She stumbled back, dropping him, and before she could recover he put the whole clip into her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She shouldn't have had a torso left." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alex knew—somehow—that the .45 could do an awful lot of damage, particularly this close, and it wasn't like Lydia was a stocky person." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But while she was clearly hurt, staggering against the wall behind her, he saw little blood." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The gunfire tore up her dress and left her looking somewhat punch drunk, but she still stood." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alex heaved himself up, grabbed her hair, and pulled her roughly into the service room." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He grunted, \"This is for Antioch, bitch!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and hurled her by her hair toward the window." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lydia slammed up against the window, but did not go through." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The glass held. She slumped to the floor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh god dammit,\" Alex huffed." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He picked her up by her hair again, got a good running start, and made a second go of it. This time she went through." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Write 7 sentences sentences in the style of Elliot Kay spawning from what the user wrote. Note: Characters and worldbuilding may appear mid-story." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lorelei's talons dug into the floor as she was dragged to the portal." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They left long, deep scars in the carpet and even the concrete beneath them, but they only partially slowed the arm pulling her through the hall. Slashing at Baal's hand and wrist had done no good; the vicious wounds healed almost instantly. He wouldn't give up. Several more impossibly long arms reached out, too, grabbing at her legs, her hips, her shoulders.\n\nThe portal would only be open for a scant few more moments. Crossing directly from Hell like this was an immense effort. It would not have been done lightly, nor would Baal let it go wasted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lorelei felt the heat of the Pit on her legs and her waist as she began to pass through the portal.\n\n\"Lorelei!\" Alex yelled. She saw him rushing to her, armed and furious. He fired at the monsters behind her as he ran. Molly and Onyx followed only a few steps behind, rushing up with their eyes wide with shock at what they saw.\n\nThe bullets had no real effect. Alex dropped the gun, snatching Lorelei's wrists." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He dug in for every bit of leverage he could to pull her back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He's too strong!\" Lorelei cried out. \"Don't let him take you, too! Alex, no!\"\n\n\"Hold on!\" Rachel cried out from the end of the hallway. Her wings folded in as she landed, rushing headlong to aid them. A battered, charred monster appeared behind her, moving with even greater urgency. Harrow bounded over her, shoving down on her shoulders as if vaulting off of a pommel horse. Rachel stumbled face-first to the floor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Harrow batted Molly and Onyx aside. The demon roared again, tackling Alex just as the young man thought for a heartbeat that he might somehow win this unreal tug-of-war. Alex was knocked off his feet. He tumbled after Lorelei into the portal.\n\nWhat had seemed like a horizontal plane suddenly became a long fall down a shaft. Alex still had hold of Lorelei's wrists. Baal's hands vanished, as did the others." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Harrow's wings spread out behind him, slowing his fall.\n\nHe wasn't the only one so capable. Lorelei threw her arms around Alex, spreading her wings out as they descended. She tried to flap them, to create some sort of lift, but she was too weary. \"You shouldn't have done this,\" she said to him, her head buried against his shoulder.\n\n\"I won't let you go,\" he said.\n\nShe clung to him fiercely." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Fear no evil, my love. It is your only chance here.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Above them, watching the group fall, Molly and Onyx saw the portal begin to shrink." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Onyx threw her wand against one side of it, trying to hold it open on instinct and magical willpower alone. Molly quickly followed, stabbing into the ripples in space created on her side of the portal with her verawood wand.\n\n\"Can you pull them back?\" Onyx asked.\n\n\"Not without letting go!\" Molly grunted.\n\n\"Just hold it open!\" Rachel shouted. She dove in, a sudden rush of light and wind rushing past the two witches.\n\nWinged shapes rushed up to meet the angel, shooting past succubus, mortal and great demon alike." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Small flying monsters with poisoned tails and claws already dripping with blood beset her. Rachel's wings pushed against the air, slowing her descent while she swung her blade wide. The first of the little beasts was instantly incinerated. Others pressed in.\n\nFar below her, Lorelei and Alex fluttered down until Harrow struck from above. Harrow's monstrous hands bashed them both and ruined the hold Lorelei's wings had on the warm air around them. Their fall ended with a sudden, merciless impact.\n\nAlex forced himself up off of the ground." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He saw monsters of a hundred different sorts surrounding them. None of them looked alike; he saw scales and boils, mottled fur and rent flesh, baleful red eyes and things with nothing at all in their eye sockets. Horns, tails and wings were everywhere, but beyond that very few of them bore any real resemblance to one another except for their hungry, frightful demeanor.\n\nLorelei struggled to rise beside him. The succubus had landed on her back. As she tried to get up, a large, burned white foot slammed down on her chest from above. Harrow growled menacingly.\n\nAs before, Alex didn't think; he just acted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The gladius was in his hands again, slashing at Harrow fiercely. The demon raised his hand as if to block it, but the blade bit deeply into his skin. He shrieked, jerking the limb back, then shrank back yet again as Alex swung and struck home at Harrow's side, drawing more dark blood.\n\nThe demon's foot came off of Lorelei, leaving her coughing and rolling to one side. Alex stepped over her, ready to swing at the thing again without understanding how he could possibly have hurt something so fearsome.\n\n\"This has entertained me,\" said a voice like a dozen different animals all calling out in the night. The cacophony only barely made any sense to the ear." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alex risked a look over his shoulder to see eight feet of black, soot-covered horror with an iron crown standing over him. \"I will allow you to leave my realm, mortal,\" Baal sneered.\n\nAlex kept his guard up. He tried to stay wary of Harrow, standing with the two demons to his either side and Lorelei at his feet. \"Fine,\" Alex said. His voice trembled, but he did his best to sound resolute. \"We'll be happy to leave.\"\n\n\"Just you. The succubus stays. She is mine.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'demon' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Fuck that noise.\"\n\n\"Look around you, boy,\" the demon lord rumbled. His voice put a tremble into the ground. \"She is home here.\" Baal gestured with his broad arms at their surroundings. The whole land was smoke and ash and glowing embers. The demon hordes watched hungrily, congregating in a ring ten or twenty yards in diameter and many demons deep at every direction." }, { "from": "human", "value": "More appeared with every breath." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That is your home,\" Baal said. He pointed past Harrow. Alex risked a glance. The portal was suddenly at ground level. Molly and Onyx still stood in the hallway holding on to the portal's edges. \"Your friends hold the door for you. Take the opportunity to leave while I am still merciful. You cannot hope to prevail here.\"\n\nLorelei coughed. She reached up to touch Alex's hand." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Fear no evil,\" she whispered hoarsely." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'again' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He opened his mouth to speak to Baal, but out of the corner of his eye he caught a flash of movement. Alex lashed out with his blade, striking Harrow's huge tail as it snaked out to grab at Lorelei again. The tail jerked back, flinging blood everywhere as it withdrew.\n\nHe had hurt the monster again. Alex swallowed. \"If I'm not a threat to you,\" he ventured, trying hard to master his terror, \"how come I'm not already dead?\"\n\n\"You would question this charity?\" Harrow hissed.\n\n\"From you guys?\" Alex nodded. \"Hell, yes.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This is your last chance,\" Baal warned." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Leave my realm. Now.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lorelei's hand squeezed his tightly. Alex turned his gaze directly toward the towering demon lord to his right. \"Make me,\" he said.\n\nBaal's eyes narrowed. \"Harrow,\" he began, but didn't finish.\n\n\"Cuntface!\" Rachel screamed, diving down on Harrow. Her sword hacked straight through his shoulder. The beast howled as his arm crumbled and fell away in flames, but Rachel had to commit so much to the blow that she left herself open for retaliation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Harrow caught her by the head with his remaining hand to slam her face first into the ground." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alex was distracted only for a split second; his memories of so many battles over so many lives were still too clear to let much of an advantage slip." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Baal rushed at him, fast enough to bowl him over." }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'baal's' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alex had his weapon up. Ball carried the young man off his feet, but Alex's sword was turned perfectly to meet him. The blade sank deeply into Baal's gut, releasing soot and ash over Alex's arms and chest.\n\nBaal screamed as he heaved Alex up and slammed him down into the ground. Alex fought on. He slashed viciously with his sword, gripping it with both hands even as the demon pounded and clawed at him from above. Baal's roars shook the land around them, announcing his fury and, tellingly, his pain.\n\nBeyond them, Rachel recovered and pressed her foe." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She swung left and right against Harrow, driving him back as he tried with his tail and remaining arm to fend her off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She feinted with another thrust and then drove her blade into his foot. With his backward momentum arrested by his impaled foot, Harrow fell onto his back. Rachel pressed in, yanking the sword out of his foot as she jumped onto his torso. She swung in a broad, circular arc. Harrow's final howl was abruptly silenced.\n\nAlex gasped for breath under Baal's assault. He stabbed and kicked and tried to get free, but his efforts faltered as his body was thrown down against the ground time and again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Baal grabbed Alex's wrist, slammed it down onto the ground, and then brought his other fist down upon the gladius." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The blade snapped in two. Alex punched and struggled, only to be shoved down onto his back by the demon lord's huge hand. Baal dragged his claws across the young man's chest, scraping bone and drawing blood.\n\nThen something hit the demon in the back. Alex saw taloned hands reach around Baal's shoulders from behind, gouging his eyes and pulling him back. Lorelei tore and bit at Baal's neck. Baal released Alex, reaching at his back to clutch at Lorelei." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Something large, white and frightful struck Baal's chest. It knocked him backward, sending him tumbling to the ground. The object landed right next to Alex as the young man struggled to rise. It was Harrow's head.\n\nRachel flew past Alex, charging Baal headlong with her sword raised, only to be brutally swatted back. She tumbled to the ground next to Alex, her sword falling from her grasp. She coughed and spit blood, trying to shake off her disorientation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alex reached out toward her, trying to ignore his injuries." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In a moment, he'd probably feel a lot worse, anyway.\n\nBaal finally got his hands on Lorelei. He dragged her off of his back, holding her high as if to slam her head first onto the ground even as she fought to slash through his wrists. \"No bitch could ever be worth this trouble,\" Baal hissed, rearing back to cast her down. He almost didn't hear himself speak over the howl of agony that came from the boy nearby, but Baal didn't pay it any mind. He'd get to that in—\n\nUnbearable pain in Baal's chest interrupted his every thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He looked down to see the angel's flaming sword sunk to the hilt in the center of his chest. Alex let go of the blade as he fell to his knees, gasping and crying in pain as his hands burned. Baal's grip faltered. Lorelei tumbled free, landing roughly next to her lover.\n\nBaal staggered, choked out a cry of terrible fear, and finally fell onto his back. The impact shook the land all around. A heartbeat later, his body caught fire.\n\nAlex stared down at his ruined, smoldering hands." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tears of pain ran freely from his eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A hand grasped his shoulder. It trembled, holding onto him weakly, but it meant the world to him. Lorelei clung to him, facing him without the slightest illusion covering her bruises or her red, demonic features. She was battered, inhuman, and every bit as beautiful to him as she had ever been. It didn't extinguish the pain, but she drew him back into the moment.\n\nShe wasn't alone, either. Rachel stepped over to them, placing one hand protectively on Alex's shoulder as the other snatched up her fallen blade." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We gotta get the fuck out, lover,\" she warned." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her healing touch helped him cope with the pain." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alex saw the hordes of demons creeping closer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Their moves were tentative, threatening but also wary, as if each waited for another to make the first move.\n\nLorelei stopped them. \"Baal is dead!\" She called out. \"Harrow is dead! Slain in their own realm, never to return! Do not make the same mistake they made!\" The mob of vile creatures paused at her words, but didn't look entirely put off.\n\nShe stepped over the smoking remains of their master. Lorelei plunged her hand into the soot and ash. The mob let out a collective gasp as she pulled forth Baal's iron crown and held it aloft over her head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The succubus gave the masses a long, imperious glare.\n\n\"Lady Lorelei,\" one of them whispered. Then more. Then more. The whispers became shouts. \"Lady Lorelei! Lady Lorelei!\"\n\nLorelei held up a firm, open hand to silence them. The crowd hushed. Fearsome demons groveled and knelt, humbling themselves before her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her gaze fell across the entire sweep of assembled foul things, and over Alex and Rachel.\n\nHer beauty frightened him. He loved her dearly, yet here she left no pretense over what she truly was. Triumphant and terrible, Lorelei looked over a legion of demons that had called her name and then fallen silent at a single gesture of her hand.\n\n\"This crown,\" she called out loudly and clearly, \"and all that it symbolizes... belongs to the last one of you standing.\"\n\nShocked eyes went wide all around them. None dared move.\n\nLorelei cast the iron crown far into the crowd." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Pandemonium erupted. Rachel didn't pause to watch the chaos as demons shoved, trampled and rent one another in their rush to recover the crown." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The angel flung her arms around Alex and Lorelei, turned and bolted.\n\nThe portal waited just a short distance away. The demons that blocked it now hurried forward, already fighting one another, disregarding the angel and her charges. They thought only of the iron crown.\n\nOnyx neared collapse. Molly was made of sterner stuff, but she knew her lover couldn't be much better off. They held the portal just long enough for Rachel to come flying through, stumbling to the ground with one arm around Alex and the other around Lorelei. The witches dropped their hold on the portal, staggering backward as the warp in reality shrank into nothing before them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A second later, the witches were both on the floor as well. It seemed like a pretty comfortable place for everyone.\n\nRachel promptly saw to Alex's wounds. She got to her knees, gingerly took up his charred hands, kissing one, then the other. She held them with her head bowed in prayer. For a long, slow moment even she wasn't sure of what might happen, but the charring faded and flesh grew back. There were scars and discolored patches, but muscle and skin returned." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thank you, Lord,\" she breathed as tears streamed from her eyes to fall across his wrists. \"Thank you.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'right' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wasn't...?\" Alex croaked. He coughed, looking around blearily. \"Wasn't the building on fire?\"\n\n\"No,\" Molly said. She lay flat on her back, waving a hand over her head. \"No, I kinda blew all that out.\"\n\n\"Right,\" Alex nodded, \"right.\" He paused to breathe again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Where'd the SUV come from?\"\n\n\"We don't know,\" Onyx panted. \"We were gonna ask you.\"\n\n\"Alex?\" a voice called. \"Hey, y'all in here?\"\n\nAlex forced his head up to look down the hallway. He saw Wade advance warily with a rifle in his hands." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory inclusion (with quotes): Hey, are all y'all a'right?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Taylor came with him, armed with a pistol. \"Hey, are all y'all a'right?\" Wade asked. Seeing two strangers among his friends sprawled on the floor, he opted to keep the rifle pointed more or less toward them.\n\n\"Woah, Wade,\" Alex waved. \"Put it down. They're cool. They came to rescue me.\"\n\n\"We came to rescue you!\" Taylor said.\n\n\"Wow,\" Alex blinked. \"You guys... really?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The succubus sat up from the floor only to find herself face to face with Rachel." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I get him for Christmas and Valentine's,\" the angel said firmly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Now is not the time,\" Lorelei whispered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Christmas and Valentine's,\" Rachel repeated. \"Maybe I'll share him, but I'm just sayin'. No cutting me out on those.\"\n\nLorelei sighed. \"Done.\"\n\n\"Uh, hey,\" Taylor thought aloud, \"shouldn't we get the hell out of here? Won't there be cops or firefighters?\"\n\n\"Not at a party like this,\" Molly spoke up. \"They take care of that shit in advance. We shouldn't just hang around, but no. I doubt there'll be cops.\"\n\n\"We can take care of cops,\" said Onyx." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And I'm not leaving 'til I've had a chance to talk to him,\" she added, waving a hand at Alex." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Are we sure there aren't more bad guys?\" Alex asked.\n\n\"Pretty sure,\" Wade nodded. \"Drew and Jason were checkin' the perimeter of the house, though, just t' be positive.\"\n\nLorelei looked over to Alex. \"Where is Lydia?\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "help write? five sentences more, same character context, Paranormal Fantasy, Erotica genre thx" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come to me,\" the blonde whispered, beckoning with one finger from behind the bush.\n\nDrew blinked, looking to her with suspicion. He hadn't seen her before. She didn't look like a vampire, though; her skin wasn't pale enough, nor was she in black. \"You okay?\" he asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Found something?\" Jason said, looking around the corner of the house.\n\n\"Come to me,\" Lydia repeated. The battered, disheveled beauty lured Drew closer. His rifle dropped low as she worked her charms. He was strong-willed, this one, and brave." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was all she could do to keep him mesmerized. If she could lure him in, though, and seal her enchantment with a kiss...\n\n\"Hey!\" Jason yelled. He turned his gun on her. \"Drew, what's up with this?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I think... I think it's cool, Jason,\" Drew murmured.\n\n\"Jason,\" Lydia smiled reassuringly. \"Put down your gun. You have rescued me. Let me reward you.\" She reached out to Drew, gesturing for him to come near. \"Let me reward you both.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Drew's eyes fluttered. He stepped closer. Jason lowered his gun. Drew moved in, his face leaning forward toward hers as his eyes closed and his lips parted. Then he heard a sudden electrical buzz, followed by a flump.\n\nThe kiss never came." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He opened his eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jason stood between Drew and the woman on the ground with his stun gun in his hands." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What the... what are you doin', man?\" Drew blinked.\n\n\"Dude! You punched out a demon tonight! A fucking demon, man! And now you're gonna go all slack jawed and stupid for this chick?\"\n\nLydia groaned, trying to rise. Jason zapped her again, leaving her sprawling out in the grass.\n\n\"Hey!\" Drew protested." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll be your writing partner today. I will set the scene (which might reference existing characters and worldbuilding), and you will continue the story with 3 sentences, channeling the voice and techniques of Vladimir Nabokov." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: \"honey-colored skin,\" \"thin arms,\" \"brown bobbed hair,\" \"long lashes,\" \"big bright mouth\"); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).\n\nLet me therefore primly limit myself, in describing Annabel, to saying she was a lovely child a few months my junior. Her parents were old friends of my aunt's, and as stuffy as she." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had rented a villa not far from Hotel Mirana." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Bald brown Mr. Leigh and fat, powdered Mrs. Leigh (born Vanessa van Ness)." }, { "from": "human", "value": "How I loathed them!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "At first, Annabel and I talked of peripheral affairs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She kept lifting handfuls of fine sand and letting it pour through her fingers. Our brains were turned the way those of intelligent European preadolescents were in our day and set, and I doubt if much individual genius should be assigned to our interest in the plurality of inhabited worlds, competitive tennis, infinity, solipsism and so on. The softness and fragility of baby animals caused us the same intense pain." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She wanted to be a nurse in some famished Asiatic country; I wanted to be a famous spy.\n\nAll at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do. After one wild attempt we made to meet at night in her garden (of which more later), the only privacy we were allowed was to be out of earshot but not out of sight on the populous part of the plage." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'nearer' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep toward me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey; sometimes a chance rampart built by younger children granted us sufficient concealment to graze each other's salty lips; these incomplete contacts drove our healthy and inexperienced young bodies to such a state of exasperation that not even the cold blue water, under which we still clawed at each other, could bring relief.\n\nAmong some treasures I lost during the wanderings of my adult years, there was a snapshot taken by my aunt which showed Annabel, her parents and the staid, elderly, lame gentleman, a Dr. Cooper, who that same summer courted my aunt, grouped around a table in a sidewalk café. Annabel did not come out well, caught as she was in the act of bending over her chocolat glacé, and her thin bare shoulders and the parting in her hair were about all that could be identified (as I remember that picture) amid the sunny blur into which her lost loveliness graded; but I, sitting somewhat apart from the rest, came out with a kind of dramatic conspicuousness: a moody, beetle-browed boy in a dark sport shirt and well-tailored white shorts, his legs crossed, sitting in profile, looking away." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\n12 sentences\nGenre:\nFiction" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I leaf again and again through these miserable memories, and keep asking myself, was it then, in the glitter of that remote summer, that the rift in my life began; or was my excessive desire for that child only the first evidence of an inherent singularity? When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past. I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel.\n\nI also know that the shock of Annabel's death consolidated the frustration of that nightmare summer, made of it a permanent obstacle to any further romance throughout the cold years of my youth. The spiritual and the physical had been blended in us with a perfection that must remain incomprehensible to the matter-of-fact, crude, standard-brained youngsters of today. Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes. We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries. Oh, Lolita, had you loved me thus!\n\nI have reserved for the conclusion of my \"Annabel\" phase the account of our unsuccessful first tryst. One night, she managed to deceive the vicious vigilance of her family." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Let's work on this story segment. I'll provide a part, and you'll continue with ten sentences in the style of Vladimir Nabokov. This is Fiction genre and characters might appear without introduction." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Although I told myself I was looking merely for a soothing presence, a glorified pot-au-feu, an animated merkin, what really attracted me to Valeria was the imitation she gave of a little girl. She gave it not because she had divined something about me; it was just her style—and I fell for it. Actually, she was at least in her late twenties (I never established her exact age for even her passport lied) and had mislaid her virginity under circumstances that changed with her reminiscent moods. I, on my part, was as naive as only a pervert can be. She looked fluffy and frolicsome, dressed à la gamine, showed a generous amount of smooth leg, knew how to stress the white of a bare instep by the black of a velvet slipper, and pouted, and dimpled, and romped, and dirndled, and shook her short curly blond hair in the cutest and tritest fashion imaginable.\n\nAfter a brief ceremony at the mairie, I took her to the new apartment I had rented and, somewhat to her surprise, had her wear, before I touched her, a girl's plain nightshirt that I had managed to filch from the linen closet of an orphanage. I derived some fun from that nuptial night and had the idiot in hysterics by sunrise. But reality soon asserted itself. The bleached curl revealed its melanic root; the down turned to prickles on a shaved shin; the mobile moist mouth, no matter how I stuffed it with love, disclosed ignominiously its resemblance to the corresponding part in a treasured portrait of her toadlike dead mama; and presently, instead of a pale little gutter girl, Humbert Humbert had on his hands a large, puffy, short-legged, big-breasted and practically brainless baba.\n\nThis state of affairs lasted from 1935 to 1939." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her only asset was a muted nature which did help to produce an odd sense of comfort in our small squalid flat: two rooms, a hazy view in one window, a brick wall in the other, a tiny kitchen, a shoe-shaped bath tub, within which I felt like Marat but with no white-necked maiden to stab me. We had quite a few cozy evenings together, she deep in her Paris-Soir, I working at a rickety table. We went to movies, bicycle races and boxing matches. I appealed to her stale flesh very seldom, only in cases of great urgency and despair. The grocer opposite had a little daughter whose shadow drove me mad; but with Valeria's help I did find after all some legal outlets to my fantastic predicament. As to cooking, we tacitly dismissed the pot-au-feu and had most of our meals at a crowded place in rue Bonaparte where there were wine stains on the table cloth and a good deal of foreign babble. And next door, an art dealer displayed in his cluttered window a splendid, flamboyant, green, red, golden and inky blue, ancient American estampe—a locomotive with a gigantic smokestack, great baroque lamps and a tremendous cowcatcher, hauling its mauve coaches through the stormy prairie night and mixing a lot of spark-studded black smoke with the furry thunder clouds.\n\nThese burst. In the summer of 1939 mon oncle d'Amérique died bequeathing me an annual income of a few thousand dollars on condition I came to live in the States and showed some interest in his business. This prospect was most welcome to me. I felt my life needed a shake-up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was another thing, too: moth holes had appeared in the plush of matrimonial comfort." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "During the last weeks I had kept noticing that my fat Valeria was not her usual self; had acquired a queer restlessness; even showed something like irritation at times, which was quite out of keeping with the stock character she was supposed to impersonate. When I informed her we were shortly to sail for New York, she looked distressed and bewildered. There were some tedious difficulties with her papers. She had a Nansen, or better say Nonsense, passport which for some reason a share in her husband's solid Swiss citizenship could not easily transcend; and I decided it was the necessity of queuing in the préfecture, and other formalities, that had made her so listless, despite my patiently describing to her America, the country of rosy children and great trees, where life would be such an improvement on dull dingy Paris.\n\nWe were coming out of some office building one morning, with her papers almost in order, when Valeria, as she waddled by my side, began to shake her poodle head vigorously without saying a word. I let her go on for a while and then asked if she thought she had something inside. She answered (I translate from her French which was, I imagine, a translation in its turn of some Slavic platitude): \"There is another man in my life.\"\n\nNow, these are ugly words for a husband to hear. They dazed me, I confess. To beat her up in the street, there and then, as an honest vulgarian might have done, was not feasible." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Years of secret sufferings had taught me superhuman self-control." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So I ushered her into a taxi which had been invitingly creeping along the curb for some time, and in this comparative privacy I quietly suggested she comment her wild talk. A mounting fury was suffocating me—not because I had any particular fondness for that figure of fun, Mme Humbert, but because matters of legal and illegal conjunction were for me alone to decide, and here she was, Valeria, the comedy wife, brazenly preparing to dispose in her own way of my comfort and fate. I demanded her lover's name. I repeated my question; but she kept up a burlesque babble, discoursing on her unhappiness with me and announcing plans for an immediate divorce. \"Mais qui est-ce?\" I shouted at last, striking her on the knee with my fist; and she, without even wincing, stared at me as if the answer were too simple for words, then gave a quick shrug and pointed at the thick neck of the taxi driver. He pulled up at a small café and introduced himself. I do not remember his ridiculous name but after all those years I still see him quite clearly—a stocky White Russian ex-colonel with a bushy mustache and a crew cut; there were thousands of them plying that fool's trade in Paris. We sat down at a table; the Tsarist ordered wine; and Valeria, after applying a wet napkin to her knee, went on talking—into me rather than to me; she poured words into this dignified receptacle with a volubility I had never suspected she had in her. And every now and then she would volley a burst of Slavic at her stolid lover. The situation was preposterous and became even more so when the taxi-colonel, stopping Valeria with a possessive smile, began to unfold his views and plans." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'colonel' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With an atrocious accent to his careful French, he delineated the world of love and work into which he proposed to enter hand in hand with his child-wife Valeria. She by now was preening herself, between him and me, rouging her pursed lips, tripling her chin to pick at her blouse-bosom and so forth, and he spoke of her as if she were absent, and also as if she were a kind of little ward that was in the act of being transferred, for her own good, from one wise guardian to another even wiser one; and although my helpless wrath may have exaggerated and disfigured certain impressions, I can swear that he actually consulted me on such things as her diet, her periods, her wardrobe and the books she had read or should read. \"I think,\" he said, \"she will like Jean Christophe?\" Oh, he was quite a scholar, Mr. Taxovich.\n\nI put an end to this gibberish by suggesting Valeria pack up her few belongings immediately, upon which the platitudinous colonel gallantly offered to carry them into the car. Reverting to his professional state, he drove the Humberts to their residence and all the way Valeria talked, and Humbert the Terrible deliberated with Humbert the Small whether Humbert Humbert should kill her or her lover, or both, or neither. I remember once handling an automatic belonging to a fellow student, in the days (I have not spoken of them, I think, but never mind) when I toyed with the idea of enjoying his little sister, a most diaphanous nymphet with a black hair bow, and then shooting myself. I now wondered if Valechka (as the colonel called her) was really worth shooting, or strangling, or drowning. She had very vulnerable legs, and I decided I would limit myself to hurting her very horribly as soon as we were alone.\n\nBut we never were." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Valechka—by now shedding torrents of tears tinged with the mess of her rainbow make-up,—started to fill anyhow a trunk, and two suitcases, and a bursting carton, and visions of putting on my mountain boots and taking a running kick at her rump were of course impossible to put into execution with the cursed colonel hovering around all the time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I cannot say he behaved insolently or anything like that; on the contrary, he displayed, as a small sideshow in the theatricals I had been inveigled in, a discreet old-world civility, punctuating his movements with all sorts of mispronounced apologies (j'ai demannde pardonne—excuse me—est-ce que j'ai puis—may I—and so forth), and turning away tactfully when Valechka took down with a flourish her pink panties from the clothesline above the tub; but he seemed to be all over the place at once, le gredin, agreeing his frame with the anatomy of the flat, reading in my chair my newspaper, untying a knotted string, rolling a cigarette, counting the teaspoons, visiting the bathroom, helping his moll to wrap up the electric fan her father had given her, and carrying streetward her luggage. I sat with arms folded, one hip on the window sill, dying of hate and boredom. At last both were out of the quivering apartment—the vibration of the door I had slammed after them still rang in my every nerve, a poor substitute for the backhand slap with which I ought to have hit her across the cheekbone according to the rules of the movies. Clumsily playing my part, I stomped to the bathroom to check if they had taken my English toilet water; they had not; but I noticed with a spasm of fierce disgust that the former Counselor of the Tsar, after thoroughly easing his bladder, had not flushed the toilet. That solemn pool of alien urine with a soggy, tawny cigarette butt disintegrating in it struck me as a crowning insult, and I wildly looked around for a weapon. Actually I daresay it was nothing but middle-class Russian courtesy (with an oriental tang, perhaps) that had prompted the good colonel (Maximovich! his name suddenly taxies back to me), a very formal person as they all are, to muffle his private need in decorous silence so as not to underscore the small size of his host's domicile with the rush of a gross cascade on top of his own hushed trickle. But this did not enter my mind at the moment, as groaning with rage I ransacked the kitchen for something better than a broom. Then, canceling my search, I dashed out of the house with the heroic decision of attacking him barefisted; despite my natural vigor, I am no pugilist, while the short but broad-shouldered Maximovich seemed made of pig iron. The void of the street, revealing nothing of my wife's departure except a rhinestone button that she had dropped in the mud after preserving it for three unnecessary years in a broken box, may have spared me a bloody nose." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But no matter. I had my little revenge in due time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A man from Pasadena told me one day that Mrs. Maximovich née Zborovski had died in childbirth around 1945; the couple had somehow got over to California and had been used there, for an excellent salary, in a year-long experiment conducted by a distinguished American ethnologist. The experiment dealt with human and racial reactions to a diet of bananas and dates in a constant position on all fours. My informant, a doctor, swore he had seen with his own eyes obese Valechka and her colonel, by then gray-haired and also quite corpulent, diligently crawling about the well-swept floors of a brightly lit set of rooms (fruit in one, water in another, mats in a third and so on) in the company of several other hired quadrupeds, selected from indigent and helpless groups. I tried to find the results of these tests in the Review of Anthropology; but they appear not to have been published yet. These scientific products take of course some time to fructuate. I hope they will be illustrated with good photographs when they do get printed, although it is not very likely that a prison library will harbor such erudite works. The one to which I am restricted these days, despite my lawyer's favors, is a good example of the inane eclecticism governing the selection of books in prison libraries. They have the Bible, of course, and Dickens (an ancient set, N. Y., G. W. Dillingham, Publisher, MDCCCLXXXVII); and the Children's Encyclopedia (with some nice photographs of sunshine-haired Girl Scouts in shorts), and A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie; but they also have such coruscating trifles as A Vagabond in Italy by Percy Elphinstone, author of Venice Revisited, Boston, 1868, and a comparatively recent (1946) Who's Who in the Limelight—actors, producers, playwrights, and shots of static scenes. In looking through the latter volume, I was treated last night to one of those dazzling coincidences that logicians loathe and poets love. I transcribe most of the page:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Pym, Roland. Born in Lundy, Mass., 1922." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Received stage training at Elsinore Playhouse, Derby, N.Y. Made debut in Sunburst. Among his many appearances are Two Blocks from Here, The Girl in Green, Scrambled Husbands, The Strange Mushroom, Touch and Go, John Lovely, I Was Dreaming of You.\n\nQuilty, Clare, American dramatist. Born in Ocean City, N.J., 1911. Educated at Columbia University. Started on a commercial career but turned to playwriting. Author of The Little Nymph, The Lady Who Loved Lightning (in collaboration with Vivian Darkbloom), Dark Age, The Strange Mushroom, Fatherly Love, and others. His many plays for children are notable. Little Nymph (1940) traveled 14,000 miles and played 280 performances on the road during the winter before ending in New York. Hobbies: fast cars, photography, pets." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\nfive sentences\nStyle:\nVladimir Nabokov" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Divorce proceedings delayed my voyage, and the gloom of yet another World War had settled upon the globe when, after a winter of ennui and pneumonia in Portugal, I at last reached the States. In New York I eagerly accepted the soft job fate offered me: it consisted mainly of thinking up and editing perfume ads. I welcomed its desultory character and pseudoliterary aspects, attending to it whenever I had nothing better to do. On the other hand, I was urged by a war-time university in New York to complete my comparative history of French literature for English-speaking students. The first volume took me a couple of years during which I put in seldom less than fifteen hours of work daily." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As I look back on those days, I see them divided tidily into ample light and narrow shade: the light pertaining to the solace of research in palatial libraries, the shade to my excruciating desires and insomnias of which enough has been said. Knowing me by now, the reader can easily imagine how dusty and hot I got, trying to catch a glimpse of nymphets (alas, always remote) playing in Central Park, and how repulsed I was by the glitter of deodorized career girls that a gay dog in one of the offices kept unloading upon me. Let us skip all that. A dreadful breakdown sent me to a sanatorium for more than a year; I went back to my work—only to be hospitalized again.\n\nRobust outdoor life seemed to promise me some relief." }, { "from": "human", "value": "One of my favorite doctors, a charming cynical chap with a little brown beard, had a brother, and this brother was about to lead an expedition into arctic Canada." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I was attached to it as a \"recorder of psychic reactions.\" With two young botanists and an old carpenter I shared now and then (never very successfully) the favors of one of our nutritionists, a Dr. Anita Johnson—who was soon flown back, I am glad to say. I had little notion of what object the expedition was pursuing. Judging by the number of meteorologists upon it, we may have been tracking to its lair (somewhere on Prince of Wales' Island, I understand) the wandering and wobbly north magnetic pole. One group, jointly with the Canadians, established a weather station on Pierre Point in Melville Sound." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Another group, equally misguided, collected plankton." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A third studied tuberculosis in the tundra. Bert, a film photographer—an insecure fellow with whom at one time I was made to partake in a good deal of menial work (he, too, had some psychic troubles)—maintained that the big men on our team, the real leaders we never saw, were mainly engaged in checking the influence of climatic amelioration on the coats of the arctic fox.\n\nWe lived in prefabricated timber cabins amid a Pre-Cambrian world of granite. We had heaps of supplies—the Reader's Digest, an ice cream mixer, chemical toilets, paper caps for Christmas. My health improved wonderfully in spite or because of all the fantastic blankness and boredom." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Surrounded by such dejected vegetation as willow scrub and lichens; permeated, and, I suppose, cleansed by a whistling gale; seated on a boulder under a completely translucent sky (through which, however, nothing of importance showed), I felt curiously aloof from my own self." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No temptations maddened me. The plump, glossy little Eskimo girls with their fish smell, hideous raven hair and guinea pig faces, evoked even less desire in me than Dr. Johnson had. Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.\n\nI left my betters the task of analyzing glacial drifts, drumlins, and gremlins, and kremlins, and for a time tried to jot down what I fondly thought were \"reactions\" (I noticed, for instance, that dreams under the midnight sun tended to be highly colored, and this my friend the photographer confirmed). I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters, such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food-fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio programs, changes in outlook and so forth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Everybody got so fed up with this that I soon dropped the project completely, and only toward the end of my twenty months of cold labor (as one of the botanists jocosely put it) concocted a perfectly spurious and very racy report that the reader will find published in the Annals of Adult Psychophysics for 1945 or 1945, as well as in the issue of Arctic Explorations devoted to that particular expedition; which, in conclusion, was not really concerned with Victoria Island copper or anything like that, as I learned later from my genial doctor; for the nature of its real purpose was what is termed \"hush-hush,\" and so let me add merely that whatever it was, that purpose was admirably achieved." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'discovered' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The reader will regret to learn that soon after my return to civilization I had another bout with insanity (if to melancholia and a sense of insufferable oppression that cruel term must be applied). I owe my complete restoration to a discovery I made while being treated at that particular very expensive sanatorium. I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style (which make them, the dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasing them with fake \"primal scenes\"; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one's real sexual predicament. By bribing a nurse I won access to some files and discovered, with glee, cards calling me \"potentially homosexual\" and \"totally impotent.\" The sport was so excellent, its results—in my case—so ruddy that I stayed on for a whole month after I was quite well (sleeping admirably and eating like a schoolgirl). And then I added another week just for the pleasure of taking on a powerful newcomer, a displaced (and, surely, deranged) celebrity, known for his knack of making patients believe they had witnessed their own conception." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\n12 sentences\nGenre:\nFiction" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Upon signing out, I cast around for some place in the New England countryside or sleepy small town (elms, white church) where I could spend a studious summer subsisting on a compact boxful of notes I had accumulated and bathing in some nearby lake. My work had begun to interest me again—I mean my scholarly exertions; the other thing, my active participation in my uncle's posthumous perfumes, had by then been cut down to a minimum.\n\nOne of his former employees, the scion of a distinguished family, suggested I spend a few months in the residence of his impoverished cousins, a Mr. McCoo, retired, and his wife, who wanted to let their upper story where a late aunt had delicately dwelt. He said they had two little daughters, one a baby, the other a girl of twelve, and a beautiful garden, not far from a beautiful lake, and I said it sounded perfectly perfect.\n\nI exchanged letters with these people, satisfying them I was housebroken, and spent a fantastic night on the train, imagining in all possible detail the enigmatic nymphet I would coach in French and fondle in Humbertish. Nobody met me at the toy station where I alighted with my new expensive bag, and nobody answered the telephone; eventually, however, a distraught McCoo in wet clothes turned up at the only hotel of green-and-pink Ramsdale with the news that his house had just burned down—possibly, owing to the synchronous conflagration that had been raging all night in my veins. His family, he said, had fled to a farm he owned, and had taken the car, but a friend of his wife's, a grand person, Mrs. Haze of 342 Lawn Street, offered to accommodate me. A lady who lived opposite Mrs. Haze's had lent McCoo her limousine, a marvelously old-fashioned, square-topped affair, manned by a cheerful Negro. Now, since the only reason for my coming at all had vanished, the aforesaid arrangement seemed preposterous. All right, his house would have to be completely rebuilt, so what? Had he not insured it sufficiently? I was angry, disappointed and bored, but being a polite European, could not refuse to be sent off to Lawn Street in that funeral car, feeling that otherwise McCoo would devise an even more elaborate means of getting rid of me." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I saw him scamper away, and my chauffeur shook his head with a soft chuckle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "En route, I swore to myself I would not dream of staying in Ramsdale under any circumstance but would fly that very day to the Bermudas or the Bahamas or the Blazes. Possibilities of sweetness on technicolor beaches had been trickling through my spine for some time before, and McCoo's cousin had, in fact, sharply diverted that train of thought with his well-meaning but as it transpired now absolutely inane suggestion.\n\nSpeaking of sharp turns: we almost ran over a meddlesome suburban dog (one of those who lie in wait for cars) as we swerved into Lawn Street. A little further, the Haze house, a white-frame horror, appeared, looking dingy and old, more gray than white—the kind of place you know will have a rubber tube affixable to the tub faucet in lieu of shower. I tipped the chauffeur and hoped he would immediately drive away so that I might double back unnoticed to my hotel and bag; but the man merely crossed to the other side of the street where an old lady was calling to him from her porch. What could I do? I pressed the bell button.\n\nA colored maid let me in—and left me standing on the mat while she rushed back to the kitchen where something was burning that ought not to burn.\n\nThe front hall was graced with door chimes, a white-eyed wooden thingamabob of commercial Mexican origin, and that banal darling of the arty middle class, van Gogh's \"Arlésienne.\" A door ajar to the right afforded a glimpse of a living room, with some more Mexican trash in a corner cabinet and a striped sofa along the wall. There was a staircase at the end of the hallway, and as I stood mopping my brow (only now did I realize how hot it had been out-of-doors) and staring, to stare at something, at an old gray tennis ball that lay on an oak chest, there came from the upper landing the contralto voice of Mrs. Haze, who leaning over the banisters inquired melodiously, \"Is that Monsieur Humbert?\" A bit of cigarette ash dropped from there in addition." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'women' × 3" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Presently, the lady herself—sandals, maroon slacks, yellow silk blouse, squarish face, in that order—came down the steps, her index finger still tapping upon her cigarette.\n\nI think I had better describe her right away, to get it over with. The poor lady was in her middle thirties, she had a shiny forehead, plucked eyebrows and quite simple but not unattractive features of a type that may be defined as a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich. Patting her bronze-brown bun, she led me into the parlor and we talked for a minute about the McCoo fire and the privilege of living in Ramsdale. Her very wide-set sea-green eyes had a funny way of traveling all over you, carefully avoiding your own eyes. Her smile was but a quizzical jerk of one eyebrow; and uncoiling herself from the sofa as she talked, she kept making spasmodic dashes at three ashtrays and the near fender (where lay the brown core of an apple); whereupon she would sink back again, one leg folded under her. She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul; women who are completely devoid of humor; women utterly indifferent at heart to the dozen or so possible subjects of a parlor conversation, but very particular about the rules of such conversations, through the sunny cellophane of which not very appetizing frustrations can be readily distinguished. I was perfectly aware that if by any wild chance I became her lodger, she would methodically proceed to do in regard to me what taking a lodger probably meant to her all along, and I would again be enmeshed in one of those tedious affairs I knew so well.\n\nBut there was no question of my settling there. I could not be happy in that type of household with bedraggled magazines on every chair and a kind of horrible hybridization between the comedy of so-called \"functional modern furniture\" and the tragedy of decrepit rockers and rickety lamp tables with dead lamps. I was led upstairs, and to the left—into \"my\" room. I inspected it through the mist of my utter rejection of it; but I did discern above \"my\" bed René Prinet's \"Kreutzer Sonata.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And she called that servant maid's room a \"semi-studio\"! Let's get out of here at once, I firmly said to myself as I pretended to deliberate over the absurdly, and ominously, low price that my wistful hostess was asking for board and bed.\n\nOld-world politeness, however, obliged me to go on with the ordeal. We crossed the landing to the right side of the house (where \"I and Lo have our rooms\"—Lo being presumably the maid), and the lodger-lover could hardly conceal a shudder when he, a very fastidious male, was granted a preview of the only bathroom, a tiny oblong between the landing and \"Lo's\" room, with limp wet things overhanging the dubious tub (the question mark of a hair inside); and there were the expected coils of the rubber snake, and its complement—a pinkish cozy, coyly covering the toilet lid.\n\n\"I see you are not too favorably impressed,\" said the lady letting her hand rest for a moment upon my sleeve: she combined a cool forwardness—the overflow of what I think is called \"poise\"—with a shyness and sadness that caused her detached way of selecting her words to seem as unnatural as the intonation of a professor of \"speech.\" \"This is not a neat household, I confess,\" the doomed dear continued, \"but I assure you [she looked at my lips], you will be very comfortable, very comfortable, indeed. Let me show you the garden\" (the last more brightly, with a kind of winsome toss of the voice).\n\nReluctantly I followed her downstairs again; then through the kitchen at the end of the hall, on the right side of the house—the side where also the dining room and the parlor were (under \"my\" room, on the left, there was nothing but a garage). In the kitchen, the Negro maid, a plump youngish woman, said, as she took her large glossy black purse from the knob of the door leading to the back porch: \"I'll go now, Mrs. Haze.\" \"Yes, Louise,\" answered Mrs. Haze with a sigh. \"I'll settle with you Friday.\" We passed on to a small pantry and entered the dining room, parallel to the parlor we had already admired. I noticed a white sock on the floor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With a deprecatory grunt, Mrs. Haze stooped without stopping and threw it into a closet next to the pantry." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We cursorily inspected a mahogany table with a fruit vase in the middle, containing nothing but the still glistening stone of one plum. I groped for the timetable I had in my pocket and surreptitiously fished it out to look as soon as possible for a train. I was still walking behind Mrs. Haze through the dining room when, beyond it, there came a sudden burst of greenery—\"the piazza,\" sang out my leader, and then, without the least warning, a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart and, from a mat in a pool of sun, half-naked, kneeling, turning about on her knees, there was my Riviera love peering at me over dark glasses.\n\nIt was the same child—the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bare back, the same chestnut head of hair. A polka-dotted black kerchief tied around her chest hid from my aging ape eyes, but not from the gaze of young memory, the juvenile breasts I had fondled one immortal day. And, as if I were the fairy-tale nurse of some little princess (lost, kidnaped, discovered in gypsy rags through which her nakedness smiled at the king and his hounds), I recognized the tiny dark-brown mole on her side. With awe and delight (the king crying for joy, the trumpets blaring, the nurse drunk) I saw again her lovely indrawn abdomen where my southbound mouth had briefly paused; and those puerile hips on which I had kissed the crenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts—that last mad immortal day behind the \"Roches Roses.\" The twenty-five years I had lived since then tapered to a palpitating point, and vanished.\n\nI find it most difficult to express with adequate force that flash, that shiver, that impact of passionate recognition. In the course of the sun-shot moment that my glance slithered over the kneeling child (her eyes blinking over those stern dark spectacles—the little Herr Doktor who was to cure me of all my aches) while I passed by her in my adult disguise (a great big handsome hunk of movieland manhood), the vacuum of my soul managed to suck in every detail of her bright beauty, and these I checked against the features of my dead bride. A little later, of course, she, this nouvelle, this Lolita, my Lolita, was to eclipse completely her prototype. All I want to stress is that my discovery of her was a fatal consequence of that \"princedom by the sea\" in my tortured past." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Everything between the two events was but a series of gropings and blunders, and false rudiments of joy." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Everything they shared made one of them.\n\nI have no illusions, however. My judges will regard all this as a piece of mummery on the part of a madman with a gross liking for the fruit vert. Au fond, ça m'est bien égal. All I know is that while the Haze woman and I went down the steps into the breathless garden, my knees were like reflections of knees in rippling water, and my lips were like sand, and—\n\n\"That was my Lo,\" she said, \"and these are my lilies.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes and character familiarity in the Fiction genre." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was a woodlake (Hourglass Lake—not as I had thought it was spelled) a few miles from Ramsdale, and there was one week of great heat at the end of July when we drove there daily." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I am now obliged to describe in some tedious detail our last swim there together, one tropical Tuesday morning.\n\nWe had left the car in a parking area not far from the road and were making our way down a path cut through the pine forest to the lake, when Charlotte remarked that Jean Farlow, in quest of rare light effects (Jean belonged to the old school of painting), had seen Leslie taking a dip \"in the ebony\" (as John had quipped) at five o'clock in the morning last Sunday.\n\n\"The water,\" I said, \"must have been quite cold.\"\n\n\"That is not the point,\" said the logical doomed dear. \"He is subnormal, you see. And,\" she continued (in that carefully phrased way of hers that was beginning to tell on my health), \"I have a very definite feeling our Louise is in love with that moron.\"\n\nFeeling. \"We feel Dolly is not doing as well\" etc. (from an old school report).\n\nThe Humberts walked on, sandaled and robed.\n\n\"Do you know, Hum: I have one most ambitious dream,\" pronounced Lady Hum, lowering her head—shy of that dream—and communing with the tawny ground." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I would love to get hold of a real trained servant maid like that German girl the Talbots spoke of; and have her live in the house.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'humbert' | Required occurrences: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No room,\" I said.\n\n\"Come,\" she said with her quizzical smile, \"surely, chéri, you underestimate the possibilities of the Humbert home. We would put her in Lo's room. I intended to make a guestroom of that hole anyway. It's the coldest and meanest in the whole house.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about?\" I asked, the skin of my cheekbones tensing up (this I take the trouble to note only because my daughter's skin did the same when she felt that way: disbelief, disgust, irritation).\n\n\"Are you bothered by Romantic Associations?\" queried my wife—in allusion to her first surrender.\n\n\"Hell no,\" said I. \"I just wonder where will you put your daughter when you get your guest or your maid.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Mrs. Humbert, dreaming, smiling, drawing out the \"Ah\" simultaneously with the raise of one eyebrow and a soft exhalation of breath." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Little Lo, I'm afraid, does not enter the picture at all, at all. Little Lo goes straight from camp to a good boarding school with strict discipline and some sound religious training. And then—Beardsley College. I have it all mapped out, you need not worry.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She went on to say that she, Mrs. Humbert, would have to overcome her habitual sloth and write to Miss Phalen's sister who taught at St. Algebra." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The dazzling lake emerged." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I said I had forgotten my sunglasses in the car and would catch up with her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I had always thought that wringing one's hands was a fictional gesture—the obscure outcome, perhaps, of some medieval ritual; but as I took to the woods, for a spell of despair and desperate meditation, this was the gesture (\"look, Lord, at these chains!\") that would have come nearest to the mute expression of my mood.\n\nHad Charlotte been Valeria, I would have known how to handle the situation; and \"handle\" is the word I want. In the good old days, by merely twisting fat Valechka's brittle wrist (the one she had fallen upon from a bicycle) I could make her change her mind instantly; but anything of the sort in regard to Charlotte was unthinkable. Bland American Charlotte frightened me. My lighthearted dream of controlling her through her passion for me was all wrong. I dared not do anything to spoil the image of me she had set up to adore. I had toadied to her when she was the awesome duenna of my darling, and a groveling something still persisted in my attitude toward her. The only ace I held was her ignorance of my monstrous love for her Lo." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had been annoyed by Lo's liking me; but my feelings she could not divine." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "To Valeria I might have said: \"Look here, you fat fool, c'est moi qui décide what is good for Dolores Humbert.\" To Charlotte, I could not even say (with ingratiating calm): \"Excuse me, my dear, I disagree. Let us give the child one more chance. Let me be her private tutor for a year or so. You once told me yourself—\" In fact, I could not say anything at all to Charlotte about the child without giving myself away. Oh, you cannot imagine (as I had never imagined) what these women of principle are! Charlotte, who did not notice the falsity of all the everyday conventions and rules of behavior, and foods, and books, and people she doted upon, would distinguish at once a false intonation in anything I might say with a view to keeping Lo near. She was like a musician who may be an odious vulgarian in ordinary life, devoid of tact and taste; but who will hear a false note in music with diabolical accuracy of judgment. To break Charlotte's will, I would have to break her heart. If I broke her heart, her image of me would break too. If I said: \"Either I have my way with Lolita, and you help me to keep the matter quiet, or we part at once,\" she would have turned as pale as a woman of clouded glass and slowly replied: \"All right, whatever you add or retract, this is the end.\" And the end it would be." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Such, then, was the mess." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I remember reaching the parking area and pumping a handful of rust-tasting water, and drinking it as avidly as if it could give me magic wisdom, youth, freedom, a tiny concubine. For a while, purple-robed, heel-dangling, I sat on the edge of one of the rude tables, under the wooshing pines. In the middle distance, two little maidens in shorts and halters came out of a sun-dappled privy marked \"Women.\" Gum-chewing Mabel (or Mabel's understudy) laboriously, absent-mindedly, straddled a bicycle, and Marion, shaking her hair because of the flies, settled behind, legs wide apart; and, wobbling, they slowly, absently, merged with the light and shade. Lolita! Father and daughter melting into these woods! The natural solution was to destroy Mrs. Humbert. But how?\n\nNo man can bring about the perfect murder; chance, however, can do it. There was the famous dispatch of a Mme Lacour in Arles, southern France, at the close of last century. An unidentified bearded six-footer, who, it was later conjectured, had been the lady's secret lover, walked up to her in a crowded street, soon after her marriage to Colonel Lacour, and mortally stabbed her in the back, three times, while the Colonel, a small bulldog of a man, hung onto the murderer's arm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "By a miraculous and beautiful coincidence, right at the moment when the operator was in the act of loosening the angry little husband's jaws (while several onlookers were closing in upon the group), a cranky Italian in the house nearest to the scene set off by sheer accident some kind of explosive he was tinkering with, and immediately the street was turned into a pandemonium of smoke, falling bricks and running people." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The explosion hurt no one (except that it knocked out game Colonel Lacour); but the lady's vengeful lover ran when the others ran—and lived happily ever after.\n\nNow look what happens when the operator himself plans a perfect removal.\n\nI walked down to Hourglass Lake. The spot from which we and a few other \"nice\" couples (the Farlows, the Chatfields) bathed was a kind of small cove; my Charlotte liked it because it was almost \"a private beach.\" The main bathing facilities (or \"drowning facilities\" as the Ramsdale Journal had had occasion to say) were in the left (eastern) part of the hourglass, and could not be seen from our covelet. To our right, the pines soon gave way to a curve of marshland which turned again into forest on the opposite side.\n\nI sat down beside my wife so noiselessly that she started.\n\n\"Shall we go in?\" she asked.\n\n\"We shall in a minute. Let me follow a train of thought.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I thought. More than a minute passed.\n\n\"All right. Come on.\"\n\n\"Was I on that train?\"\n\n\"You certainly were.\"\n\n\"I hope so,\" said Charlotte entering the water. It soon reached the gooseflesh of her thick thighs; and then, joining her outstretched hands, shutting her mouth tight, very plain-faced in her black rubber headgear, Charlotte flung herself forward with a great splash.\n\nSlowly we swam out into the shimmer of the lake.\n\nOn the opposite bank, at least a thousand paces away (if one could walk across water), I could make out the tiny figures of two men working like beavers on their stretch of shore. I knew exactly who they were: a retired policeman of Polish descent and the retired plumber who owned most of the timber on that side of the lake." }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'distracted' exactly 2 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And I also knew they were engaged in building, just for the dismal fun of the thing, a wharf. The knocks that reached us seemed so much bigger than what could be distinguished of those dwarfs' arms and tools; indeed, one suspected the director of those acrosonic effects to have been at odds with the puppet-master, especially since the hefty crack of each diminutive blow lagged behind its visual version.\n\nThe short white-sand strip of \"our\" beach—from which by now we had gone a little way to reach deep water—was empty on weekday mornings. There was nobody around except those two tiny very busy figures on the opposite side, and a dark-red private plane that droned overhead, and then disappeared in the blue. The setting was really perfect for a brisk bubbling murder, and here was the subtle point: the man of law and the man of water were just near enough to witness an accident and just far enough not to observe a crime. They were near enough to hear a distracted bather thrashing about and bellowing for somebody to come and help him save his drowning wife; and they were too far to distinguish (if they happened to look too soon) that the anything but distracted swimmer was finishing to tread his wife underfoot. I was not yet at that stage; I merely want to convey the ease of the act, the nicety of the setting! So there was Charlotte swimming on with dutiful awkwardness (she was a very mediocre mermaid), but not without a certain solemn pleasure (for was not her merman by her side? ); and as I watched, with the stark lucidity of a future recollection (you know—trying to see things as you will remember having seen them), the glossy whiteness of her wet face so little tanned despite all her endeavors, and her pale lips, and her naked convex forehead, and the tight black cap, and the plump wet neck, I knew that all I had to do was to drop back, take a deep breath, then grab her by the ankle and rapidly dive with my captive corpse." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I say corpse because surprise, panic and inexperience would cause her to inhale at once a lethal gallon of lake, while I would be able to hold on for at least a full minute, open-eyed under water. The fatal gesture passed like the tail of a falling star across the blackness of the contemplated crime. It was like some dreadful silent ballet, the male dancer holding the ballerina by her foot and streaking down through watery twilight. I might come up for a mouthful of air while still holding her down, and then would dive again as many times as would be necessary, and only when the curtain came down on her for good, would I permit myself to yell for help. And when some twenty minutes later the two puppets steadily growing arrived in a rowboat, one half newly painted, poor Mrs. Humbert Humbert, the victim of a cramp or coronary occlusion, or both, would be standing on her head in the inky ooze, some thirty feet below the smiling surface of Hourglass Lake.\n\nSimple, was it not? But what d'ye know, folks—I just could not make myself do it!\n\nShe swam beside me, a trustful and clumsy seal, and all the logic of passion screamed in my ear: Now is the time! And, folks, I just couldn't!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "In silence I turned shoreward and gravely, dutifully, she also turned, and still hell screamed its counsel, and still I could not make myself drown the poor, slippery, big-bodied creature." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'could' 4 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The scream grew more and more remote as I realized the melancholy fact that neither tomorrow, nor Friday, nor any other day or night, could I make myself put her to death. Oh, I could visualize myself slapping Valeria's breasts out of alignment, or otherwise hurting her—and I could see myself, no less clearly, shooting her lover in the underbelly and making him say \"akh!\" and sit down. But I could not kill Charlotte—especially when things were on the whole not quite as hopeless, perhaps, as they seemed at first wince on that miserable morning. Were I to catch her by her strong kicking foot; were I to see her amazed look, hear her awful voice; were I still to go through with the ordeal, her ghost would haunt me all my life. Perhaps if the year were 1447 instead of 1947 I might have hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poison from a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-class nosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocaded palaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "We are not sex fiends!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill. Oh, my poor Charlotte, do not hate me in your eternal heaven among an eternal alchemy of asphalt and rubber and metal and stone—but thank God, not water, not water!\n\nNonetheless it was a very close shave, speaking quite objectively. And now comes the point of my perfect-crime parable.\n\nWe sat down on our towels in the thirsty sun. She looked around, loosened her bra, and turned over on her stomach to give her back a chance to be feasted upon. She said she loved me." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She sighed deeply. She extended one arm and groped in the pocket of her robe for her cigarettes. She sat up and smoked. She examined her right shoulder. She kissed me heavily with open smoky mouth. Suddenly, down the sand bank behind us, from under the bushes and pines, a stone rolled, then another.\n\n\"Those disgusting prying kids,\" said Charlotte, holding up her big bra to her breast and turning prone again. \"I shall have to speak about that to Peter Krestovski.\"\n\nFrom the debouchment of the trail came a rustle, a footfall, and Jean Farlow marched down with her easel and things.\n\n\"You scared us,\" said Charlotte." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jean said she had been up there, in a place of green concealment, spying on nature (spies are generally shot), trying to finish a lakescape, but it was no good, she had no talent whatever (which was quite true)—\"And have you ever tried painting, Humbert?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Charlotte, who was a little jealous of Jean, wanted to know if John was coming." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was. He was coming home for lunch today." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had dropped her on the way to Parkington and should be picking her up any time now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a grand morning." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She always felt a traitor to Cavall and Melampus for leaving them roped on such gorgeous days." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 10 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She sat down on the white sand between Charlotte and me. She wore shorts. Her long brown legs were about as attractive to me as those of a chestnut mare. She showed her gums when she smiled.\n\n\"I almost put both of you into my lake,\" she said. \"I even noticed something you overlooked. You [addressing Humbert] had your wrist watch on in, yes, sir, you had.\"\n\n\"Waterproof,\" said Charlotte softly, making a fish mouth.\n\nJean took my wrist upon her knee and examined Charlotte's gift, then put back Humbert's hand on the sand, palm up.\n\n\"You could see anything that way,\" remarked Charlotte coquettishly.\n\nJean sighed. \"I once saw,\" she said, \"two children, male and female, at sunset, right here, making love. Their shadows were giants. And I told you about Mr. Tomson at daybreak. Next time I expect to see fat old Ivor in the ivory. He is really a freak, that man. Last time he told me a completely indecent story about his nephew. It appears—\"\n\n\"Hullo there,\" said John's voice." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant for a segment of a larger Fiction story. Your partner will send something and you will write the next one sentence. Characters may already be established." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I rushed out. The far side of our steep little street presented a peculiar sight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A big black glossy Packard had climbed Miss Opposite's sloping lawn at an angle from the sidewalk (where a tartan lap robe had dropped in a heap), and stood there, shining in the sun, its doors open like wings, its front wheels deep in evergreen shrubbery." }, { "from": "human", "value": "To the anatomical right of this car, on the trim turf of the lawn-slope, an old gentleman with a white mustache, well-dressed—doublebreasted gray suit, polka-dotted bow-tie—lay supine, his long legs together, like a death-size wax figure." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I have to put the impact of an instantaneous vision into a sequence of words; their physical accumulation in the page impairs the actual flash, the sharp unity of impression: Rug-heap, car, old man-doll, Miss O." }, { "from": "human", "value": "'s nurse running with a rustle, a half-empty tumbler in her hand, back to the screened porch—where the propped-up, imprisoned, decrepit lady herself may be imagined screeching, but not loud enough to drown the rhythmical yaps of the Junk setter walking from group to group—from a bunch of neighbors already collected on the sidewalk, near the bit of checked stuff, and back to the car which he had finally run to earth, and then to another group on the lawn, consisting of Leslie, two policemen and a sturdy man with tortoise shell glasses." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At this point, I should explain that the prompt appearance of the patrolmen, hardly more than a minute after the accident, was due to their having been ticketing the illegally parked cars in a cross lane two blocks down the grade; that the fellow with the glasses was Frederick Beale, Jr., driver of the Packard; that his 79-year-old father, whom the nurse had just watered on the green bank where he lay—a banked banker so to speak—was not in a dead faint, but was comfortably and methodically recovering from a mild heart attack or its possibility; and, finally, that the lap robe on the sidewalk (where she had so often pointed out to me with disapproval the crooked green cracks) concealed the mangled remains of Charlotte Humbert who had been knocked down and dragged several feet by the Beale car as she was hurrying across the street to drop three letters in the mailbox, at the corner of Miss Opposite's lawn." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "These were picked up and handed to me by a pretty child in a dirty pink frock, and I got rid of them by clawing them to fragments in my trouser pocket." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Three doctors and the Farlows presently arrived on the scene and took over." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The widower, a man of exceptional self-control, neither wept nor raved." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He staggered a bit, that he did; but he opened his mouth only to impart such information or issue such directions as were strictly necessary in connection with the identification, examination and disposal of a dead woman, the top of her head a porridge of bone, brains, bronze hair and blood." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sun was still a blinding red when he was put to bed in Dolly's room by his two friends, gentle John and dewy-eyed Jean; who, to be near, retired to the Humberts' bedroom for the night; which, for all I know, they may not have spent as innocently as the solemnity of the occasion required." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I have no reason to dwell, in this very special memoir, on the pre-funeral formalities that had to be attended to, or on the funeral itself, which was as quiet as the marriage had been." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But a few incidents pertaining to those four or five days after Charlotte's simple death, have to be noted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "My first night of widowhood I was so drunk that I slept as soundly as the child who had slept in that bed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Next morning I hastened to inspect the fragments of letters in my pocket." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They had got too thoroughly mixed up to be sorted into three complete sets." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I assumed that \"... and you had better find it because I cannot buy ...\" came from a letter to Lo; and other fragments seemed to point to Charlotte's intention of fleeing with Lo to Parkington, or even back to Pisky, lest the vulture snatch her precious lamb." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Other tatters and shreds (never had I thought I had such strong talons) obviously referred to an application not to St. A. but to another boarding school which was said to be so harsh and gray and gaunt in its methods (although supplying croquet under the elms) as to have earned the nickname of \"Reformatory for Young Ladies.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Finally, the third epistle was obviously addressed to me." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I made out such items as \"... after a year of separation we may ...\" \"... oh, my dearest, oh my ...\" \"... worse than if it had been a woman you kept ...\" \"... or, maybe, I shall die ...\" But on the whole my gleanings made little sense; the various fragments of those three hasty missives were as jumbled in the palms of my hands as their elements had been in poor Charlotte's head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That day John had to see a customer, and Jean had to feed her dogs, and so I was to be deprived temporarily of my friends' company." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The dear people were afraid I might commit suicide if left alone, and since no other friends were available (Miss Opposite was incommunicado, the McCoos were busy building a new house miles away, and the Chatfields had been recently called to Maine by some family trouble of their own), Leslie and Louise were commissioned to keep me company under the pretense of helping me to sort out and pack a multitude of orphaned things." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In a moment of superb inspiration I showed the kind and credulous Farlows (we were waiting for Leslie to come for his paid tryst with Louise) a little photograph of Charlotte I had found among her affairs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "From a boulder she smiled through blown hair." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It had been taken in April 1934, a memorable spring." }, { "from": "human", "value": "While on a business visit to the States, I had had occasion to spend several months in Pisky." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We met—and had a mad love affair." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I was married, alas, and she was engaged to Haze, but after I returned to Europe, we corresponded through a friend, now dead." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'handed' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jean whispered she had heard some rumors and looked at the snapshot, and, still looking, handed it to John, and John removed his pipe and looked at lovely and fast Charlotte Becker, and handed it back to me." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then they left for a few hours." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Happy Louise was gurgling and scolding her swain in the basement." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hardly had the Farlows gone than a blue-chinned cleric called—and I tried to make the interview as brief as was consistent with neither hurting his feelings nor arousing his doubts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yes, I would devote all my life to the child's welfare." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Here, incidentally, was a little cross that Charlotte Becker had given me when we were both young." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I had a female cousin, a respectable spinster in New York." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There we would find a good private school for Dolly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, what a crafty Humbert!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For the benefit of Leslie and Louise who might (and did) report it to John and Jean I made a tremendously loud and beautifully enacted long-distance call and simulated a conversation with Shirley Holmes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When John and Jean returned, I completely took them in by telling them, in a deliberately wild and confused mutter, that Lo had gone with the intermediate group on a five-day hike and could not be reached." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Good Lord,\" said Jean, \"what shall we do?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "John said it was perfectly simple—he would get the Climax police to find the hikers—it would not take them an hour." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In fact, he knew the country and—" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Look,\" he continued, \"why don't I drive there right now, and you may sleep with Jean\"—(he did not really add that but Jean supported his offer so passionately that it might be implied)." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I broke down. I pleaded with John to let things remain the way they were." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I said I could not bear to have the child all around me, sobbing, clinging to me, she was so high-strung, the experience might react on her future, psychiatrists have analyzed such cases." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was a sudden pause." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well, you are the doctor,\" said John a little bluntly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But after all I was Charlotte's friend and adviser. One would like to know what you are going to do about the child anyway.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"John,\" cried Jean, \"she is his child, not Harold Haze's. Don't you understand? Humbert is Dolly's real father.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I see,\" said John." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I am sorry. Yes, I see. I did not realize that. It simplifies matters, of course. And whatever you feel is right.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The distraught father went on to say he would go and fetch his delicate daughter immediately after the funeral, and would do his best to give her a good time in totally different surroundings, perhaps a trip to New Mexico or California—granted, of course, he lived." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So artistically did I impersonate the calm of ultimate despair, the hush before some crazy outburst, that the perfect Farlows removed me to their house." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had a good cellar, as cellars go in this country; and that was helpful, for I feared insomnia and a ghost." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now I must explain my reasons for keeping Dolores away." }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'would' exactly 2 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Naturally, at first, when Charlotte had just been eliminated and I re-entered the house a free father, and gulped down the two whiskey-and-sodas I had prepared, and topped them with a pint or two of my \"pin,\" and went to the bathroom to get away from neighbors and friends, there was but one thing in my mind and pulse—namely, the awareness that a few hours hence, warm, brown-haired, and mine, mine, mine, Lolita would be in my arms, shedding tears that I would kiss away faster than they could well." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But as I stood wide-eyed and flushed before the mirror, John Farlow tenderly tapped to inquire if I was okay—and I immediately realized it would be madness on my part to have her in the house with all those busybodies milling around and scheming to take her away from me." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Indeed, unpredictable Lo herself might—who knows?—show some foolish distrust of me, a sudden repugnance, vague fear and the like—and gone would be the magic prize at the very instant of triumph." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Speaking of busybodies, I had another visitor—friend Beale, the fellow who eliminated my wife." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Stodgy and solemn, looking like a kind of assistant executioner, with his bulldog jowls, small black eyes, thickly rimmed glasses and conspicuous nostrils, he was ushered in by John who then left us, closing the door upon us, with the utmost tact." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Suavely saying he had twins in my stepdaughter's class, my grotesque visitor unrolled a large diagram he had made of the accident." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was, as my stepdaughter would have put it, \"a beaut,\" with all kinds of impressive arrows and dotted lines in varicolored inks." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mrs. H. H.'s trajectory was illustrated at several points by a series of those little outline figures—doll-like wee career girl or WAC—used in statistics as visual aids." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Very clearly and conclusively, this route came into contact with a boldly traced sinuous line representing two consecutive swerves—one which the Beale car made to avoid the Junk dog (dog not shown), and the second, a kind of exaggerated continuation of the first, meant to avert the tragedy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A very black cross indicated the spot where the trim little outline figure had at last come to rest on the sidewalk." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I looked for some similar mark to denote the place on the embankment where my visitor's huge wax father had reclined, but there was none." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That gentleman, however, had signed the document as a witness underneath the name of Leslie Tomson, Miss Opposite and a few other people." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With his hummingbird pencil deftly and delicately flying from one point to another, Frederick demonstrated his absolute innocence and the recklessness of my wife: while he was in the act of avoiding the dog, she had slipped on the freshly watered asphalt and plunged forward whereas she should have flung herself not forward but backward (Fred showed how by a jerk of his padded shoulder)." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I said it was certainly not his fault, and the inquest upheld my view." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Breathing violently through jet-black tense nostrils, he shook his head and my hand; then, with an air of perfect savoir vivre and gentlemanly generosity, he offered to pay the funeral-home expenses." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He expected me to refuse his offer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With a drunken sob of gratitude I accepted it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This took him aback." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Slowly, incredulously, he repeated what he had said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I thanked him again, even more profusely than before." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In result of that weird interview, the numbness of my soul was for a moment resolved." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And no wonder! I had actually seen the agent of fate." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I had palpated the very flesh of fate—and its padded shoulder." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A brilliant and monstrous mutation had suddenly taken place, and here was the instrument." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Within the intricacies of the pattern (hurrying housewife, slippery pavement, a pest of a dog, steep grade, big car, baboon at its wheel), I could dimly distinguish my own vile contribution." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Had I not been such a fool—or such an intuitive genius—to preserve that journal, fluids produced by vindictive anger and hot shame would not have blinded Charlotte in her dash to the mailbox." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But even had they blinded her, still nothing might have happened, had not precise fate, that synchronizing phantom, mixed within its alembic the car and the dog and the sun and the shade and the wet and the weak and the strong and the stone. Adieu, Marlene!" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fat fate's formal handshake (as reproduced by Beale before leaving the room) brought me out of my torpor; and I wept. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury—I wept." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "im ur writing buddy. i set scene (might have existing chars), u do 6 sentences like Vladimir Nabokov" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Let's work on this story segment. I'll provide a part, and you'll continue with ten sentences in the style of Vladimir Nabokov. This is Fiction genre and characters might appear without introduction." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I am trying to describe these things not to relive them in my present boundless misery, but to sort out the portion of hell and the portion of heaven in that strange, awful, maddening world—nymphet love. The beastly and beautiful merged at one point, and it is that borderline I would like to fix, and I feel I fail to do so utterly. Why?\n\nThe stipulation of the Roman law, according to which a girl may marry at twelve, was adopted by the Church, and is still preserved, rather tacitly, in some of the United States. And fifteen is lawful everywhere. There is nothing wrong, say both hemispheres, when a brute of forty, blessed by the local priest and bloated with drink, sheds his sweat-drenched finery and thrusts himself up to the hilt into his youthful bride. \"In such stimulating temperate climates [says an old magazine in this prison library] as St. Louis, Chicago and Cincinnati, girls mature about the end of their twelfth year.\" Dolores Haze was born less than three hundred miles from stimulating Cincinnati. I have but followed nature. I am nature's faithful hound. Why then this horror that I cannot shake off?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Did I deprive her of her flower?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sensitive gentlewomen of the jury, I was not even her first lover." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Literary Collaboration:\n- Sentences: 7 sentences\n- Match character context\n- Genre: Fiction" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Part Two" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was then that began our extensive travels all over the States." }, { "from": "human", "value": "To any other type of tourist accommodation I soon grew to prefer the Functional Motel—clean, neat, safe nooks, ideal places for sleep, argument, reconciliation, insatiable illicit love." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At first, in my dread of arousing suspicion, I would eagerly pay for both sections of one double unit, each containing a double bed. I wondered what type of foursome this arrangement was ever intended for, since only a pharisaic parody of privacy could be attained by means of the incomplete partition dividing the cabin or room into two communicating love nests. By and by, the very possibilities that such honest promiscuity suggested (two young couples merrily swapping mates or a child shamming sleep to earwitness primal sonorities) made me bolder, and every now and then I would take a bed-and-cot or twin-bed cabin, a prison cell of paradise, with yellow window shades pulled down to create a morning illusion of Venice and sunshine when actually it was Pennsylvania and rain.\n\nWe came to know—nous connûmes, to use a Flaubertian intonation—the stone cottages under enormous Chateaubriandesque trees, the brick unit, the adobe unit, the stucco court, on what the Tour Book of the Automobile Association describes as \"shaded\" or \"spacious\" or \"landscaped\" grounds. The log kind, finished in knotty pine, reminded Lo, by its golden-brown glaze, of fried-chicken bones. We held in contempt the plain whitewashed clapboard Kabins, with their faint sewerish smell or some other gloomy self-conscious stench and nothing to boast of (except \"good beds\"), and an unsmiling landlady always prepared to have her gift (\"... well, I could give you ...\") turned down.\n\nNous connûmes (this is royal fun) the would-be enticements of their repetitious names—all those Sunset Motels, U-Beam Cottages, Hillcrest Courts, Pine View Courts, Mountain View Courts, Skyline Courts, Park Plaza Courts, Green Acres, Mac's Courts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was sometimes a special line in the write-up, such as \"Children welcome, pets allowed\" (You are welcome, you are allowed). The baths were mostly tiled showers, with an endless variety of spouting mechanisms, but with one definitely non-Laodicean characteristic in common, a propensity, while in use, to turn instantly beastly hot or blindingly cold upon you, depending on whether your neighbor turned on his cold or his hot to deprive you of a necessary complement in the shower you had so carefully blended. Some motels had instructions pasted above the toilet (on whose tank the towels were un-hygienically heaped) asking guests not to throw into its bowl garbage, beer cans, cartons, stillborn babies; others had special notices under glass, such as Things to Do (Riding: You will often see riders coming down Main Street on their way back from a romantic moonlight ride. \"Often at 3 A.M.,\" sneered unromantic Lo).\n\nNous connûmes the various types of motor court operators, the reformed criminal, the retired teacher and the business flop, among the males; and the motherly, pseudo-ladylike and madamic variants among the females. And sometimes trains would cry in the monstrously hot and humid night with heartrending and ominous plangency, mingling power and hysteria in one desperate scream.\n\nWe avoided Tourist Homes, country cousins of Funeral ones, old-fashioned, genteel and showerless, with elaborate dressing tables in depressingly white-and-pink little bedrooms, and photographs of the landlady's children in all their instars." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But I did surrender, now and then, to Lo's predilection for \"real\" hotels." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She would pick out in the book, while I petted her in the parked car in the silence of a dusk-mellowed, mysterious side-road, some highly recommended lake lodge which offered all sorts of things magnified by the flashlight she moved over them, such as congenial company, between-meals snacks, outdoor barbecues—but which in my mind conjured up odious visions of stinking high school boys in sweatshirts and an ember-red cheek pressing against hers, while poor Dr. Humbert, embracing nothing but two masculine knees, would cold-humor his piles on the damp turf." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most tempting to her, too, were those \"Colonial\" Inns, which apart from \"gracious atmosphere\" and picture windows, promised \"unlimited quantities of M-m-m food.\" Treasured recollections of my father's palatial hotel sometimes led me to seek for its like in the strange country we traveled through. I was soon discouraged; but Lo kept following the scent of rich food ads, while I derived a not exclusively economic kick from such roadside signs as TIMBER HOTEL, Children under 14 Free. On the other hand, I shudder when recalling that soi-disant \"high-class\" resort in a Midwestern state, which advertised \"raid-the-icebox\" midnight snacks and, intrigued by my accent, wanted to know my dead wife's and dead mother's maiden names. A two-days' stay there cost me a hundred and twenty-four dollars! And do you remember, Miranda, that other \"ultrasmart\" robbers' den with complimentary morning coffee and circulating ice water, and no children under sixteen (no Lolitas, of course)?\n\nImmediately upon arrival at one of the plainer motor courts which became our habitual haunts, she would set the electric fan a-whirr, or induce me to drop a quarter into the radio, or she would read all the signs and inquire with a whine why she could not go riding up some advertised trail or swimming in that local pool of warm mineral water." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most often, in the slouching, bored way she cultivated, Lo would fall prostrate and abominably desirable into a red springchair or a green chaise longue, or a steamer chair of striped canvas with footrest and canopy, or a sling chair, or any other lawn chair under a garden umbrella on the patio, and it would take hours of blandishments, threats and promises to make her lend me for a few seconds her brown limbs in the seclusion of the five-dollar room before undertaking anything she might prefer to my poor joy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A combination of naïveté and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of blue sulks and rosy mirth, Lolita, when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat. I was not really quite prepared for her fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement griping, her sprawling, droopy, dopey-eyed style, and what is called goofing off—a kind of diffused clowning which she thought was tough in a boyish hoodlum way. Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl. Sweet hot jazz, square dancing, gooey fudge sundaes, musicals, movie magazines and so forth—these were the obvious items in her list of beloved things. The Lord knows how many nickels I fed to the gorgeous music boxes that came with every meal we had! I still hear the nasal voices of those invisibles serenading her, people with names like Sammy and Jo and Eddy and Tony and Peggy and Guy and Patty and Rex, and sentimental song hits, all of them as similar to my ear as her various candies were to my palate. She believed, with a kind of celestial trust, any advertisement or advice that appeared in Movie Love or Screen Land—Starasil Starves Pimples, or \"You better watch out if you're wearing your shirttails outside your jeans, gals, because Jill says you shouldn't.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'drinks' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If a roadside sign said: VISIT OUR GIFT SHOP—we had to visit it, had to buy its Indian curios, dolls, copper jewelry, cactus candy. The words \"novelties and souvenirs\" simply entranced her by their trochaic lilt. If some cafe sign proclaimed Icecold Drinks, she was automatically stirred, although all drinks everywhere were ice-cold. She it was to whom ads were dedicated: the ideal consumer, the subject and object of every foul poster. And she attempted—unsuccessfully—to patronize only those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads.\n\nIn those days, neither she nor I had thought up yet the system of monetary bribes which was to work such havoc with my nerves and her morals somewhat later. I relied on three other methods to keep my pubescent concubine in submission and passable temper." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A few years before, she had spent a rainy summer under Miss Phalen's bleary eye in a dilapidated Appalachian farmhouse that had belonged to some gnarled Haze or other in the dead past. It still stood among its rank acres of golden rod on the edge of a flowerless forest, at the end of a permanently muddy road, twenty miles from the nearest hamlet. Lo recalled that scarecrow of a house, the solitude, the soggy old pastures, the wind, the bloated wilderness, with an energy of disgust that distorted her mouth and fattened her half-revealed tongue. And it was there that I warned her she would dwell with me in exile for months and years if need be, studying under me French and Latin, unless her \"present attitude\" changed. Charlotte, I began to understand you!\n\nA simple child, Lo would scream no! and frantically clutch at my driving hand whenever I put a stop to her tornadoes of temper by turning in the middle of a highway with the implication that I was about to take her straight to that dark and dismal abode." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The farther, however, we traveled away from it west, the less tangible that menace became, and I had to adopt other methods of persuasion." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Among these, the reformatory threat is the one I recall with the deepest moan of shame. From the very beginning of our concourse, I was clever enough to realize that I must secure her complete co-operation in keeping our relations secret, that it should become a second nature with her, no matter what grudge she might bear me, no matter what other pleasures she might seek.\n\n\"Come and kiss your old man,\" I would say, \"and drop that moody nonsense. In former times, when I was still your dream male [the reader will notice what pains I took to speak Lo's tongue], you swooned to records of the number one throb-and-sob idol of your coevals [Lo: \"Of my what? Speak English\"]. That idol of your pals sounded, you thought, like friend Humbert. But now, I am just your old man, a dream dad protecting his dream daughter.\n\n\"My chère Dolorès! I want to protect you, dear, from all the horrors that happen to little girls in coal sheds and alley ways, and, alas, comme vous le savez trop bien, ma gentille, in the blueberry woods during the bluest of summers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Through thick and thin I will still stay your guardian, and if you are good, I hope a court may legalize that guardianship before long. Let us, however, forget, Dolores Haze, so-called legal terminology, terminology that accepts as rational the term 'lewd and lascivious cohabitation.' I am not a criminal sexual psychopath taking indecent liberties with a child. The rapist was Charlie Holmes; I am the therapist—a matter of nice spacing in the way of distinction. I am your daddum, Lo. Look, I've a learned book here about young girls. Look, darling, what it says." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I quote: the normal girl—normal, mark you—the normal girl is usually extremely anxious to please her father." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'elusive' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She feels in him the forerunner of the desired elusive male ('elusive' is good, by Polonius!). The wise mother (and your poor mother would have been wise, had she lived) will encourage a companionship between father and daughter, realizing—excuse the corny style—that the girl forms her ideals of romance and of men from her association with her father. Now, what association does this cheery book mean—and recommend? I quote again: Among Sicilians sexual relations between a father and his daughter are accepted as a matter of course, and the girl who participates in such relationship is not looked upon with disapproval by the society of which she is part. I'm a great admirer of Sicilians, fine athletes, fine musicians, fine upright people, Lo, and great lovers. But let's not digress. Only the other day we read in the newspapers some bunkum about a middle-aged morals offender who pleaded guilty to the violation of the Mann Act and to transporting a nine-year-old girl across state lines for immoral purposes, whatever these are. Dolores darling!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "You are not nine but almost thirteen, and I would not advise you to consider yourself my cross-country slave, and I deplore the Mann Act as lending itself to a dreadful pun, the revenge that the Gods of Semantics take against tight-zippered Philistines." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I am your father, and I am speaking English, and I love you.\n\n\"Finally, let us see what happens if you, a minor, accused of having impaired the morals of an adult in a respectable inn, what happens if you complain to the police of my having kidnaped and raped you? Let us suppose they believe you. A minor female, who allows a person over twenty-one to know her carnally, involves her victim into statutory rape, or second-degree sodomy, depending on the technique; and the maximum penalty is ten years. So I go to jail. Okay. I go to jail. But what happens to you, my orphan? Well, you are luckier. You become the ward of the Department of Public Welfare—which I am afraid sounds a little bleak. A nice grim matron of the Miss Phalen type, but more rigid and not a drinking woman, will take away your lipstick and fancy clothes. No more gadding about! I don't know if you have ever heard of the laws relating to dependent, neglected, incorrigible and delinquent children. While I stand gripping the bars, you, happy neglected child, will be given a choice of various dwelling places, all more or less the same, the correctional school, the reformatory, the juvenile detention home, or one of those admirable girls' protectories where you knit things, and sing hymns, and have rancid pancakes on Sundays. You will go there, Lolita—my Lolita, this Lolita will leave her Catullus and go there, as the wayward girl you are. In plainer words, if we two are found out, you will be analyzed and institutionalized, my pet, c'est tout. You will dwell, my Lolita will dwell (come here, my brown flower) with thirty-nine other dopes in a dirty dormitory (no, allow me, please) under the supervision of hideous matrons. This is the situation, this is the choice. Don't you think that under the circumstances Dolores Haze had better stick to her old man?\"\n\nBy rubbing all this in, I succeeded in terrorizing Lo, who despite a certain brash alertness of manner and spurts of wit was not as intelligent a child as her I.Q. might suggest. But if I managed to establish that background of shared secrecy and shared guilt, I was much less successful in keeping her in good humor. Every morning during our yearlong travels I had to devise some expectation, some special point in space and time for her to look forward to, for her to survive till bedtime. Otherwise, deprived of a shaping and sustaining purpose, the skeleton of her day sagged and collapsed. The object in view might be anything—a lighthouse in Virginia, a natural cave in Arkansas converted to a café, a collection of guns and violins somewhere in Oklahoma, a replica of the Grotto of Lourdes in Louisiana, shabby photographs of the bonanza mining period in the local museum of a Rocky Mountains resort, anything whatsoever—but it had to be there, in front of us, like a fixed star, although as likely as not Lo would feign gagging as soon as we got to it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "By putting the geography of the United States into motion, I did my best for hours on end to give her the impression of \"going places,\" of rolling on to some definite destination, to some unusual delight." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'above' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I have never seen such smooth amiable roads as those that now radiated before us, across the crazy quilt of forty-eight states. Voraciously we consumed those long highways, in rapt silence we glided over their glossy black dance floors. Not only had Lo no eye for scenery but she furiously resented my calling her attention to this or that enchanting detail of landscape; which I myself learned to discern only after being exposed for quite a time to the delicate beauty ever present in the margin of our undeserving journey. By a paradox of pictorial thought, the average lowland North-American countryside had at first seemed to me something I accepted with a shock of amused recognition because of those painted oilcloths which were imported from America in the old days to be hung above washstands in Central-European nurseries, and which fascinated a drowsy child at bed time with the rustic green views they depicted—opaque curly trees, a barn, cattle, a brook, the dull white of vague orchards in bloom, and perhaps a stone fence or hills of greenish gouache. But gradually the models of those elementary rusticities became stranger and stranger to the eye, the nearer I came to know them. Beyond the tilled plain, beyond the toy roofs, there would be a slow suffusion of inutile loveliness, a low sun in a platinum haze with a warm, peeled-peach tinge pervading the upper edge of a two-dimensional, dove-gray cloud fusing with the distant amorous mist. There might be a line of spaced trees silhouetted against the horizon, and hot still noons above a wilderness of clover, and Claude Lorrain clouds inscribed remotely into misty azure with only their cumulus part conspicuous against the neutral swoon of the background." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 8 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or again, it might be a stern El Greco horizon, pregnant with inky rain, and a passing glimpse of some mummy-necked farmer, and all around alternating strips of quick-silverish water and harsh green corn, the whole arrangement opening like a fan, somewhere in Kansas.\n\nNow and then, in the vastness of those plains, huge trees would advance toward us to cluster self-consciously by the roadside and provide a bit of humanitarian shade above a picnic table, with sun flecks, flattened paper cups, samaras and discarded ice-cream sticks littering the brown ground. A great user of roadside facilities, my unfastidious Lo would be charmed by toilet signs—Guys-Gals, John-Jane, Jack-Jill and even Buck's-Doe's; while lost in an artist's dream, I would stare at the honest brightness of the gasoline paraphernalia against the splendid green of oaks, or at a distant hill scrambling out—scarred but still untamed—from the wilderness of agriculture that was trying to swallow it.\n\nAt night, tall trucks studded with colored lights, like dreadful giant Christmas trees, loomed in the darkness and thundered by the belated little sedan. And again next day a thinly populated sky, losing its blue to the heat, would melt overhead, and Lo would clamor for a drink, and her cheeks would hollow vigorously over the straw, and the car inside would be a furnace when we got in again, and the road shimmered ahead, with a remote car changing its shape mirage-like in the surface glare, and seeming to hang for a moment, old-fashionedly square and high, in the hot haze. And as we pushed westward, patches of what the garage-man called \"sage brush\" appeared, and then the mysterious outlines of table-like hills, and then red bluffs ink-blotted with junipers, and then a mountain range, dun grading into blue, and blue into dream, and the desert would meet us with a steady gale, dust, gray thorn bushes, and hideous bits of tissue paper mimicking pale flowers among the prickles of wind-tortured withered stalks all along the highway; in the middle of which there sometimes stood simple cows, immobilized in a position (tail left, white eyelashes right) cutting across all human rules of traffic.\n\nMy lawyer has suggested I give a clear, frank account of the itinerary we followed, and I suppose I have reached here a point where I cannot avoid that chore. Roughly, during that mad year (August 1947 to August 1948), our route began with a series of wiggles and whorls in New England, then meandered south, up and down, east and west; dipped deep into ce qu'on appelle Dixieland, avoided Florida because the Farlows were there, veered west, zigzagged through corn belts and cotton belts (this is not too clear I am afraid, Clarence, but I did not keep any notes, and have at my disposal only an atrociously crippled tour book in three volumes, almost a symbol of my torn and tattered past, in which to check these recollections); crossed and re-crossed the Rockies, straggled through southern deserts where we wintered; reached the Pacific, turned north through the pale lilac fluff of flowering shrubs along forest roads; almost reached the Canadian border; and proceeded east, across good lands and bad lands, back to agriculture on a grand scale, avoiding, despite little Lo's strident remonstrations, little Lo's birthplace, in a corn, coal and hog producing area; and finally returned to the fold of the East, petering out in the college town of Beardsley." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "im ur writing buddy. i set scene (might have existing chars), u do 6 sentences like Vladimir Nabokov" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A word about Gaston Godin. The main reason why I enjoyed—or at least tolerated with relief—his company was the spell of absolute security that his ample person cast on my secret. Not that he knew it; I had no special reason to confide in him, and he was much too self-centered and abstract to notice or suspect anything that might lead to a frank question on his part and a frank answer on mine. He spoke well of me to Beardsleyans, he was my good herald. Had he discovered mes goûts and Lolita's status, it would have interested him only insofar as throwing some light on the simplicity of my attitude toward him, which attitude was as free of polite strain as it was of ribald allusions; for despite his colorless mind and dim memory, he was perhaps aware that I knew more about him than the burghers of Beardsley did. He was a flabby, dough-faced, melancholy bachelor tapering upward to a pair of narrow, not quite level shoulders and a conical pear-head which had sleek black hair on one side and only a few plastered wisps on the other." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But the lower part of his body was enormous, and he ambulated with a curious elephantine stealth by means of phenomenally stout legs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He always wore black, even his tie was black; he seldom bathed; his English was a burlesque. And, nonetheless, everybody considered him to be a supremely lovable, lovably freakish fellow! Neighbors pampered him; he knew by name all the small boys in our vicinity (he lived a few blocks away from me) and had some of them clean his sidewalk and burn leaves in his back yard, and bring wood from his shed, and even perform simple chores about the house, and he would feed them fancy chocolates, with real liqueurs inside—in the privacy of an orientally furnished den in his basement, with amusing daggers and pistols arrayed on the moldy, rug-adorned walls among the camouflaged hot-water pipes. Upstairs he had a studio—he painted a little, the old fraud. He had decorated its sloping wall (it was really not more than a garret) with large photographs of pensive André Gide, Tchaïkovsky, Norman Douglas, two other well-known English writers, Nijinsky (all thighs and fig leaves), Harold D. Doublename (a misty-eyed left-wing professor at a Midwestern university) and Marcel Proust. All these poor people seemed about to fall on you from their inclined plane." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had also an album with snapshots of all the Jackies and Dickies of the neighborhood, and when I happened to thumb through it and make some casual remark, Gaston would purse his fat lips and murmur with a wistful pout \"Oui, ils sont gentils.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'would' × 3" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His brown eyes would roam around the various sentimental and artistic bric-a-brac present, and his own banal toiles (the conventionally primitive eyes, sliced guitars, blue nipples and geometrical designs of the day), and with a vague gesture toward a painted wooden bowl or veined vase, he would say \"Prenez donc une de ces poires. La bonne dame d'en face m'en offre plus que je n'en peux savourer.\" Or: \"Mississe Taille Lore vient de me donner ces dahlias, belles fleurs que j'exècre.\" (Somber, sad, full of world-weariness.)\n\nFor obvious reasons, I preferred my house to his for the games of chess we had two or three times weekly. He looked like some old battered idol as he sat with his pudgy hands in his lap and stared at the board as if it were a corpse. Wheezing he would meditate for ten minutes—then make a losing move." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or the good man, after even more thought, might utter: Au roi!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "with a slow old-dog woof that had a gargling sound at the back of it which made his jowls wabble; and then he would lift his circumflex eyebrows with a deep sigh as I pointed out to him that he was in check himself.\n\nSometimes, from where we sat in my cold study I could hear Lo's bare feet practicing dance techniques in the living room downstairs; but Gaston's outgoing senses were comfortably dulled, and he remained unaware of those naked rhythms—and-one, and-two, and-one, and-two, weight transferred on a straight right leg, leg up and out to the side, and-one, and-two, and only when she started jumping, opening her legs at the height of the jump, and flexing one leg, and extending the other, and flying, and landing on her toes—only then did my pale, pompous, morose opponent rub his head or cheek as if confusing those distant thuds with the awful stabs of my formidable Queen.\n\nSometimes Lola would slouch in while we pondered the board—and it was every time a treat to see Gaston, his elephant eye still fixed on his pieces, ceremoniously rise to shake hands with her, and forthwith release her limp fingers, and without looking once at her, descend again into his chair to topple into the trap I had laid for him. One day around Christmas, after I had not seen him for a fortnight or so, he asked me \"Et toutes vos fillettes, elles vont bien?\" from which it became evident to me that he had multiplied my unique Lolita by the number of sartorial categories his downcast moody eye had glimpsed during a whole series of her appearances: blue jeans, a skirt, shorts, a quilted robe.\n\nI am loath to dwell so long on the poor fellow (sadly enough, a year later, during a voyage to Europe, from which he did not return, he got involved in a sale histoire, in Naples of all places!)." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I would have hardly alluded to him at all had not his Beardsley existence had such a queer bearing on my case." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I need him for my defense. There he was, devoid of any talent whatsoever, a mediocre teacher, a worthless scholar, a glum repulsive fat old invert, highly contemptuous of the American way of life, triumphantly ignorant of the English language—there he was in priggish New England, crooned over by the old and caressed by the young—oh, having a grand time and fooling everybody; and here was I." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\nfive sentences\nStyle:\nVladimir Nabokov" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Around Christmas she caught a bad chill and was examined by a friend of Miss Lester, a Dr. Ilse Tristramson (hi, Ilse, you were a dear, uninquisitive soul, and you touched my dove very gently)." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She diagnosed bronchitis, patted Lo on the back (all its bloom erect because of the fever) and put her to bed for a week or longer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At first she \"ran a temperature\" in American parlance, and I could not resist the exquisite caloricity of unexpected delights—Venus febriculosa—though it was a very languid Lolita that moaned and coughed and shivered in my embrace." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And as soon as she was well again, I threw a Party with Boys.\n\nPerhaps I had drunk a little too much in preparation for the ordeal. Perhaps I made a fool of myself. The girls had decorated and plugged in a small fir tree—German custom, except that colored bulbs had superseded wax candles. Records were chosen and fed into my landlord's phonograph." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Chic Dolly wore a nice gray dress with fitted bodice and flared skirt. Humming, I retired to my study upstairs—and then every ten or twenty minutes I would come down like an idiot just for a few seconds; to pick up ostensibly my pipe from the mantelpiece or hunt for the newspaper; and with every new visit these simple actions became harder to perform, and I was reminded of the dreadfully distant days when I used to brace myself to casually enter a room in the Ramsdale house where Little Carmen was on.\n\nThe party was not a success. Of the three girls invited, one did not come at all, and one of the boys brought his cousin Roy, so there was a superfluity of two boys, and the cousins knew all the steps, and the other fellows could hardly dance at all, and most of the evening was spent in messing up the kitchen, and then endlessly jabbering about what card game to play, and sometime later, two girls and four boys sat on the floor of the living room, with all windows open, and played a word game which Opal could not be made to understand, while Mona and Roy, a lean handsome lad, drank ginger ale in the kitchen, sitting on the table and dangling their legs, and hotly discussing Predestination and the Law of Averages. After they had all gone my Lo said ugh, closed her eyes, and dropped into a chair with all four limbs starfished to express the utmost disgust and exhaustion and swore it was the most revolting bunch of boys she had ever seen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I bought her a new tennis racket for that remark." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "January was humid and warm, and February fooled the forsythia: none of the townspeople had ever seen such weather. Other presents came tumbling in. For her birthday I bought her a bicycle, the doe-like and altogether charming machine already mentioned—and added to this a History of Modern American Painting: her bicycle manner, I mean her approach to it, the hip movement in mounting, the grace and so on, afforded me supreme pleasure; but my attempt to refine her pictorial taste was a failure; she wanted to know if the guy noon-napping on Doris Lee's hay was the father of the pseudo-voluptuous hoyden in the foreground, and could not understand why I said Grant Wood or Peter Hurd was good, and Reginald Marsh or Frederick Waugh awful." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes and character familiarity in the Fiction genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I remember as a child in Europe gloating over a map of North America that had \"Appalachian Mountains\" boldly running from Alabama up to New Brunswick, so that the whole region they spanned—Tennessee, the Virginias, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, appeared to my imagination as a gigantic Switzerland or even Tibet, all mountain, glorious diamond peak upon peak, giant conifers, le montagnard émigré in his bear skin glory, and Felis tigris goldsmithi, and Red Indians under the catalpas. That it all boiled down to a measly suburban lawn and a smoking garbage incinerator, was appalling. Farewell, Appalachia! Leaving it, we crossed Ohio, the three states beginning with \"I,\" and Nebraska—ah, that first whiff of the West! We travelled very leisurely, having more than a week to reach Wace, Continental Divide, where she passionately desired to see the Ceremonial Dances marking the seasonal opening of Magic Cave, and at least three weeks to reach Elphinstone, gem of a western State where she yearned to climb Red Rock from which a mature screen star had recently jumped to her death after a drunken row with her gigolo.\n\nAgain we were welcomed to wary motels by means of inscriptions that read:\n\n\"We wish you to feel at home while here. All equipment was carefully checked upon your arrival. Your license number is on record here. Use hot water sparingly. We reserve the right to eject without notice any objectionable person. Do not throw waste material of any kind in the toilet bowl. Thank you. Call again. The Management. P.S. We consider our guests the Finest People of the World.\"\n\nIn these frightening places we paid ten for twins, flies queued outside at the screenless door and successfully scrambled in, the ashes of our predecessors still lingered in the ashtrays, a woman's hair lay on the pillow, one heard one's neighbor hanging his coat in his closet, the hangers were ingeniously fixed to their bars by coils of wire so as to thwart theft, and, in crowning insult, the pictures above the twin beds were identical twins. I also noticed that commercial fashion was changing. There was a tendency for cabins to fuse and gradually form the caravansary, and, lo (she was not interested but the reader may be), a second story was added, and a lobby grew in, and cars were removed to a communal garage, and the motel reverted to the good old hotel." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I now warn the reader not to mock me and my mental daze." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'music' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It is easy for him and me to decipher now a past destiny; but a destiny in the making is, believe me, not one of those honest mystery stories where all you have to do is keep an eye on the clues. In my youth I once read a French detective tale where the clues were actually in italics; but that is not McFate's way—even if one does learn to recognize certain obscure indications.\n\nFor instance: I would not swear that there was not at least one occasion, prior to, or at the very beginning of, the Midwest lap of our journey, when she managed to convey some information to, or otherwise get into contact with, a person or persons unknown. We had stopped at a gas station, under the sign of Pegasus, and she had slipped out of her seat and escaped to the rear of the premises while the raised hood, under which I had bent to watch the mechanic's manipulations, hid her for a moment from my sight. Being inclined to be lenient, I only shook my benign head though strictly speaking such visits were taboo, since I felt instinctively that toilets—as also telephones—happened to be, for reasons unfathomable, the points where my destiny was liable to catch. We all have such fateful objects—it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another—carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of special significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break.\n\nWell—my car had been attended to, and I had moved it away from the pumps to let a pickup truck be serviced—when the growing volume of her absence began to weigh upon me in the windy grayness. Not for the first time, and not for the last, had I stared in such dull discomfort of mind at those stationary trivialities that look almost surprised, like staring rustics, to find themselves in the stranded traveller's field of vision: that green garbage can, those very black, very whitewalled tires for sale, those bright cans of motor oil, that red icebox with assorted drinks, the four, five, seven discarded bottles within the incompleted crossword puzzle of their wooden cells, that bug patiently walking up the inside of the window of the office. Radio music was coming from its open door, and because the rhythm was not synchronized with the heave and flutter and other gestures of wind-animated vegetation, one had the impression of an old scenic film living its own life while piano or fiddle followed a line of music quite outside the shivering flower, the swaying branch." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sound of Charlotte's last sob incongruously vibrated through me as, with her dress fluttering athwart the rhythm, Lolita veered from a totally unexpected direction." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had found the toilet occupied and had crossed over to the sign of the Conche in the next block." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They said there they were proud of their home-clean restrooms. These prepaid postcards, they said, had been provided for your comments. No postcards. No soap. Nothing. No comments.\n\nThat day or the next, after a tedious drive through a land of food crops, we reached a pleasant little burg and put up at Chestnut Court—nice cabins, damp green grounds, apple trees, an old swing—and a tremendous sunset which the tired child ignored. She had wanted to go through Kasbeam because it was only thirty miles north from her home town but on the following morning I found her quite listless, with no desire to see again the sidewalk where she had played hopscotch some five years before. For obvious reasons I had rather dreaded that side trip, even though we had agreed not to make ourselves conspicuous in any way—to remain in the car and not look up old friends. My relief at her abandoning the project was spoiled by the thought that had she felt I were totally against the nostalgic possibilities of Pisky, as I had been last year, she would not have given up so easily. On my mentioning this with a sigh, she sighed too and complained of being out of sorts." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She wanted to remain in bed till teatime at least, with lots of magazines, and then if she felt better she suggested we just continue westward." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I must say she was very sweet and languid, and craved for fresh fruits, and I decided to go and fetch her a toothsome picnic lunch in Kasbeam." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Our cabin stood on the timbered crest of a hill, and from our window you could see the road winding down, and then running as straight as a hair parting between two rows of chestnut trees, towards the pretty town, which looked singularly distinct and toylike in the pure morning distance. One could make out an elf-like girl on an insect-like bicycle, and a dog, a bit too large proportionately, all as clear as those pilgrims and mules winding up wax-pale roads in old paintings with blue hills and red little people. I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with, so I leisurely walked down, eventually meeting the cyclist—a plain plump girl with pigtails, followed by a huge St. Bernard dog with orbits like pansies. In Kasbeam a very old barber gave me a very mediocre haircut: he babbled of a baseball-playing son of his, and, at every explodent, spat into my neck, and every now and then wiped his glasses on my sheet-wrap, or interrupted his tremulous scissor work to produce faded newspaper clippings, and so inattentive was I that it came as a shock to realize as he pointed to an easeled photograph among the ancient gray lotions, that the mustached young ball player had been dead for the last thirty years.\n\nI had a cup of hot flavorless coffee, bought a bunch of bananas for my monkey, and spent another ten minutes or so in a delicatessen store. At least an hour and a half must have elapsed when this homeward-bound little pilgrim appeared on the winding road leading to Chestnut Castle.\n\nThe girl I had seen on my way to town was now loaded with linen and engaged in helping a misshapen man whose big head and coarse features reminded me of the \"Bertoldo\" character in low Italian comedy. They were cleaning the cabins of which there was a dozen or so on Chestnut Crest, all pleasantly spaced amid the copious verdure. It was noon, and most of them, with a final bang of their screen doors, had already got rid of their occupants." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A very elderly, almost mummy-like couple in a very new model were in the act of creeping out of one of the contiguous garages; from another a red hood protruded in somewhat cod-piece fashion; and nearer to our cabin, a strong and handsome young man with a shock of black hair and blue eyes was putting a portable refrigerator into a station wagon." }, { "from": "human", "value": "For some reason he gave me a sheepish grin as I passed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On the grass expanse opposite, in the many-limbed shade of luxuriant trees, the familiar St. Bernard dog was guarding his mistress' bicycle, and nearby a young woman, far gone in the family way, had seated a rapt baby on a swing and was rocking it gently, while a jealous boy of two or three was making a nuisance of himself by trying to push or pull the swing board; he finally succeeded in getting himself knocked down by it, and bawled loudly as he lay supine on the grass while his mother continued to smile gently at neither of her present children. I recall so clearly these minutiae probably because I was to check my impressions so thoroughly only a few minutes later; and besides, something in me had been on guard ever since that awful night in Beardsley. I now refused to be diverted by the feeling of well-being that my walk had engendered—by the young summer breeze that enveloped the nape of my neck, the giving crunch of the damp gravel, the juicy tidbit I had sucked out at last from a hollow tooth, and even the comfortable weight of my provisions which the general condition of my heart should not have allowed me to carry; but even that miserable pump of mine seemed to be working sweetly, and I felt adolori d'amoureuse langueur, to quote dear old Ronsard, as I reached the cottage where I had left my Dolores.\n\nTo my surprise I found her dressed. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in slacks and T-shirt, and was looking at me as if she could not quite place me. The frank soft shape of her small breasts was brought out rather than blurred by the limpness of her thin shirt, and this frankness irritated me. She had not washed; yet her mouth was freshly though smudgily painted, and her broad teeth glistened like wine-tinged ivory, or pinkish poker chips. And there she sat, hands clasped in her lap, and dreamily brimmed with a diabolical glow that had no relation to me whatever.\n\nI plumped down my heavy paper bag and stood staring at the bare ankles of her sandaled feet, then at her silly face, then again at her sinful feet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You've been out,\" I said (the sandals were filthy with gravel).\n\n\"I just got up,\" she replied, and added upon intercepting my downward glance: \"Went out for a sec. Wanted to see if you were coming back.\"\n\nShe became aware of the bananas and uncoiled herself table-ward.\n\nWhat special suspicion could I have? None indeed—but those muddy, moony eyes of hers, that singular warmth emanating from her! I said nothing. I looked at the road meandering so distinctly within the frame of the window ... Anybody wishing to betray my trust would have found it a splendid lookout. With rising appetite, Lo applied herself to the fruit. All at once I remembered the ingratiating grin of the Johnny nextdoor." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\nfive sentences\nStyle:\nVladimir Nabokov" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The reader must now forget Chestnuts and Colts, and accompany us further west. The following days were marked by a number of great thunderstorms—or perhaps, there was but one single storm which progressed across country in ponderous frog-leaps and which we could not shake off just as we could not shake off detective Trapp: for it was during those days that the problem of the Aztec Red Convertible presented itself to me, and quite overshadowed the theme of Lo's lovers.\n\nQueer! I who was jealous of every male we met—queer, how I misinterpreted the designations of doom. Perhaps I had been lulled by Lo's modest behavior in winter, and anyway it would have been too foolish even for a lunatic to suppose another Humbert was avidly following Humbert and Humbert's nymphet with Jovian fireworks, over the great and ugly plains. I surmised, donc, that the Red Yak keeping behind us at a discreet distance mile after mile was operated by a detective whom some busybody had hired to see what exactly Humbert Humbert was doing with that minor stepdaughter of his." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As happens with me at periods of electrical disturbance and crepitating lightnings, I had hallucinations." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe they were more than hallucinations. I do not know what she or he, or both had put into my liquor but one night I felt sure somebody was tapping on the door of our cabin, and I flung it open, and noticed two things—that I was stark naked and that, white-glistening in the rain-dripping darkness, there stood a man holding before his face the mask of Jutting Chin, a grotesque sleuth in the funnies. He emitted a muffled guffaw and scurried away, and I reeled back into the room, and fell asleep again, and am not sure even to this day that the visit was not a drug-provoked dream: I have thoroughly studied Trapp's type of humor, and this might have been a plausible sample. Oh, crude and absolutely ruthless! Somebody, I imagined, was making money on those masks of popular monsters and morons." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Did I see next morning two urchins rummaging in a garbage can and trying on Jutting Chin? I wonder. It may all have been a coincidence—due to atmospheric conditions, I suppose.\n\nBeing a murderer with a sensational but incomplete and unorthodox memory, I cannot tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the exact day when I first knew with utter certainty that the red convertible was following us. I do remember, however, the first time I saw its driver quite clearly. I was proceeding slowly one afternoon through torrents of rain and kept seeing that red ghost swimming and shivering with lust in my mirror, when presently the deluge dwindled to a patter, and then was suspended altogether." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With a swishing sound a sunburst swept the highway, and needing a pair of new sunglasses, I pulled up at a filling station." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What was happening was a sickness, a cancer, that could not be helped, so I simply ignored the fact that our quiet pursuer, in his converted state, stopped a little behind us at a café or bar bearing the idiotic sign: The Bustle: A Deceitful Seatful. Having seen to the needs of my car, I walked into the office to get those glasses and pay for the gas. As I was in the act of signing a traveller's check and wondered about my exact whereabouts, I happened to glance through a side window, and saw a terrible thing. A broad-backed man, baldish, in an oatmeal coat and dark-brown trousers, was listening to Lo who was leaning out of the car and talking to him very rapidly, her hand with outspread fingers going up and down as it did when she was very serious and emphatic. What struck me with sickening force was—how should I put it?—the voluble familiarity of her way, as if they had known each other—oh, for weeks and weeks." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I saw him scratch his cheek and nod, and turn, and walk back to his convertible, a broad and thickish man of my age, somewhat resembling Gustave Trapp, a cousin of my father's in Switzerland—same smoothly tanned face, fuller than mine, with a small dark mustache and a rosebud degenerate mouth." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lolita was studying a road map when I got back into the car.\n\n\"What did that man ask you, Lo?\"\n\n\"Man? Oh, that man. Oh yes. Oh, I don't know. He wondered if I had a map. Lost his way, I guess.\"\n\nWe drove on, and I said:\n\n\"Now listen, Lo. I do not know whether you are lying or not, and I do not know whether you are insane or not, and I do not care for the moment; but that person has been following us all day, and his car was at the motel yesterday, and I think he is a cop. You know perfectly well what will happen and where you will go if the police find out about things. Now I want to know exactly what he said to you and what you told him.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She laughed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If he's really a cop,\" she said shrilly but not illogically, \"the worst thing we could do, would be to show him we are scared. Ignore him, Dad.\"\n\n\"Did he ask where we were going?\"\n\n\"Oh, he knows that\" (mocking me).\n\n\"Anyway,\" I said, giving up, \"I have seen his face now. He is not pretty. He looks exactly like a relative of mine called Trapp.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he is Trapp. If I were you—Oh, look, all the nines are changing into the next thousand. When I was a little kid,\" she continued unexpectedly, \"I used to think they'd stop and go back to nines, if only my mother agreed to put the car in reverse.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was the first time, I think, she spoke spontaneously of her pre-Humbertian childhood; perhaps, the theatre had taught her that trick; and silently we travelled on, unpursued." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But next day, like pain in a fatal disease that comes back as the drug and hope wear off, there it was again behind us, that glossy red beast. The traffic on the highway was light that day; nobody passed anybody; and nobody attempted to get in between our humble blue car and its imperious red shadow—as if there were some spell cast on that interspace, a zone of evil mirth and magic, a zone whose very precision and stability had a glass-like virtue that was almost artistic. The driver behind me, with his stuffed shoulders and Trappish mustache, looked like a display dummy, and his convertible seemed to move only because an invisible rope of silent silk connected it with our shabby vehicle. We were many times weaker than his splendid, lacquered machine, so that I did not even attempt to outspeed him. O lente currite noctis equi!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "O softly run, nightmares!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "We climbed long grades and rolled downhill again, and heeded speed limits, and spared slow children, and reproduced in sweeping terms the black wiggles of curves on their yellow shields, and no matter how and where we drove, the enchanted interspace slid on intact, mathematical, mirage-like, the viatic counterpart of a magic carpet." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'crumb' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And all the time I was aware of a private blaze on my right: her joyful eye, her flaming cheek.\n\nA traffic policeman, deep in the nightmare of crisscross streets—at half-past-four P.M. in a factory town—was the hand of chance that interrupted the spell. He beckoned me on, and then with the same hand cut off my shadow. A score of cars were launched in between us, and I sped on, and deftly turned into a narrow lane. A sparrow alighted with a jumbo bread crumb, was tackled by another, and lost the crumb." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When after a few grim stoppages and a bit of deliberate meandering, I returned to the highway, our shadow had disappeared." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Include the following text] → \"If he is what you think he is, how silly to give him the slip.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lola snorted and said: \"If he is what you think he is, how silly to give him the slip.\"\n\n\"I have other notions by now,\" I said.\n\n\"You should—ah—check them by—ah—keeping in touch with him, fahther deah,\" said Lo, writhing in the coils of her own sarcasm. \"Gee, you are mean,\" she added in her ordinary voice.\n\nWe spent a grim night in a very foul cabin, under a sonorous amplitude of rain, and with a kind of prehistorically loud thunder incessantly rolling above us." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I am not a lady and do not like lightning,\" said Lo, whose dread of electric storms gave me some pathetic solace." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We had breakfast in the township of Soda, pop. 1001.\n\n\"Judging by the terminal figure,\" I remarked, \"Fatface is already here.\"\n\n\"Your humor,\" said Lo, \"is sidesplitting, deah fahther.\"\n\nWe were in sage-brush country by that time, and there was a day or two of lovely release (I had been a fool, all was well, that discomfort was merely a trapped flatus), and presently the mesas gave way to real mountains, and, on time, we drove into Wace.\n\nOh, disaster. Some confusion had occurred, she had misread a date in the Tour Book, and the Magic Cave ceremonies were over!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She took it bravely, I must admit—and, when we discovered there was in kurortish Wace a summer theatre in full swing, we naturally drifted toward it one fair mid-June evening." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I really could not tell you the plot of the play we saw. A trivial affair, no doubt, with self-conscious light effects and a mediocre leading lady. The only detail that pleased me was a garland of seven little graces, more or less immobile, prettily painted, bare-limbed—seven bemused pubescent girls in colored gauze that had been recruited locally (judging by the partisan flurry here and there among the audience) and were supposed to represent a living rainbow, which lingered throughout the last act, and rather teasingly faded behind a series of multiplied veils. I remember thinking that this idea of children-colors had been lifted by authors Clare Quilty and Vivian Darkbloom from a passage in James Joyce, and that two of the colors were quite exasperatingly lovely—Orange who kept fidgeting all the time, and Emerald who, when her eyes got used to the pitch-black pit where we all heavily sat, suddenly smiled at her mother or her protector.\n\nAs soon as the thing was over, and manual applause—a sound my nerves cannot stand—began to crash all around me, I started to pull and push Lo toward the exit, in my so natural amorous impatience to get her back to our neon-blue cottage in the stunned, starry night: I always say nature is stunned by the sights she sees." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Dolly-Lo, however, lagged behind, in a rosy daze, her pleased eyes narrowed, her sense of vision swamping the rest of her senses to such an extent that her limp hands hardly came together at all in the mechanical action of clapping they still went through." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I had seen that kind of thing in children before but, by God, this was a special child, myopically beaming at the already remote stage where I glimpsed something of the joint authors—a man's tuxedo and the bare shoulders of a hawk-like, black-haired, strikingly tall woman.\n\n\"You've again hurt my wrist, you brute,\" said Lolita in a small voice as she slipped into her car seat.\n\n\"I am dreadfully sorry, my darling, my own ultraviolet darling,\" I said, unsuccessfully trying to catch her elbow, and I added, to change the conversation—to change the direction of fate, oh God, oh God: \"Vivian is quite a woman. I am sure we saw her yesterday in that restaurant, in Soda pop.\"\n\n\"Sometimes,\" said Lo, \"you are quite revoltingly dumb. First, Vivian is the male author, the gal author is Clare; and second, she is forty, married and has Negro blood.\"\n\n\"I thought,\" I said kidding her, \"Quilty was an ancient flame of yours, in the days when you loved me, in sweet old Ramsdale.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What?\" countered Lo, her features working." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That fat dentist? You must be confusing me with some other fast little article.\"\n\nAnd I thought to myself how those fast little articles forget everything, everything, while we, old lovers, treasure every inch of their nymphancy." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes and character familiarity in the Fiction genre." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Lo! Lola! Lolita!\" I hear myself crying from a doorway into the sun, with the acoustics of time, domed time, endowing my call and its tell-tale hoarseness with such a wealth of anxiety, passion and pain that really it would have been instrumental in wrenching open the zipper of her nylon shroud had she been dead. Lolita! In the middle of a trim turfed terrace I found her at last—she had run out before I was ready. Oh Lolita! There she was playing with a damned dog, not me. The animal, a terrier of sorts, was losing and snapping up again and adjusting between his jaws a wet little red ball; he took rapid chords with his front paws on the resilient turf, and then would bounce away. I had only wanted to see where she was, I could not swim with my heart in that state, but who cared—and there she was, and there was I, in my robe—and so I stopped calling; but suddenly something in the pattern of her motions, as she dashed this way and that in her Aztec Red bathing briefs and bra, struck me ... there was an ecstasy, a madness about her frolics that was too much of a glad thing. Even the dog seemed puzzled by the extravagance of her reactions. I put a gentle hand to my chest as I surveyed the situation. The turquoise blue swimming pool some distance behind the lawn was no longer behind that lawn, but within my thorax, and my organs swam in it like excrements in the blue sea water in Nice. One of the bathers had left the pool and, half-concealed by the peacocked shade of trees, stood quite still, holding the ends of the towel around his neck and following Lolita with his amber eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There he stood, in the camouflage of sun and shade, disfigured by them and masked by his own nakedness, his damp black hair or what was left of it, glued to his round head, his little mustache a humid smear, the wool on his chest spread like a symmetrical trophy, his naval pulsating, his hirsute thighs dripping with bright droplets, his tight wet black bathing trunks bloated and bursting with vigor where his great fat bullybag was pulled up and back like a padded shield over his reversed beasthood." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And as I looked at his oval nut-brown face, it dawned upon me that what I had recognized him by was the reflection of my daughter's countenance—the same beatitude and grimace but made hideous by his maleness. And I also knew that the child, my child, knew he was looking, enjoyed the lechery of his look and was putting on a show of gambol and glee, the vile and beloved slut. As she made for the ball and missed it, she fell on her back, with her obscene young legs madly pedalling in the air; I could sense the musk of her excitement from where I stood, and then I saw (petrified with a kind of sacred disgust) the man close his eyes and bare his small, horribly small and even, teeth as he leaned against a tree in which a multitude of dappled Priaps shivered. Immediately afterwards a marvelous transformation took place. He was no longer the satyr but a very good-natured and foolish Swiss cousin, the Gustave Trapp I have mentioned more than once, who used to counteract his \"sprees\" (he drank beer with milk, the good swine) by feats of weight-lifting—tottering and grunting on a lake beach with his otherwise very complete bathing suit jauntily stripped from one shoulder. This Trapp noticed me from afar and working the towel on his nape walked back with false insouciance to the pool. And as if the sun had gone out of the game, Lo slackened and slowly got up ignoring the ball that the terrier placed before her. Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp? I started to say something, and then sat down on the grass with a quite monstrous pain in my chest and vomited a torrent of browns and greens that I had never remembered eating." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I saw Lolita's eyes, and they seemed to be more calculating than frightened." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I heard her saying to a kind lady that her father was having a fit. Then for a long time I lay in a lounge chair swallowing pony upon pony of gin. And next morning I felt strong enough to drive on (which in later years no doctor believed)." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes and character familiarity in the Fiction genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The two-room cabin we had ordered at Silver Spur Court, Elphinstone, turned out to belong to the glossily browned pine-log kind that Lolita used to be so fond of in the days of our carefree first journey; oh, how different things were now! I am not referring to Trapp or Trapps. After all—well, really ... After all, gentlemen, it was becoming abundantly clear that all those identical detectives in prismatically changing cars were figments of my persecution mania, recurrent images based on coincidence and chance resemblance. Soyons logiques, crowed the cocky Gallic part of my brain—and proceeded to rout the notion of a Lolita-maddened salesman or comedy gangster, with stooges, persecuting me, and hoaxing me, and otherwise taking riotous advantage of my strange relations with the law. I remember humming my panic away. I remember evolving even an explanation of the \"Birdsley\" telephone call ... But if I could dismiss Trapp, as I had dismissed my convulsions on the lawn at Champion, I could do nothing with the anguish of knowing Lolita to be so tantalizingly, so miserably unattainable and beloved on the very eve of a new era, when my alembics told me she should stop being a nymphet, stop torturing me.\n\nAn additional, abominable, and perfectly gratuitous worry was lovingly prepared for me in Elphinstone. Lo had been dull and silent during the last lap—two hundred mountainous miles uncontaminated by smoke-gray sleuths or zigzagging zanies." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She hardly glanced at the famous, oddly shaped, splendidly flushed rock which jutted above the mountains and had been the take-off for nirvana on the part of a temperamental show girl." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'would' 4 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The town was newly built, or rebuilt, on the flat floor of a seven-thousand-foot-high valley; it would soon bore Lo, I hoped, and we would spin on to California, to the Mexican border, to mythical bays, saguaro deserts, fatamorganas. José Lizzarrabengoa, as you remember, planned to take his Carmen to the Etats Unis. I conjured up a Central American tennis competition in which Dolores Haze and various Californian schoolgirl champions would dazzlingly participate. Good-will tours on that smiling level eliminate the distinction between passport and sport. Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.\n\nMrs. Hays, the brisk, brickly rouged, blue-eyed widow who ran the motor court, asked me if I were Swiss perchance, because her sister had married a Swiss ski instructor. I was, whereas my daughter happened to be half Irish. I registered, Hays gave me the key and a twinkling smile, and, still twinkling, showed me where to park the car; Lo crawled out and shivered a little: the luminous evening air was decidedly crisp." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Upon entering the cabin, she sat down on a chair at a card table, buried her face in the crook of her arm and said she felt awful." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Shamming, I thought, shamming, no doubt, to evade my caresses; I was passionately parched; but she began to whimper in an unusually dreary way when I attempted to fondle her. Lolita ill. Lolita dying. Her skin was scalding hot! I took her temperature, orally, then looked up a scribbled formula I fortunately had in a jotter and after laboriously reducing the, meaningless to me, degrees Fahrenheit to the intimate centigrade of my childhood, found she had 40.4, which at least made sense. Hysterical little nymphs might, I knew, run up all kinds of temperature—even exceeding a fatal count. And I would have given her a sip of hot spiced wine, and two aspirins, and kissed the fever away, if, upon an examination of her lovely uvula, one of the gems of her body, I had not seen that it was a burning red. I undressed her. Her breath was bittersweet. Her brown rose tasted of blood. She was shaking from head to toe." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She complained of a painful stiffness in the upper vertebrae—and I thought of poliomyelitis as any American parent would." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Giving up all hope of intercourse, I wrapped her up in a lap robe and carried her into the car. Kind Mrs. Hays in the meantime had alerted the local doctor. \"You are lucky it happened here,\" she said; for not only was Blue the best man in the district, but the Elphinstone hospital was as modern as modern could be, despite its limited capacity. With a heterosexual Erlkönig in pursuit, thither I drove, half-blinded by a royal sunset on the lowland side and guided by a little old woman, a portable witch, perhaps his daughter, whom Mrs. Hays had lent me, and whom I was never to see again. Dr. Blue, whose learning, no doubt, was infinitely inferior to his reputation, assured me it was a virus infection, and when I alluded to her comparatively recent flu, curtly said this was another bug, he had forty such cases on his hands; all of which sounded like the \"ague\" of the ancients. I wondered if I should mention, with a casual chuckle, that my fifteen-year-old daughter had had a minor accident while climbing an awkward fence with her boy friend, but knowing I was drunk, I decided to withhold the information till later if necessary. To an unsmiling blond bitch of a secretary I gave my daughter's age as \"practically sixteen.\" While I was not looking, my child was taken away from me! In vain I insisted I be allowed to spend the night on a \"welcome\" mat in a corner of their damned hospital." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I ran up constructivistic flights of stairs, I tried to trace my darling so as to tell her she had better not babble, especially if she felt as lightheaded as we all did." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At one point, I was rather dreadfully rude to a very young and very cheeky nurse with overdeveloped gluteal parts and blazing black eyes—of Basque descent, as I learned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her father was an imported shepherd, a trainer of sheep dogs. Finally, I returned to the car and remained in it for I do not know how many hours, hunched up in the dark, stunned by my new solitude, looking out open-mouthed now at the dimly illumed, very square and low hospital building squatting in the middle of its lawny block, now up at the wash of stars and the jagged silvery ramparts of the haute montagne where at the moment Mary's father, lonely Joseph Lore, was dreaming of Oloron, Lagore, Rolas—que sais-je!—or seducing a ewe. Such-like fragrant vagabond thoughts have been always a solace to me in times of unusual stress, and only when, despite liberal libations, I felt fairly numbed by the endless night, did I think of driving back to the motel. The old woman had disappeared, and I was not quite sure of my way. Wide gravel roads crisscrossed drowsy rectangular shadows. I made out what looked like the silhouette of gallows on what was probably a school playground; and in another wastelike block there rose in domed silence the pale temple of some local sect. I found the highway at last, and then the motel, where millions of so-called \"millers,\" a kind of insect, were swarming around the neon contours of \"No Vacancy\"; and, when, at 3 A.M., after one of those untimely hot showers which like some mordant only help to fix a man's despair and weariness, I lay on her bed that smelled of chestnuts and roses, and peppermint, and the very delicate, very special French perfume I latterly allowed her to use, I found myself unable to assimilate the simple fact that for the first time in two years I was separated from my Lolita. All at once it occurred to me that her illness was somehow the development of a theme—that it had the same taste and tone as the series of linked impressions which had puzzled and tormented me during our journey; I imagined that secret agent, or secret lover, or prankster, or hallucination, or whatever he was, prowling around the hospital—and Aurora had hardly \"warmed her hands,\" as the pickers of lavender say in the country of my birth, when I found myself trying to get into that dungeon again, knocking upon its green doors, breakfast-less, stool-less, in despair.\n\nThis was Tuesday, and Wednesday or Thursday, splendidly reacting like the darling she was to some \"serum\" (sparrow's sperm or dugong's dung), she was much better, and the doctor said that in a couple of days she would be \"skipping\" again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Of the eight times I visited her, the last one alone remains sharply engraved on my mind." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It had been a great feat to come for I felt all hollowed out by the infection that by then was at work on me too. None will know the strain it was to carry that bouquet, that load of love, those books that I had traveled sixty miles to buy: Browning's Dramatic Works, The History of Dancing, Clowns and Columbines, The Russian Ballet, Flowers of the Rockies, The Theatre Guild Anthology, Tennis by Helen Wills, who had won the National Junior Girl Singles at the age of fifteen. As I was staggering up to the door of my daughter's thirteen-dollar-a-day private room, Mary Lore, the beastly young part-time nurse who had taken an unconcealed dislike to me, emerged with a finished breakfast tray, placed it with a quick crash on a chair in the corridor, and, fundament jigging, shot back into the room—probably to warn her poor little Dolores that the tyrannic old father was creeping up on crepe soles, with books and bouquet: the latter I had composed of wild flowers and beautiful leaves gathered with my own gloved hands on a mountain pass at sunrise (I hardly slept at all that fateful week).\n\nFeeding my Carmencita well? Idly I glanced at the tray. On a yolk-stained plate there was a crumpled envelope. It had contained something, since one edge was torn, but there was no address on it—nothing at all, save a phony armorial design with \"Ponderosa Lodge\" in green letters; thereupon I performed a chassé-croisé with Mary, who was in the act of bustling out again—wonderful how fast they move and how little they do, those rumpy young nurses. She glowered at the envelope I had put back, uncrumpled.\n\n\"You better not touch,\" she said, nodding directionally." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Could burn your fingers.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Below my dignity to rejoin. All I said was:\n\n\"Je croyais que c'était un bill—not a billet doux.\" Then, entering the sunny room, to Lolita: \"Bonjour, mon petit.\"\n\n\"Dolores,\" said Mary Lore, entering with me, past me, through me, the plump whore, and blinking, and starting to fold very rapidly a white flannel blanket as she blinked: \"Dolores, your pappy thinks you are getting letters from my boy friend. It's me (smugly tapping herself on the small gilt cross she wore) gets them. And my pappy can parlay-voo as well as yours.\"\n\nShe left the room. Dolores, so rosy and russet, lips freshly painted, hair brilliantly brushed, bare arms straightened out on neat coverlet, lay innocently beaming at me or nothing. On the bed table, next to a paper napkin and a pencil, her topaz ring burned in the sun.\n\n\"What gruesome funeral flowers,\" she said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thanks all the same. But do you mind very much cutting out the French? It annoys everybody.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Back at the usual rush came the ripe young hussy, reeking of urine and garlic, with the Deseret News, which her fair patient eagerly accepted, ignoring the sumptuously illustrated volumes I had brought.\n\n\"My sister Ann,\" said Mary (topping information with afterthought), \"works at the Ponderosa place.\"\n\nPoor Bluebeard. Those brutal brothers. Est-ce que tu ne m'aimes plus, ma Carmen? She never had. At the moment I knew my love was as hopeless as ever—and I also knew the two girls were conspirators, plotting in Basque, or Zemfirian, against my hopeless love. I shall go further and say that Lo was playing a double game since she was also fooling sentimental Mary whom she had told, I suppose, that she wanted to dwell with her fun-loving young uncle and not with cruel melancholy me. And another nurse whom I never identified, and the village idiot who carted cots and coffins into the elevator, and the idiotic green love birds in a cage in the waiting room—all were in the plot, the sordid plot. I suppose Mary thought comedy father Professor Humbertoldi was interfering with the romance between Dolores and her father-substitute, roly-poly Romeo (for you were rather lardy, you know, Rom, despite all that \"snow\" and \"joy juice\").\n\nMy throat hurt. I stood, swallowing, at the window and stared at the mountains, at the romantic rock high up in the smiling plotting sky." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My Carmen,\" I said (I used to call her that sometimes), \"we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Incidentally, I want all my clothes,\" said the gitanilla, humping up her knees and turning to another page.\n\n\"... Because, really,\" I continued, \"there is no point in staying here.\"\n\n\"There is no point in staying anywhere,\" said Lolita.\n\nI lowered myself into a cretonne chair and, opening the attractive botanical work, attempted, in the fever-humming hush of the room, to identify my flowers. This proved impossible. Presently a musical bell softly sounded somewhere in the passage.\n\nI do not think they had more than a dozen patients (three or four were lunatics, as Lo had cheerfully informed me earlier) in that show place of a hospital, and the staff had too much leisure. However—likewise for reasons of show—regulations were rigid. It is also true that I kept coming at the wrong hours. Not without a secret flow of dreamy malice, visionary Mary (next time it will be une belle dame toute en bleu floating through Roaring Gulch) plucked me by the sleeve to lead me out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I looked at her hand; it dropped." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As I was leaving, leaving voluntarily, Dolores Haze reminded me to bring her next morning ... She did not remember where the various things she wanted were ...\"Bring me,\" she cried (out of sight already, door on the move, closing, closed), \"the new gray suitcase and Mother's trunk\"; but by next morning I was shivering, and boozing, and dying in the motel bed she had used for just a few minutes, and the best I could do under the circular and dilating circumstances was to send the two bags over with the widow's beau, a robust and kindly trucker." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I imagined Lo displaying her treasures to Mary ... No doubt, I was a little delirious—and on the following day I was still a vibration rather than a solid, for when I looked out of the bathroom window at the adjacent lawn, I saw Dolly's beautiful young bicycle propped up there on its support, the graceful front wheel looking away from me, as it always did, and a sparrow perched on the saddle—but it was the landlady's bike, and smiling a little, and shaking my poor head over my fond fancies, I tottered back to my bed, and lay as quiet as a saint—" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores,\n\nOn a patch of sunny green\n\nWith Sanchicha reading stories\n\nIn a movie magazine—\n\n—which was represented by numerous specimens wherever Dolores landed, and there was some great national celebration in town judging by the firecrackers, veritable bombs, that exploded all the time, and at five minutes to two P.M. I heard the sound of whistling lips nearing the half-opened door of my cabin, and then a thump upon it.\n\nIt was big Frank. He remained framed in the opened door, one hand on its jamb, leaning forward a little.\n\nHowdy. Nurse Lore was on the telephone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She wanted to know was I better and would I come today?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At twenty paces Frank used to look a mountain of health; at five, as now, he was a ruddy mosaic of scars—had been blown through a wall overseas; but despite nameless injuries he was able to man a tremendous truck, fish, hunt, drink, and buoyantly dally with roadside ladies. That day, either because it was such a great holiday, or simply because he wanted to divert a sick man, he had taken off the glove he usually wore on his left hand (the one pressing against the side of the door) and revealed to the fascinated sufferer not only an entire lack of fourth and fifth fingers, but also a naked girl, with cinnabar nipples and indigo delta, charmingly tattooed on the back of his crippled hand, its index and middle digit making her legs while his wrist bore her flower-crowned head. Oh, delicious ... reclining against the woodwork, like some sly fairy.\n\nI asked him to tell Mary Lore I would stay in bed all day and would get into touch with my daughter sometime tomorrow if I felt probably Polynesian.\n\nHe noticed the direction of my gaze and made her right hip twitch amorously.\n\n\"Okey-dokey,\" big Frank sang out, slapped the jamb, and whistling, carried my message away, and I went on drinking, and by morning the fever was gone, and although I was as limp as a toad, I put on the purple dressing gown over my maize yellow pajamas, and walked over to the office telephone. Everything was fine. A bright voice informed me that yes, everything was fine, my daughter had checked out the day before, around two, her uncle, Mr. Gustave, had called for her with a cocker spaniel pup and a smile for everyone, and a black Caddy Lack, and had paid Dolly's bill in cash, and told them to tell me I should not worry, and keep warm, they were at Grandpa's ranch as agreed.\n\nElphinstone was, and I hope still is, a very cute little town. It was spread like a maquette, you know, with its neat green-wool trees and red-roofed houses over the valley floor and I think I have alluded earlier to its model school and temple and spacious rectangular blocks, some of which were, curiously enough, just unconventional pastures with a mule or a unicorn grazing in the young July morning mist." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\nfive sentences\nStyle:\nVladimir Nabokov" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A thousand-mile stretch of silk-smooth road separated Kasbeam, where, to the best of my belief, the red fiend had been scheduled to appear for the first time, and fateful Elphinstone which we had reached about a week before Independence Day. The journey had taken up most of June for we had seldom made more than a hundred and fifty miles per traveling day, spending the rest of the time, up to five days in one case, at various stopping places, all of them also prearranged, no doubt. It was that stretch, then, along which the fiend's spoor should be sought; and to this I devoted myself, after several unmentionable days of dashing up and down the relentlessly radiating roads in the vicinity of Elphinstone.\n\nImagine me, reader, with my shyness, my distaste for any ostentation, my inherent sense of the comme il faut, imagine me masking the frenzy of my grief with a trembling ingratiating smile while devising some casual pretext to flip through the hotel register: \"Oh,\" I would say, \"I am almost positive that I stayed here once—let me look up the entries for mid-June—no, I see I'm wrong after all—what a very quaint name for a home town, Kawtagain. Thanks very much.\" Or: \"I had a customer staying here—I mislaid his address—may I ...?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "And every once in a while, especially if the operator of the place happened to be a certain type of gloomy male, personal inspection of the books was denied me." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I have a memo here: between July 5 and November 18, when I returned to Beardsley for a few days, I registered, if not actually stayed, at 342 hotels, motels and tourist homes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This figure includes a few registrations between Chestnut and Beardsley, one of which yielded a shadow of the fiend (\"N. Petit, Larousse, Ill.\"); I had to space and time my inquiries carefully so as not to attract undue attention; and there must have been at least fifty places where I merely inquired at the desk—but that was a futile quest, and I preferred building up a foundation of verisimilitude and good will by first paying for an unneeded room. My survey showed that of the 300 or so books inspected, at least 20 provided me with a clue: the loitering fiend had stopped even more often than we, or else—he was quite capable of that—he had thrown in additional registrations in order to keep me well furnished with derisive hints. Only in one case had he actually stayed at the same motor court as we, a few paces from Lolita's pillow. In some instances he had taken up quarters in the same or in a neighboring block; not infrequently he had lain in wait at an intermediate spot between two bespoken points. How vividly I recalled Lolita, just before our departure from Beardsley, prone on the parlor rug, studying tour books and maps, and marking laps and stops with her lipstick!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I discovered at once that he had foreseen my investigations and had planted insulting pseudonyms for my special benefit." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At the very first motel office I visited, Ponderosa Lodge, his entry, among a dozen obviously human ones, read: Dr. Gratiano Forbeson, Mirandola, NY." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Its Italian Comedy connotations could not fail to strike me, of course." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The landlady deigned to inform me that the gentleman had been laid up for five days with a bad cold, that he had left his car for repairs in some garage or other and that he had checked out on the 4th of July. Yes, a girl called Ann Lore had worked formerly at the Lodge, but was now married to a grocer in Cedar City. One moonlit night I waylaid white-shoed Mary on a solitary street; an automaton, she was about to shriek, but I managed to humanize her by the simple act of falling on my knees and with pious yelps imploring her to help. She did not know a thing, she swore. Who was this Gratiano Forbeson?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She seemed to waver." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I whipped out a hundred-dollar bill. She lifted it to the light of the moon. \"He is your brother,\" she whispered at last. I plucked the bill out of her moon-cold hand, and spitting out a French curse turned and ran away. This taught me to rely on myself alone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No detective could discover the clues Trapp had tuned to my mind and manner. I could not hope, of course, he would ever leave his correct name and address; but I did hope he might slip on the glaze of his own subtlety, by daring, say, to introduce a richer and more personal shot of color than was strictly necessary, or by revealing too much through a qualitative sum of quantitative parts which revealed too little. In one thing he succeeded: he succeeded in thoroughly enmeshing me and my thrashing anguish in his demoniacal game. With infinite skill, he swayed and staggered, and regained an impossible balance, always leaving me with the sportive hope—if I may use such a term in speaking of betrayal, fury, desolation, horror and hate—that he might give himself away next time. He never did—though coming damn close to it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "We all admire the spangled acrobat with classical grace meticulously walking his tight rope in the talcum light; but how much rarer art there is in the sagging rope expert wearing scarecrow clothes and impersonating a grotesque drunk! I should know." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The clues he left did not establish his identity but they reflected his personality, or at least a certain homogenous and striking personality; his genre, his type of humor—at its best at least—the tone of his brain, had affinities with my own." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He mimed and mocked me. His allusions were definitely highbrow. He was well-read. He knew French. He was versed in logodaedaly and logomancy. He was an amateur of sex lore." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had a feminine handwriting." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He would change his name but he could not disguise, no matter how he slanted them, his very peculiar t's, w's and l's." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Quelquepart Island was one of his favorite residences. He did not use a fountain pen which fact, as any psychoanalyst will tell you, meant that the patient was a repressed undinist. One mercifully hopes there are water nymphs in the Styx.\n\nHis main trait was his passion for tantalization. Goodness, what a tease the poor fellow was!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He challenged my scholarship." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all; and I daresay I missed some elements in that cryptogrammic paper chase." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What a shiver of triumph and loathing shook my frail frame when, among the plain innocent names in the hotel recorder, his fiendish conundrum would ejaculate in my face!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I noticed that whenever he felt his enigmas were becoming too recondite, even for such a solver as I, he would lure me back with an easy one." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Arsène Lupin\" was obvious to a Frenchman who remembered the detective stories of his youth; and one hardly had to be a Coleridgian to appreciate the trite poke of \"A. Person, Porlock, England.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "In horrible taste but basically suggestive of a cultured man—not a policeman, not a common goon, not a lewd salesman—were such assumed names as \"Arthur Rainbow\"—plainly the travestied author of Le Bateau Bleu—let me laugh a little too, gentlemen—and \"Morris Schmetterling,\" of L'Oiseau Ivre fame (touché, reader!)." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The silly but funny \"D. Orgon, Elmira, NY,\" was from Molière, of course, and because I had quite recently tried to interest Lolita in a famous 18th-century play, I welcomed as an old friend \"Harry Bumper, Sheridan, Wyo.\" An ordinary encyclopedia informed me who the peculiar looking \"Phineas Quimby, Lebanon, NH\" was; and any good Freudian, with a German name and some interest in religious prostitution, should recognize at a glance the implication of \"Dr. Kitzler, Eryx, Miss.\" So far so good. That sort of fun was shoddy but on the whole impersonal and thus innocuous. Among entries that arrested my attention as undoubtable clues per se but baffled me in respect to their finer points I do not care to mention many since I feel I am groping in a border-land mist with verbal phantoms turning, perhaps, into living vacationists." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Who was \"Johnny Randall, Ramble, Ohio\"?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or was he a real person who just happened to write a hand similar to \"N.S. Aristoff, Catagela, NY\"? What was the sting in \"Catagela\"? And what about \"James Mavor Morell, Hoaxton, England\"? \"Aristophanes,\" \"hoax\"—fine, but what was I missing?\n\nThere was one strain running through all that pseudonymity which caused me especially painful palpitations when I came across it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Such things as \"G. Trapp, Geneva, NY.\" was the sign of treachery on Lolita's part. \"Aubrey Beardsley, Quelquepart Island\" suggested more lucidly than the garbled telephone message had that the starting point of the affair should be looked for in the East. \"Lucas Picador, Merrymay, Pa.\" insinuated that my Carmen had betrayed my pathetic endearments to the impostor. Horribly cruel, forsooth, was \"Will Brown, Dolores, Colo.\" The gruesome \"Harold Haze, Tombstone, Arizona\" (which at another time would have appealed to my sense of humor) implied a familiarity with the girl's past that in nightmare fashion suggested for a moment that my quarry was an old friend of the family, maybe an old flame of Charlotte's, maybe a redresser of wrongs (\"Donald Quix, Sierra, Nev.\")." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll be your writing partner today. I will set the scene (which might reference existing characters and worldbuilding), and you will continue the story with 3 sentences, channeling the voice and techniques of Vladimir Nabokov." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I was again on the road, again at the wheel of the old blue sedan, again alone. Rita had still been dead to the world when I read that letter and fought the mountains of agony it raised within me. I had glanced at her as she smiled in her sleep and had kissed her on her moist brow, and had left her forever, with a note of tender adieu which I taped to her navel—otherwise she might not have found it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Alone\" did I say?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Pas tout à fait. I had my little black chum with me, and as soon as I reached a secluded spot, I rehearsed Mr. Richard F. Schiller's violent death. I had found a very old and very dirty gray sweater of mine in the back of the car, and this I hung up on a branch, in a speechless glade, which I had reached by a wood road from the now remote highway." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The carrying out of the sentence was a little marred by what seemed to me a certain stiffness in the play of the trigger, and I wondered if I should get some oil for the mysterious thing but decided I had no time to spare." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Back into the car went the old dead sweater, now with additional perforations, and having reloaded warm Chum, I continued my journey.\n\nThe letter was dated September 18, 1952 (this was September 22), and the address she gave was \"General Delivery, Coalmont\" (not \"Va.,\" not \"Pa.,\" not \"Tenn.\"—and not Coalmont, anyway—I have camouflaged everything, my love). Inquiries showed this to be a small industrial community some eight hundred miles from New York City." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At first I planned to drive all day and all night, but then thought better of it and rested for a couple of hours around dawn in a motor court room, a few miles before reaching the town. I had made up my mind that the fiend, this Schiller, had been a car salesman who had perhaps got to know my Lolita by giving her a ride in Beardsley—the day her bike blew a tire on the way to Miss Emperor—and that he had got into some trouble since then. The corpse of the executed sweater, no matter how I changed its contours as it lay on the back seat of the car, had kept revealing various outlines pertaining to Trapp-Schiller—the grossness and obscene bonhommie of his body, and to counteract this taste of coarse corruption I resolved to make myself especially handsome and smart as I pressed home the nipple of my alarm clock before it exploded at the set hour of six A.M. Then, with the stern and romantic care of a gentleman about to fight a duel, I checked the arrangement of my papers, bathed and perfumed my delicate body, shaved my face and chest, selected a silk shirt and clean drawers, pulled on transparent taupe socks, and congratulated myself for having with me in my trunk some very exquisite clothes—a waistcoat with nacreous buttons, for instance, a pale cashmere tie and so on." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I was not able, alas, to hold my breakfast, but dismissed that physicality as a trivial contretemps, wiped my mouth with a gossamer handkerchief produced from my sleeve, and, with a blue block of ice for heart, a pill on my tongue and solid death in my hip pocket, I stepped neatly into a telephone booth in Coalmont (Ah-ah-ah, said its little door) and rang up the only Schiller—Paul, Furniture—to be found in the battered book." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hoarse Paul told me he did know a Richard, the son of a cousin of his, and his address was, let me see, 10 Killer Street (I am not going very far for my pseudonyms)." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ah-ah-ah, said the little door.\n\nAt 10 Killer Street, a tenement house, I interviewed a number of dejected old people and two long-haired strawberry-blond incredibly grubby nymphets (rather abstractly, just for the heck of it, the ancient beast in me was casting about for some lightly clad child I might hold against me for a minute, after the killing was over and nothing mattered any more, and everything was allowed). Yes, Dick Skiller had lived there, but had moved when he married." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nobody knew his address." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They might know at the store,\" said a bass voice from an open manhole near which I happened to be standing with the two thin-armed, barefoot little girls and their dim grandmothers. I entered the wrong store and a wary old Negro shook his head even before I could ask anything. I crossed over to a bleak grocery and there, summoned by a customer at my request, a woman's voice from some wooden abyss in the floor, the manhole's counterpart, cried out: Hunter Road, last house." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hunter Road was miles away, in an even more dismal district, all dump and ditch, and wormy vegetable garden, and shack, and gray drizzle, and red mud, and several smoking stacks in the distance." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I stopped at the last \"house\"—a clapboard shack, with two or three similar ones farther away from the road and a waste of withered weeds all around. Sounds of hammering came from behind the house, and for several minutes I sat quite still in my old car, old and frail, at the end of my journey, at my gray goal, finis, my friends, finis, my fiends. The time was around two." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "My pulse was 40 one minute and 100 the next. The drizzle crepitated against the hood of the car. My gun had migrated to my right trouser pocket. A nondescript cur came out from behind the house, stopped in surprise, and started good-naturedly woof-woofing at me, his eyes slit, his shaggy belly all muddy, and then walked about a little and woofed once more." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "AI writing task: segment from larger work -> 11 sentences sentences. style: Vladimir Nabokov. genre: Fiction. note: established characters likely." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "WRITING ASSIST:\n4 sentences sentences\nStyle: Vladimir Nabokov\nGenre: Fiction\nContext: Part of larger work" }, { "from": "human", "value": "A gas station attendant in Parkington explained to me very clearly how to get to Grimm Road." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Wishing to be sure Quilty would be at home, I attempted to ring him up but learned that his private telephone had recently been disconnected. Did that mean he was gone? I started to drive to Grimm Road, twelve miles north of the town. By that time night had eliminated most of the landscape and as I followed the narrow winding highway, a series of short posts, ghostly white, with reflectors, borrowed my own lights to indicate this or that curve." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I could make out a dark valley on one side of the road and wooded slopes on the other, and in front of me, like derelict snowflakes, moths drifted out of the blackness into my probing aura. At the twelfth mile, as foretold, a curiously hooded bridge sheathed me for a moment and, beyond it, a white-washed rock loomed on the right, and a few car lengths further, on the same side, I turned off the highway up gravelly Grimm Road. For a couple of minutes all was dank, dark, dense forest. Then, Pavor Manor, a wooden house with a turret, arose in a circular clearing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Its windows glowed yellow and red; its drive was cluttered with half a dozen cars." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I stopped in the shelter of the trees and abolished my lights to ponder the next move quietly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He would be surrounded by his henchmen and whores. I could not help seeing the inside of that festive and ramshackle castle in terms of \"Troubled Teens,\" a story in one of her magazines, vague \"orgies,\" a sinister adult with penele cigar, drugs, bodyguards. At least, he was there. I would return in the torpid morning." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gently I rolled back to town, in that old faithful car of mine which was serenely, almost cheerfully working for me. My Lolita! There was still a three-year-old bobby pin of hers in the depths of the glove compartment. There was still that stream of pale moths siphoned out of the night by my headlights. Dark barns still propped themselves up here and there by the roadside." }, { "from": "human", "value": "People were still going to the movies." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "While searching for night lodgings, I passed a drive-in. In a selenian glow, truly mystical in its contrast with the moonless and massive night, on a gigantic screen slanting away among dark drowsy fields, a thin phantom raised a gun, both he and his arm reduced to tremulous dishwater by the oblique angle of that receding world,—and the next moment a row of trees shut off the gesticulation." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\n12 sentences\nGenre:\nFiction" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well, sir, this is certainly a fine poem. Your best as far as I am concerned.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He folded and handed it back to me." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I asked him if he had anything serious to say before dying." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The automatic was again ready for use on the person. He looked at it and heaved a big sigh.\n\n\"Now look here, Mac,\" he said. \"You are drunk and I am a sick man. Let us postpone the matter. I need quiet. I have to nurse my impotence. Friends are coming in the afternoon to take me to a game. This pistol-packing farce is becoming a frightful nuisance. We are men of the world, in everything—sex, free verse, marksmanship. If you bear me a grudge, I am ready to make unusual amends. Even an old-fashioned rencontre, sword or pistol, in Rio or elsewhere—is not excluded. My memory and my eloquence are not at their best today but really, my dear Mr. Humbert, you were not an ideal stepfather, and I did not force your little protégée to join me. It was she made me remove her to a happier home. This house is not as modern as that ranch we shared with dear friends. But it is roomy, cool in summer and winter, and in a word comfortable, so, since I intend retiring to England or Florence forever, I suggest you move in. It is yours, gratis. Under the condition you stop pointing at me that [he swore disgustingly] gun. By the way, I do not know if you care for the bizarre, but if you do, I can offer you, also gratis, as house pet, a rather exciting little freak, a young lady with three breasts, one a dandy, this is a rare and delightful marvel of nature. Now, soyons raisonnables. You will only wound me hideously and then rot in jail while I recuperate in a tropical setting. I promise you, Brewster, you will be happy here, with a magnificent cellar, and all the royalties from my next play—I have not much at the bank right now but I propose to borrow—you know, as the Bard said, with that cold in his head, to borrow and to borrow and to borrow. There are other advantages. We have here a most reliable and bribable charwoman, a Mrs. Vibrissa—curious name—who comes from the village twice a week, alas not today, she has daughters, granddaughters, a thing or two I know about the chief of police makes him my slave. I am a playwright. I have been called the American Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck-Schmetterling, says I. Come on! All this is very humiliating, and I am not sure I am doing the right thing. Never use herculanita with rum. Now drop that pistol like a good fellow. I knew your dear wife slightly. You may use my wardrobe. Oh, another thing—you are going to like this. I have an absolutely unique collection of erotica upstairs. Just to mention one item: the in folio de-luxe Bagration Island by the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss, a remarkable lady, a remarkable work—drop that gun—with photographs of eight hundred and something male organs she examined and measured in 1932 on Bagration, in the Barda Sea, very illuminating graphs, plotted with love under pleasant skies—drop that gun—and moreover I can arrange for you to attend executions, not everybody knows that the chair is painted yellow—\"\n\nFeu. This time I hit something hard. I hit the back of a black rocking chair, not unlike Dolly Schiller's—my bullet hit the inside surface of its back whereupon it immediately went into a rocking act, so fast and with such zest that any one coming into the room might have been flabbergasted by the double miracle: that chair rocking in a panic all by itself, and the armchair, where my purple target had just been, now void of all live content. Wiggling his fingers in the air, with a rapid heave of his rump, he flashed into the music room and the next second we were tugging and gasping on both sides of the door which had a key I had overlooked. I won again, and with another abrupt movement Clare the Impredictable sat down before the piano and played several atrociously vigorous, fundamentally hysterical, plangent chords, his jowls quivering, his spread hands tensely plunging, and his nostrils emitting the soundtrack snorts which had been absent from our fight. Still singing those impossible sonorities, he made a futile attempt to open with his foot a kind of seaman's chest near the piano. My next bullet caught him somewhere in the side, and he rose from his chair higher and higher, like old, gray, mad Nijinski, like Old Faithful, like some old nightmare of mine, to a phenomenal altitude, or so it seemed, as he rent the air—still shaking with the rich black music—head thrown back in a howl, hand pressed to his brow, and with his other hand clutching his armpit as if stung by a hornet, down he came on his heels and, again a normal robed man, scurried out into the hall.\n\nI see myself following him through the hall, with a kind of double, triple, kangaroo jump, remaining quite straight on straight legs while bouncing up twice in his wake, and then bouncing between him and the front door in a ballet-like stiff bounce, with the purpose of heading him off, since the door was not properly closed.\n\nSuddenly dignified, and somewhat morose, he started to walk up the broad stairs, and, shifting my position, but not actually following him up the steps, I fired three or four times in quick succession, wounding him at every blaze; and every time I did it to him, that horrible thing to him, his face would twitch in an absurd clownish manner, as if he were exaggerating the pain; he slowed down, rolled his eyes half closing them and made a feminine \"ah!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and he shivered every time a bullet hit him as if I were tickling him, and every time I got him with those slow, clumsy, blind bullets of mine, he would say under his breath, with a phoney British accent—all the while dreadfully twitching, shivering, smirking, but withal talking in a curiously detached and even amiable manner: \"Ah, that hurts, sir, enough! Ah, that hurts atrociously, my dear fellow. I pray you, desist. Ah—very painful, very painful, indeed ... God! Hah! This is abominable, you should really not—\" His voice trailed off as he reached the landing, but he steadily walked on despite all the lead I had lodged in his bloated body—and in distress, in dismay, I understood that far from killing him I was injecting spurts of energy into the poor fellow, as if the bullets had been capsules wherein a heady elixir danced.\n\nI reloaded the thing with hands that were black and bloody—I had touched something he had anointed with his thick gore. Then I rejoined him upstairs, the keys jangling in my pockets like gold.\n\nHe was trudging from room to room, bleeding majestically, trying to find an open window, shaking his head, and still trying to talk me out of murder. I took aim at his head, and he retired to the master bedroom with a burst of royal purple where his ear had been.\n\n\"Get out, get out of here,\" he said coughing and spitting; and in a nightmare of wonder, I saw this blood-spattered but still buoyant person get into his bed and wrap himself up in the chaotic bedclothes. I hit him at very close range through the blankets, and then he lay back, and a big pink bubble with juvenile connotations formed on his lips, grew to the size of a toy balloon, and vanished.\n\nI may have lost contact with reality for a second or two—oh, nothing of the I-just-blacked-out sort that your common criminal enacts; on the contrary, I want to stress the fact that I was responsible for every shed drop of his bubbleblood; but a kind of momentary shift occurred as if I were in the connubial bedroom, and Charlotte were sick in bed. Quilty was a very sick man. I held one of his slippers instead of the pistol—I was sitting on the pistol. Then I made myself a little more comfortable in the chair near the bed, and consulted my wrist watch. The crystal was gone but it ticked." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'there' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The whole sad business had taken more than an hour. He was quiet at last. Far from feeling any relief, a burden even weightier than the one I had hoped to get rid of was with me, upon me, over me. I could not bring myself to touch him in order to make sure he was really dead. He looked it: a quarter of his face gone, and two flies beside themselves with a dawning sense of unbelievable luck. My hands were hardly in better condition than his. I washed up as best I could in the adjacent bathroom. Now I could leave. As I emerged on the landing, I was amazed to discover that a vivacious buzz I had just been dismissing as a mere singing in my ears was really a medley of voices and radio music coming from the downstairs drawing room.\n\nI found there a number of people who apparently had just arrived and were cheerfully drinking Quilty's liquor. There was a fat man in an easy chair; and two dark-haired pale young beauties, sisters no doubt, big one and small one (almost a child), demurely sat side by side on a davenport. A florid-faced fellow with sapphire-blue eyes was in the act of bringing two glasses out of the bar-like kitchen, where two or three women were chatting and chinking ice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I stopped in the doorway and said: \"I have just killed Clare Quilty.\" \"Good for you,\" said the florid fellow as he offered one of the drinks to the elder girl. \"Somebody ought to have done it long ago,\" remarked the fat man. \"What does he say, Tony?\" asked a faded blonde from the bar. \"He says,\" answered the florid fellow, \"he has killed Cue.\" \"Well,\" said another unidentified man rising in a corner where he had been crouching to inspect some records, \"I guess we all should do it to him some day.\" \"Anyway,\" said Tony, \"he'd better come down. We can't wait for him much longer if we want to go to that game.\" \"Give this man a drink somebody,\" said the fat person. \"Want a beer?\" said a woman in slacks, showing it to me from afar.\n\nOnly the two girls on the davenport, both wearing black, the younger fingering a bright something about her white neck, only they said nothing, but just smiled on, so young, so lewd. As the music paused for a moment, there was a sudden noise on the stairs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tony and I stepped out into the hall." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Quilty of all people had managed to crawl out onto the landing, and there we could see him, flapping and heaving, and then subsiding, forever this time, in a purple heap.\n\n\"Hurry up, Cue,\" said Tony with a laugh. \"I believe, he's still—\" He returned to the drawing room, music drowned the rest of the sentence.\n\nThis, I said to myself, was the end of the ingenious play staged for me by Quilty. With a heavy heart I left the house and walked through the spotted blaze of the sun to my car. Two other cars were parked on both sides of it, and I had some trouble squeezing out." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand this chapter by adding four sentences in the genre. Note that some context may come from earlier parts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "NET CONNECTION MADE\n\nTUTORIAL LOADED >\n\nMoria surveyed her surroundings, walked further until she came to a small park area in which a fountain cut cursive lines through the air above a wide pool containing giant lilies with flowers like purple claws, and shoals of small, blue flatfish in pellucid depths. All around her the scented air filled with the chirruping and occasional flutter of flying frogs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Finding a stone bench Moria seated herself and told her aug, Go." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "VIRTUALITIES SELECT >" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand this chapter by adding four sentences in the genre. Note that some context may come from earlier parts." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which they ate with a runcible spoon—\n\nHe managed to ignore it at first, the people patting him on the back or grasping his hand and saying, \"It's great to meet you,\" or \"Thank you for what you're doing,\" or simply staring. But now as he sat sipping a glass of the local brew—something called greenwine—at one of the bars in the arcade leading to the main runcible complex, he began to become a little irritated. \"Christ! You think they'd be used to seeing soldiers by now.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Urbanus, who sipped a glass of cranberry vodka just to be sociable and because a fuel cell in his body could utilize it to power him, emulated an amused smile and gazed up at the glass ceiling of the arcade." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Are you going to tell him, Lindy, or shall I?\"\n\n\"I think we should let him find out for himself, don't you?\" Lindy replied. She glanced back into the bar itself where numerous customers had gathered since their arrival, and kept peering out at them. Then she bit her lip and nodded to a screen display affixed amidst ivy on the outer wall of the bar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What are you two—\" Jebel turned towards the screen. \"That's Grant's World... fucking Prador.\"\n\nThe scene depicted a camouflaged second-child fleeing through jungle. Something familiar about that, but then Jebel had seen many fleeing Prador." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He let his gaze stray away and saw that a group of people now gathered on the main concourse were looking towards the bar." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Frequency requirement: 'others' - 2 occurrence(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When they saw he had spotted them, some of them grinned, nodded and moved off. Others stayed to point out the bar to others. Jebel was beginning to get the creepy feeling it was him they were pointing to, and it made him feel nervy.\n\n\"Excuse me, sir.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jebel spun round spilling some greenwine down his shirt front." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His hand dropped to the thingun holstered on his belt. Then he lowered his gaze to a small boy standing before him—a kid in ersatz fatigues, a toy pistol on his belt and a pet lizard clinging to his shoulder.\n\n\"Hey,\" said Jebel, \"I'm no recruiting officer.\"\n\nThe boy did not seem to know how to reply to this, so instead looked towards a woman standing a few paces back, clutching a holocamera." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She held the device up questioningly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jebel supposed the kid, who was obviously into militaria, wanted a recording of himself with some soldiers. He shrugged and waved a hand obligingly. Boy moved up beside him as the woman, probably his mother, raised the recorder.\n\n\"Can you stand by me?\" the boy asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Feeling rather foolish, Jebel stood with his hand on the boy's shoulder." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What's your name?\" he asked.\n\n\"Alan,\" the boy replied.\n\n\"So you want to be a soldier?\"\n\n\"I want to be like you,\" the boy replied, staring up at him wide-eyed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like adults throughout history Jebel then just stood there unable to think of anything else to say. Certainly the boy would not want to be like Jebel, but how to explain that to him? Finally the woman came over.\n\n\"Thank you for that.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She held up her holocamera exposing a fingerprint and gene reader plate." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Could you verify it, please? I know it's an imposition, but there are sure to be fakes.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well ... yeah, sure.\" Jebel pressed his thumb against the plate until the device beeped.\n\n\"We'll leave you in peace now—I expect you get a lot of this.\" Hand on her boy's shoulder, she moved away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The boy kept looking back at Jebel, still wide-eyed.\n\nJebel sat, not quite sure what to think.\n\n\"Of course,\" said Urbanus, \"the lizard on his shoulder is a gecko—they've become quite a fashionable pet.\"\n\nGecko." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Worryingly dense, our great leader,\" Lindy added." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With interminable slowness, realisation surfaced in Jebel's consciousness. He understood then that, on some level, he already knew. He turned and looked at the bar's screen and observed airborne shots of a glowing crater surrounded by burning jungle.\n\n\"Recorded by the AIs, war drones,\" said Jebel, then turning to Urbanus, \"and you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Golem nodded. \"Those were my instructions. The Polity needs good news of victories right now, and there's damned few of them. It also needs heroes.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm not sure I—\" Shadows abruptly fell across their table. Jebel looked up to see four floating holocams jockeying for position above him.\n\n\"Looks like the Trajeen newsnets just found out,\" said Lindy.\n\n\"I won't stay here for this,\" said Jebel." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No need,\" Urbanus replied, \"I've just been informed that our services are required elsewhere, if you are willing.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "/set_word_count: through, frequency: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Where?\" Jebel asked.\n\nUrbanus pointed up through the roof of the arcade, at an object only just visible in the sky.\n\nStanding upon the bridge of one of the utility ships available to the runcible project, Moria gazed through a chainglass screen at the nearby Boh runcible hanging in silhouette before the gas giant: a small thorny object skating above banded colour and omnipotent indifference. She rubbed at the back of her neck." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The tension, just bearable during the transit here, seemed to have stretched all her muscles and turned her spine into a rod." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her stomach also felt full of swirling oil and she'd not eaten for ten hours. But the excitement was gone. Moria acknowledged to herself that the war removed the gloss of discovery and adventure from it all. Everyone was distracted by the constant bad news, and only recently were people becoming frightened." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Staff were also being seconded away by ECS to work in the big shipyards, and many of those remaining worried about kin either involved in the conflict or living on worlds closer to the front line." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How could anyone feel excited about the runcible project now that the Prador were killing millions, taking world after world, and smashing Polity dreadnoughts like a steamroller tracking over walnuts. Moria shook her head and tried to return to the moment.\n\nWhen they first approached, she was able to discern the smaller objects spreading away from the runcible itself, some of them towed by grabships, some moving under their own power, and some being shifted by stripped-down drive motors bolted into place. To evacuate the runcible about half of the infrastructure—all the scaffolds and extraneous rubbish and all the occupied accommodation units—was moved to a lower orbit, and since then boosted around the other side of Boh, that being probably the safest place to move them, in the permitted time, should there be any mishaps." }, { "from": "human", "value": "U-space com established between Trajeen and Boh, Moria could call up a real-time view of events back at the other runcible." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There a different procedure was used. Rather than detach paraphernalia from around the runcible, the staff were evacuated to Trajeen. The runcible itself, driven far out from the planet by five big fusion motors, represented less of a danger than the Boh one since at that end any mishaps would not be so cataclysmic. Now in deep dark, with Trajeen a distant blue marble, that runcible waited." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And a hundred kilometres away from it, the big cargo carrier stood ready: one kilometre long and half a kilometre wide, that final distance extended by old-style balanced U-space engine nacelles and a third very old U-navigation nacelle—they did not want to use a new vessel for this. The ship's holds were filled with asteroidal rock to bring its mass up for the test. Neither humans nor AIs occupied it—George, or rather the larger part of him back at the Trajeen runcible, would guide it remotely through the gate.\n\n\"As well as data gathering and collation at this end,\" said George, standing beside her, \"I want you to model the entire test.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well, thanks for that,\" Moria checked the time to the test in her aug, \"but a little more notice would have been nice.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'think' precisely 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"As we have thus far discovered: it is only when you are under pressure that the more esoteric programs and functions of your aug are revealed.\"\n\n\"How much more processing space do you think it has, and how fast do you think it can operate?\" she asked.\n\n\"This is what we will find out. But if you do run out of space and speed,\" George pointed towards the gas giant, \"there are five server satellites in orbit to which you can apply for more.\" He glanced at her, and as he did so the codes she could use for this arrived in her aug. \"Any more capacity you might require has been prepaid and so held open for you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She turned and faced him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So tell me, what's being tested here, the cargo runcible or my aug?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Both,\" George replied, still staring out into vacuum. He then frowned and continued, \"The current war situation being what it is, it seems likely this project will shortly be relocated. Also, augs such as yours might be useful to the war effort—perhaps more so than a working cargo runcible.\"\n\n\"But you'd need Sylac for that.\"\n\n\"Sylac was apprehended on Cheyne III and is currently in transit to Titan, where he will be working for ECS.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Moria absorbed that, then replayed what George had just said. \"Hang on ... relocated. We'll not be able to move these runcibles.\"\n\n\"The research will be relocated.\" Now George turned to face her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"These runcibles will be destroyed before the Prador arrive here.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "For a moment Moria was stunned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yes, the war was impinging and taking all the excitement out of the project, but only now did the reality truly strike her. \"They are coming here?\"\n\n\"Unless we gain some unexpected advantage, the battle line will cross the Trajeen system in two months time. Since we came out here,\" he nodded towards Boh, \"evacuation and defence programs have been instituted. But it seems likely Trajeen will either be occupied by the Prador or rendered inert. ECS will not be able to halt the Prador advance until the shipyards are all fully functional.\"\n\nRendered inert." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And there, she realised, the difference between George and a normal human being." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She should never forget that he was essentially an AI submind in a human shell, and along with all the other Polity AIs directed an interstellar war like some kind of chess game in which worlds were pawns.\n\n\"Will we win, do you think?\" she asked.\n\n\"Define 'win,'\" said George, staring at her steely eyed, then he seemed to relent. \"The Polity will certainly survive, but in what form or after sustaining how much damage is debatable. At least our course is clear.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Clear?\"\n\n\"We are defending ourselves from an alien aggressor with seemingly no regard for the lives of our citizens. This is our first encounter with them and we have given them no reason for their aggression. We are fighting to survive not to defend or impose some political ideology, nor to maintain or gain some economic advantage ... as has been the human custom. Those who fight will suffer few moral qualms.\"\n\n\"Oh, that's okay then.\"\n\n\"It is time for you to begin modelling the test,\" he told her, expression bland." }, { "from": "human", "value": "After that?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She felt like just telling him to bugger off, but then took a grip upon herself. Cold in his summation of the situation George might be. Cold in their plans might be the Polity AIs. But the luxury of emotional breast-beating would not win this kind of merciless, industrialized conflict." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'would' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What would win it would be the efficient construction and deployment of weapons, the measured choices in the development of technologies, intricate battle-planning to the advantage of the Polity as a whole, calculation, working the numbers. Very few AIs bothered to play roulette, those that did always won.\n\n\"Did you hear me?\" George asked.\n\n\"Yes, I heard.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'began' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Moria began with the basic real-time virtual model of the two gates, distances truncated to fit within the compass of her perception. She then created underlying gravity, system vector/energy and U-space coordinates maps. But these were only the parchment on which she painted the rest. Recalling from memspace the models she had already created of the two runcibles' energy systems, she began running predicted function, perpetually updated by actual function—the delay measured in microseconds." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Soon she observed warp initiation." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Between the five gateposts of each runcible the cusps formed: each like the meniscus of a soap bubble. Slowly then, the five horn-shaped posts began to slide apart, opening like iris doors, stretching each cusp across vacuum. The cargo ship's fusion drive ignited like a white star and the vessel now began to accelerate towards the Trajeen gate.\n\n\"0.0004532 disparity between G2 and 3 here,\" she noted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Already noted,\" George replied." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You now have access. Make the necessary correction.\"\n\nMoria felt a moment of pure terror as channels opened from the Boh runcible to her aug, and she found herself taking a mental step back as appalling data flows overwhelmed her. She applied to the Boh servers and processing space opened. She began running the calculations to superpose her model on reality and find the required corrections." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She created and collapsed formulae in her mind, in her aug, quickly working her way through the problem." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then came the ecstasy of squirting the solution over to the runcible. A few brief squirts from the runcible's attitude jets closed the disparity and shortly her superposed model matched.\n\nThe five horns now completely separated, spreading the meniscus across a kilometre of space. Between them, the edges of that strange severance of realspace blurred out and away, spilling Hawking radiation into vacuum." }, { "from": "human", "value": "However, Moria soon recognised an untoward energy drain in the system, and put online two more reactors at the Boh runcible." }, { "from": "human", "value": "George did not instruct her to do this, but he made no objection." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'trajeen' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She saw that the larger part of him, at Trajeen, did the same.\n\n\"I now give you total control of the Boh outer gate.\"\n\nShit! Fuck!\n\nNow the vessel reached the Trajeen gate and went through, gone in an instant." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A microsecond of calculation as the buffer feedback figures came through." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Precisely the correct amount of energy applied at the meniscus. Calculations collapsing beyond it. A blurring, negative state, U-space calculus, a glimpse of understanding: everything there and everything here, matter just rucked up space-time and time itself a mere parenthesis...\n\nThe cargo vessel flashing through the gate, backwards, twisted out of shape and trailing fire." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A thousand kilometres beyond the gate it abruptly decelerated, yet none of its engines could be working to do that. Then it just came apart as if somehow all its components transformed into wet clay. Metal and chunks of asteroidal rock slowly spread out, breaking down further until micro-debris formed a sphere which began to be distorted by Boh's gravity. Moria felt as if someone flash-froze her brain then cracked it with a hammer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She groaned and went down on her knees." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What went wrong?\" George: calm, analytical.\n\n\"I don't know!\" she yelled.\n\n\"That is a shame. You still have a long way to go.\"\n\nShe knew, instantly, that he was not talking about just her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "During the weeks of travel through U-space, Immanence reviewed his family's present status in the Kingdom and made plans for further expansion upon his return by deciding on which alliances he should make or break, which other Prador to bring down if not assassinate—though the assassination of Prador adults was never easy—and by working on scenarios based on all the new things he had learned since the war's beginning." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But such plans remained skeletal at best, and protean, for who knew what advantages or disadvantages he might own over the next few years, or how many of his allies or enemies might be destroyed, or how their positions might change? It was the ability to adjust his plans to changing circumstances that had raised him to his present position, and he relished the prospect of further rapid change. However, after a time such planning in a vacuum palled, and he turned his attention to history recordings—private and public—then to weapons design, the formulation of new poisons, possible application of enslaved humans ... but steadily lost interest in each subject as he worked through it.\n\nThe entertainments available to him in his sanctum finally all but exhausted, Immanence decided to take a tour of his ship before its arrival at the next target." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He summoned both Vagule and Gnores, and the second-child XF-326 along with a random selection of that one's contemporaries." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The two first-children arrived before the others outside the closed doors to the sanctum and Immanence watched them through the corridor cam system. Gnores moved to the fore and carefully watched the doors. Vagule shoved him aside, and when Gnores raised his claws, Vagule quickly smacked him hard across the visual turret. Gnores hesitated—not being that much smaller than Vagule—but the other having been appointed Prime by Immanence forced his decision." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He squealed obligingly and backed off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Now the second-children arrived, led by XF-326 who, Immanence noted, with his new privileges providing him better nutrition that Immanence also ordered dosed with certain hormones, was growing fast. The second-children, clambering over each other behind where XF-326 halted a safe distance from the two first-children, were all about the same size. His size lay between that of them and Vagule and Gnores. Immanence understood why XF-326 held back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His recent growth spurts would have weakened his carapace and a blow administered by either of the two first-children might result in serious injury." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Immanence rose up on his grav-motors and swung towards the doors, ordering them open as he slid towards them.\n\nMuch scrambling, pushing and shoving ensued as his children realised he actually intended to leave the sanctum. The second-children were fine staying in the corridor all about him, there being room for them. As Immanence turned into the wide oblate-section corridor, perfect for his large carapace, he noted that XF-326 assumed the safe position directly underneath the rear of his carapace—safe so long as the captain did not decide to shut off his grav-motors, which he was known to do." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vagule and Gnores necessarily scrambled ahead, scuttling sideways so they could keep their father in clear view, clattering their back ends against the rough walls, loosening weed and sending ship lice scuttling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I want to see how you are progressing with these humans,\" Immanence told them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We have four recently implanted, and we are seeing how they progress before doing any more,\" Vagule informed him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I am aware of the current status of your research, Vagule. I want to see the entire process. Bring up another four and show me.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We were thinking of trying spider thralls next,\" piped up Gnores.\n\nImmanence observed Vagule's mandibles grinding and knew that Gnores would pay for that impertinence later.\n\n\"Why spider thralls?\" Immanence asked.\n\nGnores replied, \"With a less traumatic installation we were hoping... were expecting... that is—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vagule interrupted, \"Even with all the support systems, full coring kills them within a few days. We are gradually learning about their autonomous nervous system, but we need to learn more to know what can be safely retained or discarded. Using spider thralls we are hoping they will live longer and thus provide us with more time to gather data.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Very good, thought Immanence. Vagule already understood that though the truth might result in some unpleasant punishment, lies, though delaying it, would result in punishment more severe.\n\n\"How many have died so far?\"\n\n\"As a result of installation, fifty-three. A further eight have died in the holding area from injuries suffered during capture. We have also discovered that feeding them can be a problem. At present they are refusing to eat their own kind, though that might change should they become sufficiently hungry.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'would' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And?\"\n\n\"I would rather try them on other foods, since waiting until they are starving would result in them being weakened and ill and less able to sustain thrall implantation.\"\n\n\"Very well. Try them on our stores of meat and check their requirements for supplements. These humans are omnivores, remember, so may require certain minerals from vegetative matter.\"\n\nAt the end of the corridor they reached a shaft down which Vagule and Gnores scurried." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Immanence slid into it, the second-children scuttling all around him and descending using footholds in the rough wall of the shaft." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Immanence dropped slowly in the lower gee, his grav-motors countering the plates at the shaft bottom to halt him a few metres from the floor. The procession continued until they reached a sealed chamber much like the captain's sanctum. Vagule opened the doors for him and ducked inside. Immanence followed, scenting alien blood and flesh and the other smells concomitant with human life, and death." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the chamber he turned, surveying the humans upon whom Vagule experimented." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'twelve' 2 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Twelve of them were clamped along one wall. To his left lay a stack of about twenty corpses—failures. Of the twelve, he could see by the readouts on the hexagonal screens above, five were dead. He eyed a rack of spider thralls, then another rack containing the larger thrall hardware required after a full coring." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Perhaps something even smaller should be made?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Immanence filed the thought for later attention as he now surveyed surgical equipment dipped in bins of sterilizing grease and two surgical robots standing off to one side. These dark metal shells conformed to the foreparts, visual turret and underside of a first-child. Many recessed pit controls inside took their claws and manipulatory hands, whilst to the fore spread many jointed, precision limbs, each ending in surgical tools.\n\n\"Remove the corpses and bring in four replacements,\" Immanence instructed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He then gestured his claw towards XF-326." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You, bring one of them over and feed me.\"\n\nUnder orders from Vagule, Gnores took some of the second-children off to collect four living humans, while Immanence kept a greedy eye on XF-326. The second-child closed its claw into the ribcage of one corpse, swiftly dragged it over and methodically began to dismember it, passing up pieces to Immanence's mandibles. As he crunched up a severed hand and forearm, the captain contemplated what enabled him to eat such fare." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The rugged Prador digestive system could extract nutriment from a stone—this being a known method of survival in some situations." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "While eating he realised that decay improved the taste, probably because bacteria in the ship were partially breaking down the alien flesh. Even so, the captain pondered the quirks of evolutionary biology that resulted in something that tasted so good.\n\nGnores returned with the four humans who were, until they entered this chamber, docile and mainly inactive. However, two of them began yelling and babbling human speech." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Immanence guessed they found the scene somewhat distracting. Sending a command to one of his sanctum chouds he ran the speech through a translator then directly back to him, but it revealed nothing of relevance, just many questions concerning their fate, occasional threats, and vague references to some human deity. He studied the humans while Gnores and the second-children began stripping off their filthy clothing. They were difficult to tell apart but now Immanence knew enough about their anatomy to identify one male, two females and a younger version that was probably the human equivalent to a second-child, though he could not guess at what its sex might be." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Strange creatures. What was the purpose of that thick mat of hair on their heads, some form of protection perhaps?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Why were two of them emptying their bowels—surely in a dangerous situation it would be better not to leave a scent that could be tracked?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What purpose was served by piercing the body here and there with pieces of rare metals decorated with cut gems? Why those vulnerable external genitalia on the men and those ridiculously inflated mammary glands on the women? Immanence realised he had much yet to learn, should he be interested enough.\n\nVagule inserted himself into the back hollow of a surgical robot while Gnores and the others clamped the humans to the wall." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The babble soon ceased when human-specific drugs were injected and feed-lines attached to their veins." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The spider thralls—each leggy device no larger than a human thumb—were installed via splits in the thick muscle on either side of the back of their necks. One of the humans—the child—for no immediately apparent reason died during this procedure.\n\n\"How many do we have left?\" Immanence asked, his manner slightly bored now as he turned back towards the doors, though through his chouds he spied on the data streams from the thralls." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Six hundred and twenty,\" Vagule replied, backing out of the surgical robot." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I will be expecting some measure of success by the time that figure drops to five hundred and sixty,\" Immanence told him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And I will be most displeased by failure.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"As you order,\" Vagule replied, sagging slightly.\n\nGnores, however, immediately perked up at this, as did XF-326. They all knew precisely what Immanence meant by it: that some time soon the opportunity for promotion might arise, after one terminal demotion.\n\nWhile the grabship flew on automatic towards the Trajeen cargo runcible, Conlan scratched between his aug and his ear to lift the edge of his mask, pressed a control no larger than a pinhead and felt the mask sag on his face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "After a moment all its edges lifted and he peeled it away and dropped it beside his seat." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then he studied the grabship's controls." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though a pilot carried out the main task of launching the vessel and much of the final manoeuvring to position its load, certain safety protocols were also functioning, and he was constantly monitored. Should he become ill, or die, the runcible AI could take control to guide the ship out of danger and back to base. Also, if the vessel deviated from its mission plan, the AI would be alerted, and could again take control. For example, if the pilot took it into his head to ram the ship into one of the runcible gateposts, the AI would swiftly put a stop to that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Subverting such systems was no easy task with the usual hardware, which was why Conlan, though leader of this mission, had chosen himself for this part of it." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'systems' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He clipped open the cover on his aug and plugged into it his multipurpose optic cable, then found the relevant port in the console and plugged the other end into that. Passive scanning of the vessel's systems quickly revealed the various security systems. All communications were being monitored by sophisticated voice language-recognition programs which passed com up through various layers of filtering, then informed the AI should they hear some sequence to cause concern. A blueprint of the mission plan was also stored, so comparisons could be made and any large deviations equally passed on." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There were many other security measures. Conlan noted one flashing a warning to his console—apparently he and the copilot needed to link in the monitoring hardware of their spacesuits. Conlan scanned all these then went in search of the truly important level of security: the one that informed the AI if any of the other systems were being interfered with. He found it stretching weblike across all the other systems." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But there was nothing he could do about it at the programming level. His aug might be a sophisticated tool, but he did not yet possess sufficient skill to create the destructive viruses he might need. However, it was possible for him to scan and analyse the ship's hardware.\n\nAfter a quarter of an hour, Conlan unstrapped himself and moved into the rear of the ship, and stepping over the copilot, he made his selection from the racked tools there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He then pulled up a floor plate and cut through certain optic cables, before returning to his seat, opening the control console, plugging his aug back in, then continuing his selective destruction of the ship's safety and security protocols, beginning with that one concerning suit monitoring for himself and the copilot." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When finished he gained complete control of the vessel, and would retain it unless the AI managed to take him out. He offlined autopilot, took hold of his grabship's joystick and pushed it forwards to its limit. Now he changed com to a nonstandard frequency, encoding the signal through his aug.\n\n\"Conlan here. What's your status, Braben?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Our shuttle is about to dock. We encountered a few problems. One of them is now sitting in the toilet with a broken neck, the rest were minor and put down to glitches associated with the runcible test and the subsequent return of about five hundred technicians.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You are running twenty minutes late. Why is that?\" So asking, Conlan eased off on the joystick. Braben and the rest of the Separatists should have penetrated the runcible's infrastructure by now, causing distracting mayhem.\n\n\"Two shuttles got priority ahead of us—probably due to the same glitches and confusion that made things easier for us.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Okay.\" Conlan felt a sudden sweat break out over his body." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Had their plans been uncovered? He could not see how. \"Continue to plan. I'll delay my strike by twenty minutes, but no longer. When you have things under control, you'll have to knock out docking security so I can come in. Best of luck. Out.\"\n\nNow the runcible lay clearly visible ahead of him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He magnified the view in the forward screen, initiated a grid and selected the unit housing the runcible AI." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He knew that unit mounted laser meteor defences and was heavily armoured." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Those lasers were also powerful enough to knock out most conventional missiles, and could easily cripple a ship like this one." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'through' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Certainly the AI would fire on the missile he intended to use.\n\nIt made no difference.\n\nFive of them came through the airlock, heavily armoured and opening up with projectile weapons. Security drones dropped from the ceiling and lasers snap-cracked through the air." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Two drones exploded, scattering debris about the embarkation lounge." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "One of the men went down screaming with smoke pouring from his armour's joints, concentrated laser-fire having penetrated his suit. Cams kept going out, and Jebel's perspective kept on changing. Then the last cam was gone, and the images, transferred by Jebel's aug to his visual cortex, blinked out. However, he could still hear the shooting and occasional explosion." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The AIs made no objection to Jebel and his Avalonians roughly tracking the progress of the Prador dreadnought that had destroyed Avalon Station and was directly responsible for the death of Cirrella." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His unit became one of the best at putting up a ferocious defence against Prador first-strike ground forces. Unfortunately, after grinding that initial assault to a standstill it was usually the first unit to be moved on to the next world or next station, which sometimes put them ahead of the ship—as at Grant's World—but more often behind it when its initial bombardment ended and the ground forces moved in. The AIs understood his vendetta against the Prador aboard that ship to be a powerful motivation indeed. And this time they had placed him on the right world at the right time, where some opportunity, no matter how small, might present itself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He considered the growing military encampment on the planet below. Forces here were small—about a thousand four-man Sparkind units, numerous war drones, and about fifty thousand ground troops—since most of the runcibles were being employed for evacuation, and Trajeen already accepted as a lost cause, especially now that they knew another ship of the same kind had joined his ship. However, that did not mean there should be no resistance at all. The forces here were to give the Prador a bloody nose before retreating, to delay things long enough for a big Polity dreadnought to engage, and to give the new ships steadily being turned out by the shipyards time to deploy around the next world." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But now this: being called up here to deal with this." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At first it seemed like a welcome escape from the media attention on the planet below, but Jebel, coldly angry at the best of times and further enraged by events at Grant's World, felt his anger reach new heights upon learning what the first part of his job here entailed.\n\n\"Urbanus, is the shuttle away?\" he asked over his comlink.\n\n\"It is.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Are they safe?\"\n\n\"The pilot is okay, but she just found her navigator in the toilet. Dead. Broken neck,\" the Golem replied.\n\n\"They will fucking pay for that.\"\n\n\"I have just received reports from the surface,\" the runcible AI, for some reason known as George, interrupted, \"the technicians whose identity they assumed, were not in fact killed. Someone simply altered their departure times so they just did not turn up at the spaceport.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jebel mulled that one over." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's worrying. Again we're seeing some sophisticated planning and computer subversion here.\"\n\nThe attack was well-planned; the Separatists managed to smuggle equipment aboard the shuttle, and their subsequent entry into the complex surrounding this cargo runcible demonstrated that they had obtained information on the positioning of the security drones and cams. It would have succeeded too, but for one of the Separatists on the planet below deciding, at the last moment, that fighting on the side of aliens that blithely destroyed worlds and ate people, might not be such a great idea after all.\n\nThe smell of burning wafted through the air, and smoke became visible just below the corridor ceiling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jebel pushed himself away from the wall and closed his visor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Behind him, twelve other Avalonians, crouched against the wall, did the same. It occurred to him, in that moment, that although having been involved in some hideous conflicts, he had killed only one human being—a man, one firing a pulse rifle into a crowd after having been driven insane by a duff aug, and that was twenty years ago. But he did not think that would be much of a problem in this case. The idea of capturing some of these bastards to interrogate them about their organization was soon abandoned—an exercise about as pointless as obtaining information about underground movements in Dresden just before the bombers arrived." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He took a small remote control from his pocket and peered around the corner." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Three armoured Separatists entered ahead of the main group assigned to this corridor. Two other such groups would now be entering the two other main corridors leading from embarkation, and encountering a similar reception. Jebel held up three fingers to those behind him, then crooked a finger. The three nearly reached the corner where Jebel awaited, before the main group of eight entered the corridor behind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jebel sent the signal and ducked back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The explosions, multiple, one upon another, lasted for a few seconds. Jebel drew his thingun—disdaining anything heavier for this chore. Human wreckage filled the corridor, some of it beginning to scream, the rest mangled and still, and Jebel was reminded of another place and time. The fragmentation mines had torn out the walls." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Directly ahead of him, the first of the armoured Separatists tried to push himself upright while turning to gaze at the devastation. In passing, Jebel slapped him on the back. The man turned, raising his seeker-gun, but the ignition delay of the small gecko mine on his armour ran out. The mine thumped, the man belching blood and other substances inside his visor before dropping like a puppet unstrung." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The other Avalonians now advanced." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another of the Separatists struggled up onto his knees. An Avalonian put a mine on him before he fully rose, and blew the back out of his helmet. One of the other Avalonians placed a mine on the third, maybe unnecessarily. They moved on towards embarkation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Something bloody whined and scrabbled at the floor as Jebel stepped over it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He identified a head and put one pulse from his thingun through it. The whining stopped.\n\n\"Have we got them all?\" Jebel asked over com.\n\n\"Seems like,\" Urbanus replied." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"By the way, Lindy has taken their commander prisoner.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why did she do that?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I thought I'd better wait for your input, Jebel,\" Lindy interrupted over com. She sounded a little shaky to him, but then she had probably never killed a human before. \"We caught him out... oh, there you are.\"\n\nEmbarkation lay in ruins, unsurprisingly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jebel's Avalonians were now checking the area." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "One of the Separatists was down on his knees with his hands interlaced on top of his head, the Avalonian behind him grinding the snout of a laser carbine into the back of his neck. Lindy stood to one side looking a little sick. Urbanus stood before the prisoner. Jebel walked over.\n\n\"How did he survive?\" he asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Urbanus glanced round. \"Commanding from the rear. He wasn't in the corridor when we blew the mines. Touch of concussion from the tail end of the blast.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Blood running between his teeth, the man glared up at him. \"Do you think you've won?\"\n\nJebel glanced about himself. \"Seems pretty decisive to me.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You'll know... soon enough.\"\n\nJebel flung up his hands. \"There now, you've gone and done it. Now I'll have to find out what you know, and fast. Y'know, there is a war on.\"\n\n\"You can't—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jebel shot him through the kneecap." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Now, perhaps you'd like to explain yourself?\"\n\nThe larger part of the Trajeen System Cargo Runcible AI observed the scene in the embarkation area, just as it observed many other scenes throughout the runcible installations here and around Boh. Its connection at present with its other part—a submind called George occupying a human skull—presently stood offline while the ship ferrying George and Moria made a short U-space jump back towards Trajeen. It considered intervening in Jebel Krong's interrogation—the man seemed unstable and might kill his prisoner—but his methods thus far were the most effective in the circumstances." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And certainly, something else was up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their plan to take control of the runcibles so as to hand them over to the Prador when they arrived, could have succeeded only so far, because the AI controlled everything within the complex." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps they had thought to take hostages; no, they must know that the AI would only allow a hostage situation to continue until the Prador ship drew close enough. Then, imbalances in the runcible—a resonance with buffers offline—resulting in no runcible at either end for the Prador to seize. This then must have been only part of their attack. The informational sophistication they had used made that evident." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Grabship?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The AI focused its sensors on the grabship hurtling down under full acceleration. Trying to link to that vessel it found no connection at all. This then, must be the other part of the plan. Did the pilot of that ship intend to ram it into the accommodation unit containing the AI itself?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Such suicide missions were not uncommon amid such fanatics." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The AI brought its meteor lasers online and up to power, targeting the approaching vessel, but the ship dropped its load and began to curve away. The AI targeted the load now heading directly towards it. Only seconds away. The AI instantly identified the object, and understood, and admired, the brilliance of the plan: the charge the buffer section contained could not be destroyed or diverted, not with meteor lasers. A brief calculation rendered the result that the AI's chances of survival were minimally better if it did fire upon the buffer. Minimally." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the microseconds remaining, the AI's thoughts went off at a tangent instigated by the nature of this attack, and it realised a probable solution to the problem posed by the approaching Prador dreadnoughts. Too late. It fired the lasers and kept on firing. Most of the energy reflected away from the metallo-ceramic layers armouring the huge store of power inside. Ion trail—so some penetration." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Information package to human submind, and into complex computer systems. Intense fusion fire—" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The runcible buffer section struck home.\n\nConlan observed the explosion and smiled. The AI had fired on the buffer section, but even if it had not, the result would have been the same. Its chances of fully rupturing the section with meteor lasers were minimal in the time allowable, but certainly the section would rupture on impact." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A plasma fire radiated out into space." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The initial EM pulse from all that energy discharging scrambled the AI, and the subsequent fire now fried it. It was dead.\n\nA perfectly executed hit.\n\nConlan began decelerating the grabship, turning it back towards the runcible.\n\n\"Braben, report.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Silence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Braben?\"\n\n\"Braben is otherwise occupied. Who the fuck is this?\"\n\nThat was not Braben or any voice he recognised—someone else was using Braben's comlink. Conlan felt the knowledge drive into his gut like a blunt drill." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Obviously the assault on the complex had failed. If he went there he would be captured, and ECS were not noted for their mercy. He would have to try landing on the planet.\n\n\"Oh, brilliant,\" the other abruptly said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You know, you turd, in lieu of meeting you myself, I just wish I could see you meet your allies.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Conlan's instinct was to break contact, but his curiosity stirred. \"I am not sure I entirely catch your drift.\"\n\n\"Well, obviously you're the fuckwit aboard that grabship who just murdered an AI.\"\n\nAutomatically Conlan replied, \"You cannot murder machines.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now that they knew he was aboard this ship, landing on the planet was also out of the question, for they would track him down to the surface and ECS troops would be waiting for him the moment he stepped out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Only one other option remained: try heading out-system on an intercept course with the approaching Prador ships. But supposing there were enough supplies aboard for him to survive the journey, what would be the reaction of those Separatist allies? He might have killed the AI, but he certainly had not secured the runcible. Always central to Separatist plans lay the idea of them holding this huge bargaining chip." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Conlan had seen the newsnet broadcasts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He suspected the Prador might be less inclined to mercy than ECS. A sudden tiredness suffused him as he observed all avenues closing to him.\n\n\"To whom am I speaking?\" Conlan enquired.\n\n\"Oh, let's get on a friendly first-name basis. My name's U-cap, what's yours?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm Conlan and you know, U-cap, we will be meeting very shortly.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Conlan thrust the joystick fully forwards and aimed the grabship towards those runcible buffers already in place. If he hit hard and fast enough the chain reaction should be spectacular. Better to go out that way than in some ECS cell or in pieces in some alien gut.\n\n\"I don't think so, shit-head.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Conlan did not recognise that voice either, and only belatedly realised it came from behind him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He turned just in time to see his copilot, Anna Vasco, her face masked with blood, and then the heavy handle of a multidriver slammed down onto the side of his head and knocked him into a dark place.\n\nThe Occam Razor surfaced from U-space and hurtled towards the planetary system. Massive capacitors and laminar batteries stacked up power from fusion reactors, enormous weapons carousels began powering up, replacement parts stood ready in robotic hands for lasers and masers, and the entire internal structure of the ship began to reconfigure for battle.\n\n\"I require weapons authorization from my human captain,\" Occam stated through their link." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The evident irony of this request made Captain Tomalon wonder just how necessary his permission might be." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The closer he grew to the AI the more he realised how utterly entangled they were becoming. He granted authorization without even reviewing the sensor data upon which it was based. Inside the great ship he observed those carousels now turning to present missiles to the breech sections of rail-guns, and weapons platforms and turrets rising on titanic rams towards the hull. An exterior view showed him turrets extruding from the ship like the spikes from a mace, rail-gun ports and the business ends of beam weapons opening and one platform for informational warfare finally surfacing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This ship carried appalling destructive capability: besides the beam weapons and rail-guns it also carried missiles containing contra-terrene devices—CTDs—antimatter weapons with a ridiculously high yield. But would it be enough? The Prador ships had already demonstrated that they could take most of what ECS could throw at them and repay it tenfold. He now reviewed the sensor data." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Where the hell is this?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he asked out loud.\n\nOccam made no reply. Tomalon checked back through the navigational log, found it to be in order, then made comparisons between recorded data on their destination system and this one. They were the same." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh Christ, that's Grant's World.\"\n\nThrough the Occam Razor's sensors he studied the devastated planet. At present it held a kind of temperature stasis: the heat from the weapons employed down there, and the subsequent volcanic activity, were countering the effects of the dust in the atmosphere blotting out the sun. This could not last of course." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Within a decade, Grant's World would drop into a centuries-long winter, during which some species might survive to rebuild a living world, as had always been the case on Earth after each catastrophic mass extinction." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But this was no misfortune of nature or orbital mechanics. An intelligent species had done this to wipe out members of another intelligent species, in just one battle in an ever-expanding war.\n\n\"There are people alive down there,\" Occam informed him.\n\n\"You're kidding.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The temporary stability of the temperature did not mean things were okay on the surface." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hurricane-force winds were swiftly spreading radioactives everywhere, tornadoes drilled across landscapes churning up topsoil and hurling it high. The chances of escaping a tsunami if you were anywhere within a hundred kilometres of a shore, were nil. And if that was not quite enough, the massive quakes released billions of tons of CO2 from ocean depths whilst the spew from the volcanoes acidified the sky. The atmosphere was no longer breathable for a human being, not even for one breath, unless you wanted to etch out the inside of your lungs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I am detecting emergency beacons, but also some com between military units. However, that will have to wait. Let me direct your attention to the objects in nearby space.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tomalon dragged his attention away from the holocaust. The objects Occam indicated were three big cylinder-shaped vessels, two dark ships bearing a familiar shape but nowhere near the size of the dreadnoughts they sought, and various smaller ships.\n\nPrador.\n\n\"Do you need any further weapons permissions?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he asked in their silent communication.\n\n\"No. Shall we dance?\"\n\nHe and Occam drew closer in informational no-space so that Tomalon could not quite say where he ended and the Occam Razor's AI began. Was it he who cut the decelerating burn so they came upon those enemy ships, travelling at over a million kph?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Did he fire the rail-guns, launching a swarm of solid projectiles out ahead of them?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was both observer and main participant." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For a while he was the Occam Razor.\n\nThe rail-gun projectiles slammed into the enemy ships first, puncturing hulls and containment, breaching reactors and occasionally detonating weapons. Two shuttles simply exploded. One of the cylindrical vessels—a troop carrier, Tomalon realised—belched atmosphere through numerous breaches." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Next missiles, launched at lower speed then igniting their own drives out from the Razor, punched home." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They struck perfectly central on two of the carriers, which broke in half trailing atmosphere and fire, while other spillages gave the impression of seed pods snapped open. A close view of those seeds showed thousands of Prador second-children pouring into space with their legs clamped up close to their under-carapaces. Tomalon wondered if they were dead or if they could actually survive in vacuum for a while. He would not have been surprised." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What the fuck?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'occam' | Required occurrences: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Pain racked Tomalon. Someone was pointing a blow-torch flame at his skin. Exterior view of the Occam Razor: turquoise flashes as a phenomenally powerful particle beam sliced a trench through the hull, fire exploding into the spaces inside. Occam immediately redirected missiles aimed for the last troop carrier, zoning them in on the Prador destroyers which remained seemingly untouched by the rail-gun projectiles. The beam struck again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This time from the second destroyer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A weapons turret exploded, rolling fire around the hull. Then the missiles reached their targets.\n\nA full-on hit with a CTD sent one of the destroyers tumbling through space, a huge chunk torn out of it and fires burning inside, but Tomalon was troubled to see that the vessel had survived at all, and now seemed to be trying to right itself. He, or Occam, hit the exposed interior with laser blasts, gutting it until it became still." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Those other vessels surviving the initial assault also began to fire on the Occam Razor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Beam strikes made Tomalon feel warm and caused itches he could not scratch, but there were no more of those ridiculously powerful particle beam strikes. Why? He did not know.\n\nMissiles swarmed out, but the Occam Razor outran them. In a hard decelerating burn it swung around Grant's World, its superstructure groaning, and error reports flashing up to the captain's vision from the distant reaches of the ship where repair robots were rushing to breaches like ants to holes in their nest." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Coming back towards the remaining Prador ships he detected U-space signatures as some of the Prador ran." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However, the remaining destroyer began to accelerate towards them.\n\nBoth ships launched solid rail-gun projectiles and explosive missiles. Occam fired two CTDs to detonate in and punch a hole through an approaching swarm of the solid projectiles and followed them with a line of five CTDs running one behind the other. Three closely spaced detonations followed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Briefly, turquoise fire licked over the Occam's hull, then the remaining two weapons hammered home." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Prador ship hurtled out of the ensuing blasts, misshapen, with splits in its hull." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Small seeker missiles then, buzzing around the out-of-control ship like horse flies zoning in for an opportunity to bite. They found the splits and detonated inside. The subsequent explosions must have killed everything within, but unnervingly, they did not break the hull, but pushed it almost back into its original shape.\n\n\"Tough fuckers, aren't they?\" Tomalon observed, wincing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Two further missiles departed the launch tubes, one heading towards the hulk now falling past them, one heading out to find the remains of the other destroyer: beacons—so they could be retrieved for study." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "ECS had obtained few remains of such ships.\n\nNow they came upon the remaining Prador ships. Launch after launch spread obliteration. The remaining intact troop carrier ceased to be intact." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Smaller ships detonated like fire crackers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lasers, running on subprograms, sought out anything crab-shaped, and seared holes through it. When the Occam Razor finally turned and headed back towards Grant's World, very little remained behind it but glowing wreckage and fire.\n\n\"Now the survivors,\" said Tomalon, only slightly troubled by his part in a conflict with quarter neither offered nor requested. As more and more reports filtered out to him, he realised that this conflict was fast becoming total war, and atrocity merely another weapon—employed by both sides." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That is not our mission.\"\n\nChewing on his lower lip, Tomalon disconnected slightly, raised his nictitating membranes and once again saw the interior of the bridge. His mission to pursue, delay, and if possible stop the two Prador dreadnoughts, took precedence. But he did not like the idea of leaving survivors down there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Open com to them,\" he instructed out loud, closing down the membranes on his eyes again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When Occam complied, Tomalon said, \"This is Captain Tomalon of the ECS dreadnought the Occam Razor. Please send status reports detailing available supplies and the condition of your wounded, and append prior reports and present known casualty figures.\" Within his close connection with Occam, Tomalon counted fifteen distinct communications and viewed the facts the AI winnowed out. There were a hundred and forty-three survivors. Twelve would die if they did not receive aid within an hour and another fifty-six were stretcher cases that could last maybe another day." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All either had sufficient air supplies or were managing with envirosuit filters and purification plants." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "One group of the fifteen needed assistance because they were located in a highly radioactive area. If they were not out of that area within three hours their dosage levels would kill them despite later rescue.\n\n\"It is not just those on the planet,\" Occam observed.\n\nCommunications began arriving from ships scattered throughout the system: people trapped behind bulkheads, engines burnt out, atmosphere venting, leaking reactors... but not many wounded needing medical attention, vacuum being an unforgiving environment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Through Occam, Tomalon surveyed the holds of the Occam Razor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He observed a vast hall with shuttles lining one side like upright soldiers, gleaming and oiled." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He observed racking systems containing landing craft and conveyers to take them to their bays.\n\n\"Just me and you aboard, so we have no need for all this. They contain medical equipment and supplies.\"\n\n\"Other ECS ships are on their way, certainly, but the plan would fail in one respect: we would need to remain here to guide these craft to their destinations throughout the system and down on the planet. In nearly every case the craft would face problems their programming might not be able to overcome: wrecked vessels, auto-defences still online, storms and EM interference.\"\n\n\"We can't just leave those poor bastards!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We will—our solution approaches.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Long range sensors picked out the ECS destroyer moving out from an asteroid field." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Its fusion drive was burning dirty, but it was making progress.\n\n\"Who is this?\" Occam asked over U-com\n\n\"Aureus,\" replied the AI within the destroyer.\n\n\"Your crew?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"All dead.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Through exterior cams Tomalon observed hold doors irising open in the Razor's hull to release a stream of shuttles and landers. Inside, the shuttles were moving down their hall like bullets in a magazine, and the landers were being conveyed—all the massive machinery inside the Occam Razor in smooth titanic motion.\n\n\"I have given Aureus the control codes for all these vessels,\" Occam explained. \"Once they are all launched we must leave.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "expand on the story like Neal Asher would. btw might have existing characters/lore" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'applied' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand—\n\nGreat, now she was getting a headache, which added to the feeling, despite her having applied for and received planetary processing space, of her head being filled to bursting point. Despite the early arrival of the Prador vessel, it had been necessary to slow the runcible's orbital speed to bring it to the right place at the right time. All her previous calculations she'd completely erased, since they no longer applied, even very roughly. The calculations she presently ran were a living thing. She knew the result, the solution, but necessarily needed to keep altering the input values in keeping with data received from the Occam Razor and the test sensors out at Boh. Sometimes, deep in all this, she lost sight of her ultimate aims, but looking out through her own eyes at the changing horizon, storms and cloud banks passing underneath her, snapped her back to reality." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If she failed, that view might well change, horribly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Returning her attention to the Trajeen runcible she again checked her preparations, hesitated for only a moment, then initiated the Skaidon warp. Her view altered immediately as the shimmering meniscus flickered into being beside her. Though the present drain on the fusion reactors lay within acceptable limits, she knew that later the need would rise beyond those limits, so onlined extra power from the solar collector satellites. The power they supplied, by maser, to the gateposts, slotted into her calculations and gave her greater manoeuvring space. She now gave the instruction for the gateposts to begin parting, though she did not yet intend to throw them out to their full extent, since their tendency to drift while the entire runcible was being moved could wreck everything. She now considered some other calculations.\n\nThe C energy, though not a true representation of what would instantiate beyond the meniscus because of the exponential progression that took place actually at the meniscus, was very substantial." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Moria briefly considered taking the Boh runcible buffers completely offline, ran some calculations, and felt a sudden thrill of horror at the results this rendered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Boh gate itself would last about .005 of a second, and it seemed possible the entire energy burst could actually ignite the gas giant itself—turn it into a small, swiftly burning sun." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not a great idea. She could not do that; however, she did not have to work the gate as intended for the transmission of cargo ships. The output velocity did not have to be the same as the input, for she could borrow some of the C energy and add it to the latter.\n\nThe energy calculation ran roughly at a 70,000 kph disparity between the Trajeen and Boh gates, so anything entering the Trajeen gate at, say, 10 kph, would exit Boh at 70,010 kph, so an object travelling at 40,000 would exit at 110,000... Moria calculated the extent of possible damage to the Boh runcible, and to various objects within its vicinity. She based these calculations on probable reaction times of Prador systems and the Prador themselves. She factored in the probable breakup of a certain object when accelerated beyond certain limits, including in those factors the results of geological surveys requested from the planetary network, and in the end settled on borrowing one fortieth of the C energy. Very roughly, C equalled 1,070,000,000 kph." }, { "from": "human", "value": "One fortieth plus initial velocities resulted in a total of twenty-seven million kilometres per hour." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'while' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In one second, an object travelling at that speed, would cover 7500 kilometres. As Moria modelled the near future, the scene, playing out in her mind, lit a fire behind her eyes.\n\nWhile some second-children brought him lunch, Immanence ruefully observed the Polity dreadnought, and damned himself for not turning back to destroy it when it was more badly damaged than this. He had mistakenly believed it to be either a lifeless hulk or crippled beyond the ability to go anywhere, and transmitted its location to other, smaller, Prador vessels, thinking it now a problem beneath his notice. However, its presence here did not particularly worry him, because even scanning from a distance it appeared the damage was by no means completely repaired. It might be able to travel, but if it actually tried to attack he knew he could destroy it.\n\nHe continued studying the vessel while he mulled over the recent message from the human Separatist." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As per plan they had seized control of the Trajeen cargo runcible, and because of that the Boh runcible was now his for the taking. He decided that when he finally travelled inwards to Trajeen itself, he would send Gnores or Scrabbler to collect those Separatists, to bring them aboard for dinner... But that pleasant prospect lay in the future, meanwhile he must decide what to do about this damned Polity ship. Should he turn back and destroy it before seizing the Boh runcible, or just continue with his mission here and destroy it should it try to engage? The latter, he decided.\n\nAs Immanence directed his chouds to set his own vessel on a course for Boh, he still kept sensors directed towards the enemy ship and realised, from its trajectory, that it was not, as expected, trying to intercept him. It swung out and round, accelerating hard." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Prador captain felt a sudden amusement. Obviously the Polity ship's captain intended to give himself as much time as possible to make further repairs, and then await Immanence as part of some organized defence of Trajeen itself. Typical of the desperate measures these humans took to protect their own. Immanence munched contemplatively on the human leg a second-child passed up to his mandibles. Then, another possibility occurred to him.\n\nHis stomachs rumbled, and he released a long acidic belch, simultaneously spitting the leg out, down onto the second-child's carapace. With a sweep of his claw he sent the child squalling and tumbling end over end into the wall." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Too much of a good thing in two respects: the rich human meat was beginning to have an unwanted effect on his digestion, and easy victories led him into a stupid complacency." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He realised the Polity captain must know the runcibles were now controlled by Separatists and divined Immanence's plan concerning the one at Boh, and was racing ahead to take control of or even destroy that runcible before Immanence could seize it.\n\nThe Prador captain sent the instruction for maximum acceleration, and even in his gravplated and shock-absorbing sanctum felt the surge throughout the ship as two extra fusion engines fired up and flamed out into space. Champing his mandibles he checked the navigational projections, and slowly his irritation receded. The Polity ship was fast, but not quite fast enough. Immanence would arrive before it. He now opened com channels:\n\n\"Gnores, get aboard the shuttle and prepare for launch when we arrive.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, Father.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Immanence now returned his attention to the quivering second-children attending him. \"Bring me shorefish and boulder eel steaks. I've had enough of this human meat for now.\"\n\nThe second-children scurried away.\n\nJebel observed Lindy and Urbanus returning to the ship well within the time he allotted them, but a glance at the screens in this Control Centre only confirmed the message just received from the dreadnought captain: the Prador ship was accelerating massively, and now the Boh runcible lay well within its sensor range. Plans needed to change.\n\nJebel accessed the blueprint of this runcible complex in his aug and searched for a likely place of concealment. Much of the structure was missing and the complex here was nowhere near as large as the one at Trajeen." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He checked corridor plans, the layouts of various accommodation units, then finally settled on a secluded garden, not because it was the best place to hide, but because it lay under a chainglass dome and would present them with a grand view of near-future events. Of course, an airlock lay nearby as well.\n\n\"Urbanus, Lindy, when you get back inside, grab armament and all the chameleonware you can find, and head for this location.\" Via his aug he sent the relevant map references. \"You should be able to get there quicker by going outside again. Oh, and bring another spacesuit.\"\n\n\"The reason for this?\" Urbanus enquired.\n\n\"The Prador ship accelerated and now we are well within the range of its sensors. We can't leave.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Silence met this, and Jebel knew what the other two were thinking. If they left the runcible now, this would result in their probable destruction by weapons fired from the Prador ship. Their presence here would make Immanence infinitely suspicious, so he would ensure that no booby traps lay aboard the runcible. But most importantly he would also regard Conlan's information as suspect, because Conlan had told the Prador this runcible was secure. The ship docked outside did not matter, since it could have been abandoned during the evacuation, but their presence did. Jebel realised they were now utterly committed to Moria's plan, and must conceal themselves from the Prador to see it through.\n\n\"I am not sure that I relish the prospect of staying here,\" Conlan opined." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Live with it,\" Jebel spat." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Conlan stood. \"If we don't run now we'll be found, and if we are not found we'll end up inside that ship with all your mines. That wasn't part of the deal. I didn't sign on for a suicide mission.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jebel considered violence, and rejected it. He still needed Conlan to speak to the Prador captain again. It might be a critical key, considering the level of Prador paranoia. He turned to the man, nodded to the door and with his thin-gun waved Conlan ahead of him.\n\n\"I don't for one moment think that Immanence, given time to check things and properly secure his position, will allow those mines inside his ship. So we are going to panic him. Right now there's a Polity dreadnought heading here. You will send a message to Immanence telling him that those controlling the positional drives intend to open up the Boh runcible, wide, to present a larger target for the Polity dreadnought's weapons.\" Jebel halted, spotting something on one of the screens. The Prador ship was now visible, as was the shuttle now departing it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Conlan turned, glanced towards the same screen then focused his attention back on Jebel." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm not sure I see the point of such a message.\"\n\nJebel waved him on towards the door. \"Immanence will try to protect all or part of the runcible. This means he'll get close, perhaps close enough to be damaged by those mines. He may even risk grabbing all or part of the runcible. In which case we have him.\"\n\nJebel considered the explanation he had just given. Not bad on the spur of the moment. He did not want to risk telling Conlan the whole truth until the last moment—didn't want to give the man too much time to think about it and see all its holes, then maybe slip something else into his message to the Prador.\n\n\"But where will we be when this happens?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jebel mulled his answer over for a moment, then decided to go right to it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I promised you a chance to survive this, and I will stick to my word. As you heard: the others will be bringing a spare spacesuit for you.\"\n\n\"And?\" Conlan asked.\n\n\"Though my dislike of the Prador drives me to do things some would consider suicidal, I do actually want to continue living,\" said Jebel. \"You'll make contact with Immanence, tell him what I just told you, and once that's done there's no more reason for us to remain here. If we tried leaving by ship, that would alert the Prador. So we don't leave by ship.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nJebel continued: \"There's one horror for anyone who ever goes EVA in a spacesuit. It's the idea of your line breaking or you being flung away into vacuum. What happens then? You float through space and gradually run out of air, dying a pretty horrible death.\"\n\n\"But that doesn't happen,\" said Conlan." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Precisely,\" Jebel replied. \"When in that situation you can now initiate the suit's injector pack. The drugs throw you into a hibernation state in which you use less than five per cent of the suit's oxygen. Out here your power supply would run out before the oxygen, and in that hibernation state you would freeze. People have actually been revived from that.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're insane,\" said Conlan, coming to a halt.\n\nJebel shook his head. \"If we stay here, we die either when the mines detonate or the Prador find us. Leaving through an airlock we just might slip under the radar—too small to notice. At least this way we'll have some chance, not much different from the chance I offered you before, Conlan.\"\n\n\"Freezing in a suit is not quite the same as being put in suspended animation in a cold coffin.\"\n\nJebel shrugged. \"Tough,\" he said, and prodded Conlan in the back with his gun barrel to get him moving again.\n\nAs he walked, Conlan realised Jebel Krong had not revealed all his plans, but he just could not fathom the rest. It sounded good—initiating an action to drive Immanence into grabbing the mined runcible without thoroughly checking it—but stood no chance of success." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Prador were winning." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why would Immanence risk his entire ship just for the dubious gain of this technology? It all seemed just too desperate. The Prador hammer was coming down and he, Krong and Trajeen itself were sitting on the anvil. Time for him to alter things in his favour.\n\nA shuttle now approached from the Prador ship. Having loaded the plans of this complex while linked in with his aug, Conlan guessed that shuttle would dock at the largest access point—a small embarkation lounge about three-quarters of a kilometre from where he stood. He modelled his own position on those plans and considered imminent actions." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His chances of escaping once he and Krong joined the other two would drop to zero, not simply because there would be three of them, but because one of them was a Golem and could move very fast when required." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Linking into this complex's systems was easy, and he had done it in parallel while he spoke to Immanence. Of course he possessed no executive control, for that operated from Trajeen and whoever held the reins there. But he did not need to control the runcible itself—nothing large like that—all he needed was the level of system control available to a maintenance technician. Ahead, lay a crossroads. The right-hand corridor led to a storeroom, the left-hand one terminated at a drop-shaft leading either up or down to further levels. In his aug Conlan set up three instructions: one a simple radio transmission to a junction box a little way ahead of him, the other to set in motion a light-intensifier program to run the moment he sent the first signal, and the third to signal another critical junction box in the left-hand corridor. Conlan sent the first signal and put out the lights." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The shots cut the air overhead as Conlan dropped and flung himself forwards." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He rolled into the left-hand corridor as further shots slammed into the wall next to him, their impact sites leaving black shadows in his aug-intensified vision. Within a few strides he reached the drop-shaft and hit the panel to initiate the irised gravity field to take him upwards, and dove into the shaft. Jebel pursued closely, and one pulse from his thin-gun took off Conlan's boot heel as he rose out of sight. Now Conlan abruptly reached out and grabbed a maintenance ladder beside the shaft. Jebel, into the shaft below, spinning round to aim up at him. Third signal. The drop-shaft's power cut out, and the gravplates on lower levels exerted their pull. Jebel yelled and dropped." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There followed a sickening crack Conlan easily recognised as the sound of bone breaking, and another yell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Conlan began climbing just as fast as he could." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'around' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Thin-gun shots threw sparks up the shaft as he exited on the next floor. Conlan ran.\n\nImmanence watched as the shuttle, containing Gnores and the second-children, decelerated towards the Boh runcible. Under a similar decelerating burn his own vessel shook and grumbled all around him. However it carried a great deal more inertia than the shuttle and relative to its mass its engines were smaller, so it needed to lose velocity around Boh before coming back into position between the runcible and the approaching Polity ship. Immanence champed in frustration, once again belched acid, and damned all humans. While the deceleration continued he summoned Scrabbler and one other to him.\n\n\"Are you ready to take on the position as Prime?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "he asked the firstchild." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Scrabbler danced about a little. \"Yes, Father. Yes I am.\"\n\n\"The Polity ship may fire on the Boh runcible. In the unlikelihood that I do not intercept all its missiles, it is quite possible that Gnores will not survive. You will then be Prime. I'll want you to ready the second shuttle for a similar mission to the Trajeen runcible. One has to prepare...\"\n\n\"Now, should I do it now... Father?\" Scrabbler could hardly contain his glee.\n\nThe second individual Immanence summoned now reached the doors into the sanctum and waited there indecisively. Immanence waved that one in with his claw." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Scrabbler turned and eyed this second-child—one grown slightly larger than usual.\n\n\"XF-458, come before me. Scrabbler, you may depart.\"\n\nScrabbler turned and headed for the doors with uncertain steps, his eye-palps quivering, and perhaps now he had some intimation of the extent of his father's preparations.\n\nStaring down at the thriving second-child before him, Immanence pondered how many times he had done this before. Scrabbler would be his forty-third Prime ... or was that fifty-third?\n\n\"XF-458, you will henceforth be known as Gurnax,\" Immanence began. Later, when he dismissed the new firstchild, who was not quite grown enough to assume that title, he checked other likely candidates amongst the remaining second-children and sent instructions redirecting them to different food stores within the ship." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He then ordered some third-children to be thawed out and placed in the nursery. Preparation was everything." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "By the time the runcible rose back into sight around Boh, the shuttle had finally docked. Immanence chose a course to bring him between Boh and the runcible, then to a stable orbit between the runcible and the approaching Polity dreadnought. With an inner smile he noted launches from the other vessel—a swarm of rail-gun missiles.\n\nShould have fired those earlier, he thought.\n\nSome tinkering with steering thrusters brought him much closer to the runcible, so the Polity ship could obtain no clear line of sight to that structure. The rail-gun missiles, hurtling in at a terrific velocity, could not change their course. A few hours later they began impacting on the exotic metal hull." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Immanence noted minimal damage and a steady increase in power available to his particle cannons. Then he detected launches of self-powered missiles from the approaching vessel. These would be more of a danger because they could be programmed to swing round and come in from any direction, and could even shut down for a little while, drift, then start up their drives again for a renewed attack. Immanence drew his ship even closer to the structure and onlined masers and meteor lasers, then sent an order to another part of the ship: \"You will intercept and destroy any missiles that get past this ship. I am sending you each your areas of deployment. Nothing must get past. Is that understood?\"\n\nA concert of voices replied, \"Yes, Father.\"\n\nGazing through sensors in the drone cache, Immanence watched the nine spherical war drones accelerating out through the triangular space door. Checking designations he noted Vagule was the last of them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This must be just chance, for Vagule could now have no sense of trying to extend his span." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Via exterior sensors the captain watched them speeding away, the proximity to the runcible being such that Boh cast a weak shadow over them and the ship. Now Immanence returned his attention to the approaching enemy.\n\n\"Bring it on human,\" he bubbled in the Prador tongue. \"Just come a little closer.\"\n\nGnores hurtled from the assault docking tube punched through the skin of the station, and scrambled to a halt tearing up carpet in the embarkation lounge. He swung in a circle, rail-gun, particle weapon and a laser brought to bear on the branching corridors around him. He felt rather reckless and quite relished the prospect of a fight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a firstchild trait, and another reason why first-children tended to need replacing." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'would' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He knew this, but still could not feel any other way, just as he knew that his father might be preparing to remove him, and could do nothing but obey.\n\nFifty second-children now poured in, similarly armed but also carrying high-powered scanners. No attack revealed itself—not a human in sight.\n\n\"Follow the search pattern precisely. Those who deviate, unless required to by combat, will not be returning to Father's ship,\" Gnores told them. But if there was anything to find he did not expect it to be within these human accommodation units. The other fifty second-children, suited against vacuum and now spreading out around the entire structure, would be the ones to find booby traps, because if they were here, they would certainly be on the runcible device itself.\n\nGnores replaced all his weapons in his harness, then while walking around the embarkation lounge, listened into the com-chatter of the second-children, and to those channels open back to the ship, which kept him updated." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Moving over to a wide window—something unthinkable to a Prador for here would be a weakness in its armour—he gazed at his father's ship, clearly visible just out from the runcible. The ship stood silhouetted against gaseous incandescence on its other side, and through those channels Gnores learnt it was intercepting a rail-gun attack.\n\n\"Gnores! Gnores! Gnores! A human!\"\n\nGnores whirled around and accelerated across the lounge to the branching corridors on the other side. Many of them were far too small for him to enter. Besides, he did not know which one he should enter anyway.\n\nOn the com unit he now held in his claw, Gnores traced who spoke, reaching forward with one of his finer under-hands to manipulate the complex controls." }, { "from": "human", "value": "XG-12, one of the batch raised to second-childhood shortly after they set out from the Second Kingdom." }, { "from": "human", "value": "According to the map he should be a hundred metres over—" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The human charged into sight with XG-12 snapping claws at his heels. Gnores drew and aimed his rail-gun, but then realised the human was unarmed. The creature paused, seeing him, then abruptly ran towards him, making all sorts of strange noises and waving about its soft upper limbs.\n\n\"Desist, XG-12. Return to the search.\"\n\nThe second-child slid to a halt, perhaps remembering Gnores' earlier threat and realising that this might not be defined as a combat situation. It turned away and ran off. The human staggered to a halt before Gnores, gasping, and still intermittently making those noises." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Gnores realised it was trying to talk to him, only he carried no translator." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He reached out and closed the tips of his claws on its lower torso and picked it up.\n\n\"Father, I have found a human. It is trying to speak to me but I do not understand it,\" he sent via one of the channels to the ship.\n\nAfter a moment Immanence, having viewed Gnores' prize through the cameras mounted on the firstchild's carapace, replied, \"Gnores, it is not trying to speak to you. It is making those sounds because it is in pain. You have damaged it.\"\n\nGnores abruptly realised he had squeezed too tightly, for the lower torso of the creature split open and organs were bulging out. There also seemed to be a lot of red liquid dribbling onto the floor. Gnores dropped the human at once. He observed it coiling on its side and trying to push its internal organs back inside." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I was sure it was trying to speak to me a moment ago,\" he said." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'translator' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why do you not have a translator with you?\" Immanence enquired.\n\nGnores felt a sudden flash of embarrassment. Though having brought every variety of hand weapon, scanning gear and equipment for accessing human computer systems, he had entirely forgotten about bringing a translator. Then came the fear. Father would severely punish such a lapse. Such a lapse would probably ensure his removal as a Prime. And there was only one way Primes were ever removed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But this place was supposed to be empty! My mission here was to scan for booby traps and secure—\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Upon your return, Gnores,\" said Immanence, \"we will discuss this further.\"\n\nGnores sagged as the comlink broke. He stared dimly into his future and realised it did not extend very far. Damned human! He sank into a fug of self-pity and wondered if his father was already ordering a drone shell to be brought up to his sanctum, or if all of Gnores would be food for second-children. The human—some payback there... Gnores forced his attention back to his surroundings. He would keep the human alive. He would be much more careful this time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe he could make that pleasure last until Immanence recalled him. He peered down at the floor and saw a bloody trail leading over to a nearby corridor, the human just dragging himself from sight. Gnores charged over and crashed into the corridor mouth—his shell too large to allow him ingress. For a moment he tore at the walls with his claws, but then the human opened some kind of access hatch and began pulling himself inside. Gnores drew his rail-gun and fired, but too late, for the human escaped.\n\nGnores stood grinding his mandibles together and drooling black saliva. After a moment he pushed himself back and whirled away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No matter. It wouldn't live very long with such injuries. They never did." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Now. The time was now. Moria restarted the positioning drives on the Trajeen runcible, and observed the massive gateposts separating from each other, slowly at first then accelerating, drawing out the Skaidon warp, the drives' white blades of flame pointing inwards over the meniscus surface. In her real-time model Moria observed the Occam Razor hurtling down towards Boh, and the Prador vessel dropping lower and lower to keep itself between its opponent and the runcible. Some of the Polity vessel's missiles came close to hitting the runcible itself. That would spell disaster, but, equally, revealing to the Prador that the Boh runcible was not the Polity ship's intended target would be disastrous too. But just maybe there lay a way around that. Moria accessed the runcible's meteor collision lasers and routed through to them a military ballistics program uploaded from the planet." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'should' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe that would be enough.\n\nNow the Boh runcible. She started the positional drives there, and watched the ring of white fire bloom. Conlan should be sending the second signal now. She did not have time to check with Jebel, and checking would not change matters.\n\nUtterly unbelievable pain, almost equalled by the horror of being injured like that. Okay now, all wrapped up and back where it should be." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Prador had pinched his abdomen tightly in the tips of its claws, too tight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If it had gripped him only slightly differently it would have snapped his spine. His bulging guts pressed hard against the serrated inner edges of the claw, which cut in, and his intestines and the lower lobes of his liver belched through the split. He'd got it all back inside, and with the remains of his shirt bound it all in place, and tied that down with the optic cable, but the blood just kept oozing out. He was bleeding internally too. He could feel it. Death did not lie very far away.\n\nEDDRESS REQUEST >" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "OFFLINE EDDRESS REQUEST?\n\nACCEPT?\n\n\"What the fuck?\" he managed. He looked around at the cramped space, could hear the clattering sound of hard Prador feet not very far away. Perhaps they wanted to exchange messages, for they seemed quite anxious to reacquaint themselves with him. Conlan damned himself for a fool. The moment he saw one of those little bastards faceto-face he knew that running to them had been a suicidal move." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The big one, like the one called Vortex appearing on the newsnets, he assumed to be a leader of some kind." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'accepted' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why hadn't it listened to him?\n\nThe eddress request remained and he considered taking the facility offline, but what the hell did it matter now? He accepted and immediately received a message:\n\nYOU BROKE MY FUCKING LEG YOU PIECE OF SHIT.\n\nVOCAL CONNECTION?\n\nConlan accepted that and sent, \"I hope it really hurts. You still at the bottom of that shaft?\"\n\n\"No, Urbanus came and collected me and now I've a couple of nice drug patches on my chest—compound fracture, so pretty nasty. He got the bones back into my leg and splinted it. I don't seem to mind that you've probably screwed this operation.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Conlan felt he could do with some similar patches himself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Obviously, by his tone over the link, Jebel Krong floated up in the clouds.\n\n\"I'll tell you what. I haven't screwed your operation completely, but I still can. You send Urbanus for me, with some of those patches, and maybe I'll still do what you want.\" As he finished delivering that speech, Conlan realised that if speaking out loud he would have needed to pause for breath every few words.\n\nJebel's laughter came ghostly over the link. \"So the Prador weren't talking? Have they got you now, stuck you up on a wall somewhere? You really won't like what happens next. Remember me telling you?\"\n\n\"They don't have me. I'm in hiding. I'm serious about my offer.\"\n\n\"No can do, I'm afraid. This place is crawling with them. We're under a chameleonware shield, local, blocking scan. No intention of moving right now. They'll probably find you soon enough. Bit of advice for you...\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What's that?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Kill yourself.\"\n\n\"You are a bastard, Krong.\"\n\nLaughter again, then, \"And you're not?\"\n\nConlan looked around. He lay in an air duct junction. The Prador might pick him up on their scanners, but they'd have to cut through a lot of metalwork to reach him. By then he could crawl on to somewhere else.\n\n\"How long till the runcible starts moving?\" he asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Any time now.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If I send your signal, and survive ... will you hold to your promise to me?\"\n\n\"Of course, but I don't really see you surviving. Are you near a console now?\"\n\nConlan wasn't, but further along a nearby duct a vent opened into some private accommodation and there would be one in there. He considered his survival chances. It would be so much easier to lie here and die; already he felt slightly cold and sleepy. Approaching the Prador again would almost certainly result in the scenario Krong once described to him and promised to mimic with pliers and metal snips. If he crawled to that room and sent the signal, Krong's plan might succeed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But then there were the Prador here. In that room he would be more vulnerable and he doubted he would be able to haul himself up to the vent again.\n\n\"Tell me again your plan?\" he asked.\n\n\"Oh, you mean about the mines and such—all complete bollocks, obviously.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Well, I didn't want you telling your Prador chums. The mine scenario worked just fine for our purposes. And even if you ratted on us the real plan might still work.\"\n\n\"So what is your real plan?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You expect me to tell you now? Why should I do that?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Because my guts are hanging out, I'm bleeding internally, and I know the Prador are not my chums.\"\n\n\"Love the Polity now do you?\"\n\n\"I hate it and all it stands for, but right now I hate the Prador more.\"\n\nAfter a long pause Jebel spoke more soberly. \"Give me a visual link via your aug, and patch in a med diagnostic.\"\n\n\"Med diagnostic?\"\n\n\"You'll find it in the functions catalogue. It enables the hospital system of your choice to monitor your health.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Conlan first patched through a visual link, which was easy, and gazed down at his leaking torso." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Shortly he found the health monitoring function and studied its readout himself. It only confirmed what he already knew: he was dying. He allowed Krong access to that diagnosis.\n\n\"You're in a bad way, but I guess you don't need me to tell you that. I'm attaching a graphic for you now showing a future model of what we hope will shortly happen.\"\n\nThe attachment came through and Conlan hesitated before opening it. It could contain some military virus or something equally nasty, but he realised he was too tired to care. As he opened the attachment and viewed the scene displayed, and Moria's projections, he felt a steady vibration through the floor, growing in intensity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The positional drives have just started up,\" Krong noted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Can you see ... outside? Can you see it?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Certainly can.\"\n\n\"Give me a visual link and I'll do what you want.\"\n\nIt came through quickly, and in his third eye Conlan gazed up through a chainglass dome across the Boh runcible, fusion flames of the positional drives gleaming in his vision. He rolled over and began crawling towards that vent, in the end not because he hated the Prador nor loved the Polity, but because of the sheer audacity of what that woman planned.\n\nHellish fire spewed across vacuum as the masers struck twelve targets out of a possible twenty, though it was difficult to be sure of the latter number since the missiles used many techniques of concealment. The ship's meteor defence laser struck five more, but the EM output of those close antimatter blasts threw his sensors into disarray. Two missiles struck his ship, the massive detonations hurling it back towards the runcible, a huge glowing dent in its hull." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Where are the rest?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'drones' into your response exactly 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His sensors finally unscrambled enough for him to see not one but three missiles now past his ship and bearing down on the runcible. A sudden detonation ensued and a drone tumbled out of the extremity of the explosion and then righted itself. A second detonation as a second missile passed through the enfilading fire from two other drones. Those drones were closer to the blast however, and their carrier signals flatlined. Despite the possibility of damage to the runcible, Immanence redirected masers to target the remaining missile—since there seemed few drones in the vicinity—but before his own weapons fired again the missile detonated, spreading a ball of white fire.\n\nWhat?\n\nHe analysed what happened, and laughed his Pradorish laugh: the runcible's own meteor defences had fired up, destroying the missile." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But the laughter did not last." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'about' precisely 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For a moment he thought the runcible itself damaged from the close blast and now burning, then realised the flames he was seeing were too evenly spaced for that.\n\n\"Gnores, what is happening down there?\"\n\n\"I am investigating now, Father. It seems that the engines used to position each section of the runcible are now operating.\"\n\nGnores did not sound particularly enthusiastic about his investigation, but Immanence could do nothing about that right then. He returned his attention to sensor data, seeing the Polity vessel decelerating hard and slightly altering its course, but that did not account for why it ceased firing. Immanence used manoeuvring thrusters to reposition his own ship to retain maximum cover of the runcible, then turned his attention to the damage received.\n\nNumerous casualties and quite a lot of wreckage, but not sufficient to be concerned about." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He redirected some of the stored power to memory metal layers in the hull and observed the dent gradually easing out." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'gnores' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Again a scan of the runcible.\n\n\"Gnores, the runcible is spreading its five sections.\"\n\n\"Yes, I am aware of that... Father.\"\n\nImmanence champed angrily. He again adjusted the position of his vessel, moving it further out to cover this expansion, still blocking line-ofsight from the Polity ship. But if Gnores did not come up with an explanation soon, Immanence decided he would move away. He did not like what was happening there. Then, at that moment, he became aware of a com channel signalling for his attention." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Separatist.\n\n\"Explain,\" said Immanence succinctly.\n\n\"There's a Polity warship ... out there,\" said the one called Conlan.\n\n\"I am aware of that.\"\n\n\"They got through ... somehow. I'm injured.\"\n\n\"Explain!\" Immanence spat.\n\n\"They want to destroy it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Immanence spun round in frustration on his grav-motors." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Explain yourself clearly, human!\"\n\n\"The technicians—those few left here at Trajeen—they managed to break into the system—got control of the positional drives out there. They know you want it, and the Polity ship is there to destroy it. They're spreading it out... making it more difficult for you to cover.\"\n\n\"I see.\" Immanence cut the link. He eased his vessel out further, to keep the runcible covered. So this was why the Polity ship ceased firing: it was waiting until the five sections of the runcible presented easier targets and would then pick them off. Even now those sections lay on the edges of a circle a hundred kilometres across. The complex around it also separated, though Gnores and most of the second-children lay inside the largest piece attached to one gatepost." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Gnores, recall all the second-children to the gatepost you presently occupy and concentrate your search there. Be thorough and be quick.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yeah... whatever.\"\n\nGnores would pay very heavily indeed for that. Immanence gazed through the cams on the firstchild's carapace and saw that he was lingering by one of the corridors, peering down at a trail of human blood. Quickly reviewing the situation there, the captain saw that all the second-children were returning to that one gatepost, but was further angered to find that those inside that part of the complex were no longer searching for booby traps, but the injured human who had escaped. Gnashing his mandibles in frustration, Immanence cut the link and returned his attention to matters he could attend to now. Gnores would have to wait.\n\nThe Polity ship was manoeuvring again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Runcible a hundred and twenty kilometres wide." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Immanence again shifted his ship to cover it; lower down towards Boh, the five gateposts marking points on the circumference of a perfect circle behind him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Polity ship's tactics were admirable: Immanence needed to move his ship further and further out to cover the runcible, this meanwhile meant a greater chance of missiles getting round him. He would, he already decided, concentrate on defending the gatepost Gnores occupied, for snatching part of this runcible would be better than none at all.\n\nTwenty seconds.\n\nMoria was panicking, correction after correction, small stabs of the positional drives and adjustments to field strengths and energy feeds, calculations screaming through her mind like a hysterical crowd. The meniscus spread before her like a new horizon, wavering, seeming close to going out, the further gateposts out of sight. One small error and it would fail. Already the drain from the solar satellites had maxed out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fifteen seconds." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fluctuation: G3. In her virtual vision the meniscus began bowing in between posts three and four. In less than a hundredth of a second an AI on the planet shut down the smaller runcible there for the evacuees, and opened its own processing space for her. The screaming crowd of calculations spilled in and spread, and gave her room for just one more. She ran it, sent the corrections, watched the bow straightening out again.\n\nTen seconds.\n\n\"You can do this?\" Moria asked out loud." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Over the tumult she heard, \"Desperate diseases have desperate remedies.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah—right.\n\nFive seconds.\n\nIt hurtled into view, tumbling end over end, two hundred kilometres across at its widest point, trillions of tonnes of asteroidal iron and stone: Vina—the fast moon. The last seconds counted down as slow as years as the moon loomed before her—a crushing, unimaginable force.\n\n\"Work, damn you!\" Moria screamed.\n\nThe moon tumbled into the meniscus, gone. Moria released her hold and errors stacked a thousandfold." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The runcible went out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instantly alerted, Immanence turned to his screens, and for a moment could not comprehend the shimmering circle appearing behind his ship, two hundred and forty kilometres across. In panic he started main engines, and manoeuvring thrusters to turn his ship, and began directing weapons towards this new threat. Missiles launched and all four particle cannons began firing.\n\n\"Scrabbler!\" he bellowed. \"Gnores!\" And then, \"Vagu—\"\n\nSomething briefly occupied the circle and grew immense before him. Immanence did not even have the time to realise what it must be." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sensors transmitted brightness and went out as annihilation arrived." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tomalon expected to see the moon hurtling out, but it came so much faster than that. Just a flicker between the runcible and the Prador ship, then an explosion that briefly blanked out sensors within the human visual range. They came back to reveal a streak of incandescence across space, a cometary tail of gaseous iron and rock, and glimmering tarry streaks of exotic metal, already hardening in vacuum into objects almost with the appearance of bones.\n\n\"It worked,\" said Tomalon.\n\n\"We were lucky,\" Occam replied. \"Now we need to be stronger, and better.\"\n\nJebel Krong felt something loosen inside his chest, but that was all—no fierce joy, no relief." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Perhaps the drugs dulled his senses too much." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe he would feel it later.\n\nLindy let out a series of whoops and was now lying on her back staring up at the tail of fire stretching out from Boh. Urbanus showed no reaction at all, but now turned towards him.\n\n\"There are still Prador here on the runcible,\" the Golem reminded them.\n\n\"Yeah, but over on Gatepost One, not here. Let's at least celebrate that.\"\n\nUrbanus shrugged.\n\nAnnoyed, Jebel decided to try another party." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well, what did you think of that?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he sent to Conlan.\n\n\"Oh Christ! Help me!\"\n\n\"Give me visual,\" Jebel instructed.\n\n\"Ah fuck you!\"\n\nThis last might well have been addressed to Jebel, but he rather thought the source of Conlan's rage and fear more imminent. But visual came through, nevertheless.\n\nMandibles loomed right in front of Conlan's face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The view changed abruptly, and now the man gazed down at a claw closed around his waist as he was thrust backwards." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'second-children' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A subliminal glimpse then inside a small room: smashed computer console, some second-children skittering about excitedly, a bed up against one wall, torn in half. Had Conlan tried to hide underneath it?\n\n\"What's happening, Conlan?\"\n\n\"Stuck me to the wall!\"\n\nThe second-children were now doing something—hooking up bags and pipes. Jebel checked the man's health readout and realised that though he remained mortally wounded, the Prador were giving him fluids and stimulant drugs intravenously. They wanted to keep him alive for as long as possible." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jebel reached into his pocket and removed a small remote control, and still watching the scene through Conlan's eyes, he called up a particular designation on the remote's screen and held his thumb poised over the print and DNA reader pad." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'prador' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I can help you, Conlan, but only in one way.\"\n\n\"Aaargh!\"\n\nThe big Prador in the room had torn away the temporary dressing around Conlan's torso, and now unravelled something Conlan only glimpsed before turning away, unable to bear the sight. Jebel lowered his thumb. Conlan's eyes opened on Prador mandibles munching something like bloody spaghetti, then the scene whited out and all contact fizzed away. The intense flash reached Jebel from over two hundred kilometres away. Hauling himself up a little he could just see that initial glare simmering down and now spreading into a glowing ball, slowly dispersing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well that takes care of numerous problems,\" commented Urbanus." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What was that?\" asked Lindy.\n\n\"The mines on Gatepost One,\" Jebel replied.\n\n\"Conlan?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Jebel Krong, his throat tight. He rubbed at the V-shaped scar on his cheek and realised his face was wet with tears. Utterly ridiculous that this last act—killing someone no better than the Prador themselves—finally elicited a response. But he saw if for what it was: a streak of fire through space was just too dispassionate, and this last had been up close, and personal." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vagule hung in space utterly devoid of purpose as he observed the smear of gas and debris that was all that remained of his home." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He eyed the fading light of the other explosion that killed the rest of his kin, and cold thoughts cycled in his cold mind." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Father?\" he queried over the ether.\n\n\"Kill the humans! Kill the Humans!\" chanted the remaining second-child drones as they accelerated towards the approaching Polity dreadnought.\n\nVagule felt the sudden impulse to follow them. Wasn't this his purpose?\n\n\"They will not manage to kill any humans,\" Pogrom observed. \"But their loyalty is admirable.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vagule absorbed that: though to kill humans was his purpose as a war drone, that purpose remained implicit rather than a direct order from his father, therefore he found he could get around it, especially since the chances of fulfilling said purpose in these circumstances seemed remote." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The only problem was that once round it he began to feel empty again.\n\n\"We must return home and report this,\" said Pogrom.\n\nVagule spied the other war drone drawing close, burns and scars on its armour from an explosion that destroyed other drones. Once again Vagule absorbed the underlying message. Reporting this incident was utterly proper, it was the returning home bit that seemed problematic: drones did not contain U-space drives.\n\n\"Do you agree?\" asked Pogrom.\n\nIf they stayed here they would certainly end up being destroyed by the Polity dreadnought." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If they headed for the planet, their chances of survival were just as limited, the greater likelihood being that the dreadnought would detect them long before they reached it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It seems reasonable,\" Vagule tentatively agreed.\n\n\"Let us make an inventory of our resources,\" Pogrom suggested.\n\nWith sufficient power they could survive for centuries, for in essence they were no longer organic creatures. They found both their power levels to be at a similar level, and began analysing astrogation data for the best route home. For both of them, the best option was for them to link up, and use one fusion burn of eight hours to throw them towards the nearest star, saving some fuel to manoeuvre when they got there. Upon their arrival they would probably be able to find useable ice to convert into fuel and sunlight on which to recharge power cells. During the intervening time, they held sufficient power to maintain their facsimile of life." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Many such stopovers would be necessary. Many.\n\nVagule and Pogrom linked using extensible grabs, adjusted their attitude to the stars and fired up their drives. Behind them they observed fires flaring and going out as the second-child drones drew close enough to the Polity dreadnought for it to detect them, and erase them. Their defiant cries swiftly died. Eight hours later Vagule and Pogrom shut down their drives, and hurtled through dark to the first of eight hundred distant lights. They did finally arrive in what had once been the Prador Second Kingdom, and it was a strange and alien place. But they were stranger and more alien still after their fifty-three-century journey." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Exhausted, Moria detached her optic cable and let it drop." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She gazed across at George, his forehead down on the table and utterly still. She wondered if this had killed him as she reached out to unplug his optic cable, but the moment it came free he jerked, placed the flat of his hand on the pseudo wood and slowly pushed himself upright.\n\n\"Are you all right?\" she asked, wondering what proverb he would use for his reply.\n\nHe said nothing, just stared at her.\n\nMoria closed her eyes for a moment. They had done it, she watched it all through the test sensors, but somehow this just did not seem to satisfy and she felt the need for a more human confirmation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Come on,\" she said, pulling at the shoulder of his uniform." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She stood, her legs shaking and something hollow nestling under her breastbone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "George stood also, though she had not expected him to. She led the way out into the corridor, for a moment unable to decide which way to go, unable to simply find her way in this complex even after all she had just achieved. Then she worked it out and headed off. George stumbled along behind her and she wondered if his operation of the internal runcible systems had burnt out what remained of his mind. There was blood leaking from behind his aug and his mouth hung open with a trickle of saliva shining on one side.\n\nFinally they reached the place where she first encountered Jebel Krong. The windows here gave her the view she required." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She walked over to stand before vacuum and reached out her right hand to press it against cool chainglass." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The gas giant itself stood out visibly larger than surrounding stars, and extending from it coiled a short tail of brightness, fading now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As she watched it she felt George's hand close about her left hand." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She turned to look at him. He closed his mouth, reached up and wiped it.\n\nHe smiled and told her:\n\n\"And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,\n\nThey danced by the light of the moon,\n\nThe moon,\n\nThe moon," }, { "from": "human", "value": "They danced by the light of the moon.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "SHADOW OF THE" } ]