[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A strange, sweet, rustling, chattering noise. And yet not so strange, for he'd heard it before. If only he could remember where. Then all at once he did remember. It was the noise of running water.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All round them, though out of sight, there were streams, chattering, murmuring, bubbling, splashing, and even, in the distance, roaring.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And his heart gave a great leap, though he hardly knew why, when he realized that the frost was over. And much nearer there was a drip, drip, drip from the branches of all the trees.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then as he looked at one tree, he saw a great load of snow slide off it. And for the first time since he had entered Narnia, he saw the dark green of a fir tree.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And by being very cruel to the reindeer, the dwarf managed to get it on the move again, and they drove a little further.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now the snow was really melting in earnest, and patches of green grass were beginning to appear in every direction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unless you have looked at a world of snow as long as Edmund had been looking at it, you will hardly be able to imagine what a relief those green patches were after the endless white. Then the sledge stopped again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's no good, your majesty, said the dwarf. We can't sledge in this thaw. Then we must walk, said the witch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We shall never overtake them walking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Growled the dwarf. Not with the start they've got.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are you my counselor or my slave? said the witch. Do as you're told. Tie the hands of the human creature behind it and keep hold of the end of the rope and take your whip and cut the harness of the reindeer. They'll find their own way home. The dwarf obeyed and in a few minutes


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Edmund found himself being forced to walk as fast as he could with his hands tied behind him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He kept on slipping in the slush and mud and wet grass. And every time he slipped, the dwarf gave him a curse and sometimes a flick with a whip.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The witch walked behind the dwarf and kept on saying, faster, faster! Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches of snow grew smaller.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every moment, more and more of the trees shook off their robes of snow. Soon, wherever you look,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead of white shapes, you saw the dark green of furs, or the black prickly branches of bare oaks and beaches and elms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then the mist turned from white to gold, and presently cleared away altogether.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Shafts of delicious sunlight struck down onto the forest floor, and overhead you could see a blue sky between the tree tops.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon there were more wonderful things happening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Coming suddenly round a corner into a glade of silver birch trees, Edmund saw the ground covered in all directions with little yellow flowers, celandines. The noise of water grew louder. Presently, they actually crossed a stream. Beyond it, they found snowdrops growing. Mind your own business!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He noticed a dozen crocuses growing round the foot of an old tree, gold and purple and white.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then came a sound even more delicious than the sound of the water.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Close beside the path they were following, a bird suddenly chirped from the branch of a tree.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was answered by the chuckle of another bird a little further off. And then, as if that had been a signal, there was chattering and chirping in every direction. And then a moment of full song. And within five minutes, the whole wood was ringing with birds' music.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And wherever Edmund's eyes turned, he saw birds alighting on branches, or sailing overhead, or chasing one another, or having their little quarrels, or tidying up their feathers with their beaks. Faster! Faster! said the witch. There was no trace of the fog now. The sky became bluer and bluer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now there were white clouds hurrying across it from time to time. In the wide glades there were primroses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A light breeze sprang up which scattered drops of moisture from the swaying branches and carried cool, delicious scents against the faces of the travellers. The trees began to come fully alive. The larches and birches were covered with green, the laburnums with gold.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon the beech trees had put forth their delicate transparent leaves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As the travellers walked under them, the light also became green. A bee buzzed across their path. This is now Thor! said the dwarf, suddenly stopping. This is Spring! What are we to do?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your winter has been destroyed. I tell you, this is Aslan's doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If either of you mentions that name again, said the witch, he shall instantly be killed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All of you at some time or other have built a house.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It may have been a house of cards that blew over very easily, or it may have been made of books, or it may have been made of building blocks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or, it may have been a shack in the backyard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, every house must have walls and a roof.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you lean two blocks or cards together, you have the walls forming a roof, and the roof forming the walls. That is the simplest way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The sides form both walls and a roof, as in a tent or a wigwam.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The sides of the pyramids were both walls and a roof. A pyramid was shaped something like a tent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was built solid except for the small rooms in the center. If I told you the oldest buildings were tombs,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The next oldest buildings were temples. Houses men built for their gods.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the next page is a picture of the ruin of what we think was a temple. It probably never had a roof.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you can see several stone crossbeams still in place. It is called Stonehenge. And it's not in Egypt. It's in England.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I am showing it to you here because the stones still standing show very well how it was built. Not as the pyramids were built.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But by putting one stone across two standing stones. This is the second way of building.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The ruins of Stonehenge look very much like something a child might build out of blocks. Two blocks standing up with one laid across. But these blocks are of stone. Immense stones many times bigger than a man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Stonehenge probably was built just to enclose a space that was set aside as holy ground, where the ancient men came to worship the sun god.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For this was long before Christ was born, and before the Christian religion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We call the people who build Stonehenge druids. One of the greatest and oldest temples is in Egypt. It is the temple at Karnak.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Part of which was built by Ramesses the Great, the Pharaoh who ordered all the Israelite children in Egypt killed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It also is a ruin, and one of the most beautiful ruins in the world. You may feel that a ruin could not be beautiful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A broken down and dilapidated house, where man is not usually beautiful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why do you suppose this ruin of Karnak is called beautiful? I know a man who built a ruin in his garden. That's absurd, of course.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The main columns at Karnak, which once supported the roof, were almost 70 feet high.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Twelve times as high as a man standing up. And twelve feet wide.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These columns are made to look either like a single lotus flower or a bouquet of lotus flowers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lotus flowers were water lilies that grew in the Nile There were other Egyptian temples


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But though all of them are smaller, all were built in somewhat the same way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First there was an avenue of sphinxes leading to the temple. And then there were two obelisks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An obelisk is a tall upright stone pointed at the top and it was supposed to represent a ray of the sun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After the obelisks came the gateway to the temple.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was made with two huge towers called pylons, one at each side of the door.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The pylon walls slant inward, and if they went higher, they would meet like a pyramid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is thought that the old astrologers, that is, men who told fortunes from the stars, used to go up on top of these pylons to read the stars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The front of these pylons had figures cut into the rock face.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And back of that was a hall of columns called a hyper-style hall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And back of that, the Holy of Holies, where the statue of the God was kept.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know how people, when they go abroad, bring home souvenirs. Well, nations have done the same thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there is another in London on the bank of the River Thames.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These two obelisks are called Cleopatra's Needles, though they were made long before the Queen of Egypt named Cleopatra lived, and they look more like giant pencils than needles. One is in Paris, in the center of a beautiful square. There are many in Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Be not too tame, neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Seek the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance that you owe a step not the modesty of nature.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold as to a, the mirror up to nature.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How now, my lord? Will the king hear this piece of work?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thou art Ian as just a man, as ere my conversation coped withal. Oh, my dear lord. Nay, do not think I flatter. For what advancement may I hope from thee, that no revenue hast but thy good spirits to feed and clothe thee?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why should the poor be flattered? No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, And croak the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning. Does thou hear?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, and could have men distinguish her election, she hath sealed thee for herself. For thou hast been as one in suffering all that suffers nothing. A man that fortunes, buffets, and rewards has ten with equal thanks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And blessed are those whose blood and judgment are so well commedled that they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger to sound what stops she please.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Give me that man that is not passion slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, high in my heart of heart, as I do thee.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There is a play tonight before the King. One scene of it comes near the circumstance which I have told thee of my father's death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Give him heedful note, for I mine eyes will rivet to his face, and after we will both our judgments join in censure of his seeming.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're coming to the play. I must be idle. Get you a place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What should a man do but be merry? For look how cheerfully my mother looks. And my father died within two hours.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. Oh heavens, I died two months ago and not forgotten yet!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year. But by a lady he must build churches then, or else shall he suffer not thinking on with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is, For oh, for oh, the hobby-horse is forgot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pours poison in the sleeper's ears and leaves him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Poisoner woos the Queen with gifts. She seems harsh a while, but in the end accepts love.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We shall know by this fellow. The players cannot keep counsel, they'll tell all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Any show that you'll show him. Be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I heard the argument. Is there no offence in it? No, no, they do but jest. Poison in jest. No offence in the world. And what do you call the play? The Mousetrap. Marry how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the duke's name, his wife Baptista. You shall see it on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is a naivish piece of work, but what of that? Your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get the gold jade winch, our withers are unrun. Ah, this is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I could interpret between you and your love if I could see the puppets dallying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you must take your husbands. Begin, murderer! Leave thy damnable faces and begin! Come! The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With drinks? No, my lord, with collar. Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to the doctor. For for me to put him to his vacation would perhaps plunge him into more collar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why do you go about to recover the wind of me as if you would drive me into a toil? Oh my lord.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Govern these ventures with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me. You would seem to know my stops. You would pluck out the heart of my mystery. You would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass. And there is much music, excellent voicing, this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak? Spud, you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then I will come to my mother by and by.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They fool me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by. I will say so. By and by is easily said. Leave me friends.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world, now could I drink hot blood?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh heart, lose not thy nature. Let not ever the soul of Nero enter this firm bosom. Let me be cruel, not unnatural. I will speak daggers to her, but use none. My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How in my words some ever she be shent, To give them seals never, my soul consent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair. I am tame, sir, pronounce.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, has sent me to you. You are welcome. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother's commandment. If not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of my business. Sir, I cannot. What?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We shall obey where she ten times our mother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are you your father's leave? What says Polonius? He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave, my laborsome petition, and at last, upon his will I sealed my hard consent. I do beseech you give him leave to go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Upon our first, he sent out to suppress his nephew's levies, which to him appeared to be a preparation against the Polak. But better looked into, he truly found it was against your highness, where it grieved that so his sickness, age,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To employ those soldiers, so levied as before, against the Polak, with an entreaty herein further shown.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I saw him once. He was a goodly king.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My lord, I think I saw him yesternight. Saw who? My lord, the king, your father.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Season your admiration for a while with an atent ear till I may deliver upon the witness of these gentlemen this marvel to you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two nights together had these gentlemen Marcellus and Bernardo on their watch in the dead waste and middle of the night been thus encountered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A figure, like your father, armored at point exactly, cap a pay, appears before them, and with solemn march, goes slow and stately by them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where, as they had delivered both in time, form of the thing, each word made true and good, the apparition comes. I knew your father. These hands are not more like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where was this? My lord, upon the platform where we watch. Did you not speak to it? My lord, I did. But answer made it none.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yet once methought it lifted up its head and did address itself to motion like as it would speak. But even then the morning cock crewed loud.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What, looked he frowningly? A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pale or red? No, very pale. And fixes eyes upon you? Most constantly. I would I had been there. It would have much amazed you. Very like, very like. Stated long?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred? Longer, longer. Not what I saw it. His beard was grizzled, no? It was as I have seen it in his life. A sable, silvered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chapter 20 The Diaspora The Scattering of the Jews


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We've been learning about the time of the Crusades, the years when knights from all over the world fought over the city of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem was built by the Jews. Why weren't the Jewish people in charge of their own city? Long ago, back before the beginning of this book,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They rose up against the Roman army that occupied Jerusalem. The Roman soldiers in Jerusalem weren't ready for a rebellion and they had to retreat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And sent a huge army of 60,000 men into Judea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This army marched through the countryside, destroying the villages where Jewish freedom fighters, called zealots, were hiding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finally, they arrived at Jerusalem and put the city under siege.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The siege lasted for months until the Roman soldiers broke down the walls of Jerusalem and poured into the city. They burned the temple where the Jews worshipped and took the Jewish people captive. Now Judea was under Roman rule again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the Romans were tired of putting down Jewish rebellions. They thought,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As long as we leave the Jews in their own city they'll keep trying to take it back from us. So the Romans scattered the Jews all through their empire and they refused to rebuild the temple. This was a problem for the Jews. After all,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were Jews because of their worship of God. An Englishman was someone born in England.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And a Frenchman was someone born in France, but a Jew was someone who worshipped God in the temple. Without the temple, how could the Jews be Jews?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One Jewish scholar, Yohanan Ben-Zakai, believed that the Jews could still remain Jews even though they could not worship in the temple. He thought that the Torah,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The sacred writings of the Jews could be the glue that held the Jewish people together. If they could all remember and follow the Torah,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They would still be Jews even if they were scattered all over the world. But Yohanan had a problem. He was in Jerusalem. And the Romans were knocking down the walls. He knew that Jerusalem was doomed. So he bought a coffin and lay down in it, pretending to be dead. He had his students carry him out of Jerusalem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yohanan Benzakai climbed out of the coffin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He went to a little town near the sea with his pupils and there set up a school for the study of the Torah. He trained other teachers or rabbis.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These rabbis went out to other towns where the scattered Jews were living and taught them how to worship God in little local temples called synagogues.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For hundreds of years, the Jews went right on living all over the world, worshipping God in their synagogues and reading the Torah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Throughout the Middle Ages, Jewish people lived in many different countries. England, Spain, France, Russia, Italy, Egypt, and more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But even though they were English, Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, Egyptian, and all the other nationalities, the Jews also remained Jews.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They weren't considered good Englishmen or good Frenchmen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because their worship of God was more important than their loyalty to England or France. So the Jews were often mistreated.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During the Middle Ages, England and France both declared that Jews were not welcome in their countries. But many Jews settled in Spain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because the Muslim rulers were friendlier towards Judaism than were the Christian kings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Islamic Kingdom of Spain was so friendly to Jews that the Jews talk about their time in Spain as the Golden Age of the Jews.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Jews would not have a land of their own again until the 20th century. But because of the rabbis and the Torah, they remained Jews, even without a country to call their own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We call this scattering of the Jews the diaspora.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I will come straight. Look you lay home to him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, and that your grace hath screened and stood between much heat and him. I'll silence me even here. Pray you be round with him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In another part of the castle, Banquo was getting ready for bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I should put my candle out as well, but I'm too restless. I feel that something terrible may happen tonight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As he said these words, Macbeth knocked on the door. Do you have everything you need? He inquired. I do, Banquo said, but I'm too restless to sleep. I've been thinking over the words of the weird women.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They said that you would be Thane of Cawdor and you are. But when they said you would be king...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's talk about that later, Macbeth interrupted, when you have the time. For tonight, sleep well. While Macbeth and Banquo were talking,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lady Macbeth took drugged wine to Duncan's guards.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He wandered up and down the hall in a frenzy of uncertainty. As he grew more frantic, he began to see things


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think I see a dagger hanging before me in the air, he cried. Is it my imagination? Is it a vision telling me to carry out this dreadful plot? Here is a real dagger in my belt. Will I draw it? Yes, I will. I have made up my mind. Duncan, this night you will go to heaven or to hell. And he made his way towards the stairs. Lady Macbeth waited for her husband in their rooms. When she heard his step, she opened the door. There he stood, his face white.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have done it, he whispered, but I think I will never sleep again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I thought I heard a voice cry, sleep no more, Macbeth doth murder sleep, Macbeth shall sleep no more. Pull yourself together, Lady Macbeth told him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Go, wash your hands, put on your night clothes, and we'll tell everyone we were asleep when it happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Macbeth and his wife came yawning from their room, pretending to be shocked and horrified.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lady Macbeth even fainted. They played their part so well that Duncan's followers decided to make Macbeth


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was afraid that Banqual would be the next to plot for the throne.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hadn't the weird women said that Banquo would be the father of kings?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe Banquo was planning to put his children on the throne in that best place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Macbeth hired three murderers to follow Banko on his morning's ride and kill him. Now Macbeth was truly safe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But as he sat at dinner that night, Macbeth saw Banquo's ghost. He shouted, Hen's horrible shadow, startling his other guests who could see nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As time went on, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth felt more and more guilt. They had nightmares. We sleep in the affliction of these terrible dreams that shake us nightly, Macbeth complained. Duncan sleeps peacefully in his grave. He is better off than we are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Lady Macbeth started to walk in her sleep rubbing her hands together over and over, as if she were washing them. Out, out bloody spot, she would whisper, until someone woke her up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finally Macbeth decided to go find the three weird women again and ask them whether his throne was safe. He discovered them in a cave, huddled around a cauldron, chanting,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Till the forest walks up to your castle, the women answered him. That will never be, Macbeth exclaimed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who can command the trees to unfix their roots from the earth? And he went home, comforted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when he arrived at his gate, he saw his servants weeping. Your lady is dead, they told him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lady Macbeth had died of a guilty conscience, and worse was to come.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Macbeth's lookouts began to shout that they could see a forest approaching the castle. When Macbeth ran up to the wall, he saw an enormous army moving towards his castle, each man carrying in front of him a branch cut from the woods so that the defenders in the castle could not tell exactly how many soldiers were coming.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Duncan's relatives were at the front of the attack, ready to fight for the throne.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon the avenging army broke into the castle. Armed men ran towards Macbeth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Macbeth realized that his life was over. He shouted, Out, out, brief candle. Life's but a walking shadow. A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then he drew his sword, plunged into the fight and was killed. Macbeth is a tragedy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At its end, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and a number of other characters are all dead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But if Queen Elizabeth had lived to see this play, she probably would have enjoyed it. After all, it showed that a nobleman who plotted treason against a ruler would come to a bad end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] John Lackland and the Magna Carta. Richard's nickname was the Lion Hearted, but John's nickname wasn't nearly as pretty. John's people called him John Lackland. Why? John was the youngest son of the King of England. Remember, England was a feudal system.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The king owned all of the land that he ruled.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when John's father died, Richard inherited the whole land of England. John didn't inherit any of it. He lacked land. But when Richard died, John became the king. Now he wasn't John Lackland. He was the king and owner of all England.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] John's older brother Richard had always treated him like a little boy who couldn't possibly rule a country. While Richard was away at war, John tried his best to claim the throne. But when Richard came home and took the throne back, he laughed at his brother. What a child you are!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was determined to show that he was a strong grown-up ruler. But he had all sorts of troubles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For one thing, he wasn't tall and golden-haired like Richard. He was short, plump, and losing his hair.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The noblemen of England didn't respect him and the King of France was trying to take away the castles that England owned over in France.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He could prove that he was a great warrior like his older brother. So he fought battle after battle in France. These battles cost money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had to pay his soldiers, feed them, and buy horses for them. So to raise money, John came up with ideas to get more money from his noblemen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He declared that in emergencies like wars with France, his nobleman owed him extra money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] John could take control of the nobleman's land and make money from it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now all of these were ways that kings had raised extra money before John came to the throne. But John used them to raise lots of money. Soon his noblemen started to feel poor. John became more and more unpopular.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then John did something that was even more tyrannical. He ordered his nephew


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Marched into London, England's capital city, and captured it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We call this a civil war, when soldiers are fighting in their own country against their own people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] John realized that he wouldn't be able to recapture London, so he dressed himself in his royal robes, gathered his court together, and went out to meet the rebels at a field called Runnymede.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The nobleman presented John with a paper and told him to sign it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The paper described new laws that the king had to follow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That the king couldn't throw his noblemen in jail unless they had actually committed a crime.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This paper was called the Magna Carta, or Great Charter. John didn't want to sign this paper. After all,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That unless he signed the Magna Carta he would lose his crown. So he signed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the King of England had to obey the law like everyone else in his kingdom. This was a new idea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For the first time, the law was the most powerful force in a country, instead of the king.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Today we still follow the ideas of the Magna Carta. If you live in Canada or in the United States, your leaders don't own your country. Instead, they have to follow the law like everyone else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The president or the prime minister can't suddenly decide, today I want everyone in my country to pay me $50 so that I can start a war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They have to ask the people's permission to raise taxes and start wars. But instead of traveling to Washington DC,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where the President of the United States lives, or to Ottawa, Ontario, where the Prime Minister of Canada has his office, and giving them permission ourselves, we choose representatives. People who go to Washington or Ottawa and speak to our leaders for us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the president or prime minister wants to start a war or raise taxes, these representatives have to give permission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the United States, these elected people are called representatives and senators. They meet together in Congress.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In Canada, these representatives are elected to the House of Commons. They are called Members of Parliament.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This system got started 800 years ago when John signed the Magna Carta.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alex said softly, playing with my hair as I rested my throbbing head in his lap,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, if this girl Allison started out as Miranda's assistant and is now an editor at the magazine, well, that'd be good enough for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even though his kids were only nine years old, he'd been disappointed to see how jaded and cynical they already were.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They all spoke freely about blowjobs, knew ten different slang words for pod, and loved to brag about whose cousin was currently residing in a tougher jail. I slid my hand under his t-shirt and started to scratch his back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't think it's completely selling out to work for a fashion magazine, do you? He squeezed my arm and lay down next to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Baby, of course it's not selling out, it's paying your dues. You're saying that if you put in a year at runway, you'll save yourself three more years of bullshit assistant work somewhere else? I nodded. That's what Emily and Allison said.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Work a year for Miranda and don't get fired and she'll make a call and get you a job anywhere you want. Then how could you not?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You'll work your year and you'll get a job at the New Yorker. It's what you always wanted. You're right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're totally right. He kissed me, one of those long lazy kisses it seemed we had personally invented.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We cooked a simple dinner and fell asleep watching Letterman. I was dreaming about nine-year-olds swigging forties of old English malt liquor when the phone rang.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alex picked it up and pressed it to his ear, but didn't open his eyes or say hello. He quickly dropped it next to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm so hungover I could die, and I finally stop puking long enough to fall asleep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm awakened by a woman who says she works in HR at Elias Clarke.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she's looking for you. At 7.15 in the freaking morning so call her back and tell her to lose my number.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I took the portable and crept out of the bedroom, quietly closing the door as I went.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Miranda was very impressed with you and said she's very much looking forward to working with you. Isn't that wonderful? Congratulations, dear. How does it feel to be Miranda Priestley's new assistant? My head was spinning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was she asking me if I would like the job, or was she making an official offer?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So let's see, you can start on Monday, right? She'll actually be on vacation then, but that's a great time to start.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Starting Monday. It was refusing to make sense in my addled brain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, well, I don't think I can do this Monday because I don't currently live in New York.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I quickly explained, clutching the phone, and I'll need a couple days to find an apartment and buy some furniture and move.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh well then, I suppose Wednesday would be okay. She sniffed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a few more minutes of haggling, we finally settled on November 17th, a week from Monday. That left a little more than eight days to find and furnish a home in one of the craziest real estate markets in the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clovis managed to unite the battling peoples of Gaul into one empire, the Franks. But could he keep them together?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clovis decided that three things would help make the Franks, the Romans,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He established a capital city at a place called Lutetia Parisiorium.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An old Roman fortress, built on a hill near the River Seine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was easy to defend because anyone who attacked it would have to climb uphill while fighting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there were already good, smooth Roman roads leading to Laetitia Parisiorium. Clovis had a wall built around the hill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And named his new city Paris. Now all his people could call Paris their capital city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Second, Clovis decreed that everyone in his empire should become a Christian.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When he was baptized, he had three thousand of his fighting men baptized at the same time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do you think all those men were Christians? Probably not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Clovis knew that people who followed the same religion are less likely to attack each other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he made Christianity the official religion of the Franks. And he built an enormous cathedral in Paris called Saint Genevieve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now Clovis had one religion in his country and one capital city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he needed one more thing to keep his country unified. One law.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like Justinian, Clovis knew that a strong, peaceful country needs one set of laws that everyone follows. So he had his scribes and clerics issue a new set of laws called the Salic Law.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These laws tell us quite a lot about the Kingdom of the Franks. Here is one of the Salic laws.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If a Roman attacks a Frank and steals from him, he will pay 2500 dinars. This was a lot of money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A man would have to work for at least three months to earn 2500 dinars. But then the law goes on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But if a Frank attacks a Roman and steals from him, he will pay 1400 dinars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A Frank who attacked a Roman would pay a much smaller fine than a Roman who robbed a Frank.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So although the Romans were part of the Frankish Empire, they weren't given the same protections as the Franks. Does this seem fair to you? Here is another law.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If a man calls another man fox or hare, he will have to pay 120 dinars. Calling names was against the law. If you called someone a fox, you were calling them sly and untrustworthy like a spy. And if you called a man a hare,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You were saying that he was cowardly and anxious to run away from a fight. Loyalty to their country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And bravery and battle were very important to the Franks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If anyone wants to move to another village, and even one person in the village doesn't want him there, he cannot move.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The people of the village can summon the Kingsman to come and take the offender away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clovis may have brought the Franks, Romans, Burgundians, and Alamani together into one empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it sounds as though some of them still didn't want to live close to each other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What if a Roman wanted to move into a Burgundian village? The people who lived there could refuse to accept him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The empire of the Franks was united, but it was not peaceful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 17 year old Olga Corbett, the Russian gymnast, had fallen off the uneven bars, but then,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] had earned two golds and a silver in her other competitions. Now, on the morning of September 5th, there were only four days of competition left.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The men climbing the fence had broken into the rooms where the Israeli Olympic team slept. Two Israelis had already been killed. Nine more were being held hostage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The men weren't athletes at all. They belonged to a group called Black September, a new kind of revolutionary group. These men were terrorists. Instead of fighting directly against their enemies, like most of the revolutionary groups we've heard about, they fought against civilians. They carried out random violent acts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Set out to get what they wanted, not by defeating an enemy army.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But by creating so much terror among the people of a country, that the people would force their government to do what the terrorists wanted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Black September was a group that had broken off from yet another terrorist group, the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO. Both groups wanted the same thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Israel should get out of the land that it once belonged to Arabs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There were eight black September terrorists in the Munich Olympic Village.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unless 200 Arab guerilla fighters, taken prisoner by the Israeli army, were released from Israeli prison.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the Israeli government would not even listen to the terrorist demands. The German government, desperate to end this Olympic nightmare,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Asked other Arab countries if they would talk to the terrorists. They all refused.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finally, the Germans offered to fly the Black September terrorists and the Israeli hostages out of Munich to anywhere the terrorists wanted. The terrorists agreed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when they stepped out to walk to the airplane that the Germans had provided, German police opened fire on them. By the time the shooting was over, five Black September terrorists and all nine Israeli hostages were dead. Terrorism was in the world to stay. Over the next 30 years,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Different terrorists hoping for different kinds of change would launch many campaigns of terror. The most well-known terrorist groups in the world came from the Middle East. In 1964,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When Israel took land away from four other Arab nations, the PLO realized that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Israel would never give up any land to form a country for Palestinian Arabs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Israel seemed much more likely to claim as much land as possible than to keep it for Israelis. So members of the PLO formed other groups. Terrorist groups. Their goal was to attack crowds of Israelis, not just crowds of soldiers, but also civilian men, women, and children. If enough Israelis died,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps the Israeli people would force the Israeli government to give land to the Arabs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These terrorist groups also wanted the rest of the world to know what they were doing. They hoped that other countries would recognize their demands and help pressure the Israelis into giving up land. So the terrorists didn't just make attacks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They called international newspapers and explained who had carried out the attack and what they wanted. Something called claiming responsibility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the terrorists could get their demands in newspapers and on television, people all over the world might see, understand, and sympathize.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Black September attack at the Olympics was an attempt to get international attention. The Olympics was one of the most famous events in the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Camera crews, newspaper reporters, TV anchors, and thousands of other news gatherers attended the game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the Black September attack was broadcast on television, half a billion people watched it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Another group that gave birth to terrorism was the IRA, the Irish Republican Army.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You may remember that the Irish Republican Army was organized by the Irish nationalist group Sinn Fein.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When most of Ireland was made into the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland remained part of the British Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hoping to reunite Northern Ireland with the rest of the Irish Republic, the IRA turned from being an army to being a terrorist group.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead of attacking or challenging the British government alone, the IRA planted bombs in England.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But some of its members thought that terrorism was the only way to ever get Northern Ireland back for the Irish Republic. They split off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And formed a new organization called the Provisional Irish Republican Army.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it also planted bombs in English pubs and businesses along London streets and in subways.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 1978, the P.I.R.A. managed to put a bomb on a fishing boat that belonged to Lord Mountbatten, the cousin of Queen Elizabeth. Lord Mountbatten was nearly 80 years old. He had fought in both World War I and World War II.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he had even been the Viceroy of India back when India was still British. When the bomb blew up the boat, Lord Mountbatten, his grandson, and two other people were killed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Irish and Palestinian terrorist groups planned many of the terrorist attacks of the 1970s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before 1948, Jewish terrorists killed British civilians in Palestine to try to scare Britain out of occupying Palestine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] or about Australia or New Zealand or about Japan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your flying carpet didn't take you to any of these countries. Maybe it was a Roman carpet and didn't know any better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Spanish Armada tried to invade England 1100 years after the fall of Rome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It looks very different than it did in the days of the old Roman Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So let's take another little trip around the world and see just how different it is. But you won't need a flying carpet anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You crossed the path of a merchant ship headed for North America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Its owner is hoping to get rich soft skins from the Native Americans of Canada and bring them back for French ladies to wear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As you continue south, you also pass a battered group of Spanish ships limping back to port after their humiliating defeat by England. The sailors are pumping water out of the ship's holds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Spanish galleons are leaking because the English Navy shot them full of holes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could turn to the east now and sail through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you decide to keep on sailing down the coast of Africa. You know that you can sail around the southern tip of Africa and back up towards India. Vasco da Gama already did nearly a hundred years ago. As you sail down the coast of Africa,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You see Portuguese, Spanish, and English ships anchored at African ports. Some of these ships are loading up gold. Some are filling their holds with ivory. But you also hear wails and cries. African captives are being herded onto slave ships to begin the long trip across the Atlantic. They will work in the New World and never come home again. You stay on your southern route. Soon the trading ships are behind you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The southern African coast is thick, green, and mysterious.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Past the coast, deep in the heart of the African continent,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tribes roam the grassland and the jungles hunting and fishing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't know anything more about these tribes. The rest of the world hasn't yet explored into the center of Africa. You round the tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, and start north. Now you're in the Indian Ocean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And after hundreds of miles of ocean have passed beneath your ship, you see the Arabian Peninsula ahead of you. The Ottoman Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And its people are casting a wary eye east at the Persians who live between Arabia and India.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It looks as though war may break out between the Persians and the Ottomans.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't want to run into any fighting so you stay safely out to sea. You head your ship east and soon see the coast of India.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're no longer alone. Other ships are headed for Indian ports too. Portuguese, Spanish, and English ships are hoping to trade for Indian spices.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hindus and Muslims live side by side. And the whole country prospers because of trade with Europe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're half tempted to drop anchor and go ashore. To see the beautiful Indian buildings and smell the rich scent of spices at the ports. But you decide to keep on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You make your way carefully through a maze of islands into the South China Sea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] South of you lies the huge island of Australia, where Aboriginal nomads hunt kangaroos,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But explorers haven't yet made their way to these islands, and so you turn north, towards China, and sail along the eastern coast of this huge, mysterious country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once China had its own ships and traded with the outside world. But now the Ming dynasty rules over China.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Ming emperors have forbidden sailors to set out into the ocean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They have built a secret palace in the center of China's capital.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where the emperor lives far away from foreign eyes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You'd like to land your ship and explore, but you're afraid that you won't be welcome. So you sail on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] North of you lie the islands of Japan, where the samurai are fighting with each other for control of their country. The emperor isn't strong enough to stop them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The famous samurai warrior Oda Nobunaga has just captured the capital city of Japan. For now he is the strongest leader in Japan. You turn your ship right and head east again, out into the Pacific Ocean. You know that since the earth is round,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You'll eventually run into the west coast of North America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And after months of travel, land finally comes into view. There are no colonies on this coast yet, but when you turn and sail south,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Down along the coast of Central America, you begin to see Spanish settlements where Aztec cities once stood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Past Central America, down along the South American coast,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You see the ruins of Incan temples and broad Incan roads high on the mountains that rise up from South America's beaches. The wind grows stronger. You are reaching the southern tip of South America. You could take a shortcut through the Straits of Magellan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you're afraid your ship will run aground in that rough choppy water. So you go all the way down to Cape Horn, sail around it, and head back up north. Now you begin to see Portuguese settlements.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you have to tack quickly out of the way when a Portuguese ship sails by on your left, firing at a Spanish ship approaching on your right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Portuguese and Spanish are still arguing over that South American land.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Eventually you sail around the broadest part of South America and head up through the Caribbean toward North America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Spanish colonies dot Florida. But as you keep on sailing north along the coast, the land grows wilder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You glimpse a hunting party of Native Americans, silently stalking a herd of deer. But when they see your ship, they disappear into the forest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As you reach the middle of the continent, you sail past a windswept island a little off the coast. A couple of water-soaked planks lie on the beach. When you squint,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can see the ruins of a fence with deer grazing contentedly on the watermelons that grow in an old garden overgrown with weeds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The remains of the lost colony still stand on Roanoke Island.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You see an island up ahead of you, with a busy fishing settlement on its shores.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Smoke rises up from the chimneys of dozens of small houses. Drying fish lie on stands all along the shore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's the height of the fishing season in Newfoundland, and the colony of St. John's is busy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's time to turn to the east once more and sail back toward England, where you began your trip.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now it was moving day, a full week later, and while neither was still visibly mad, neither seemed exactly the same either. There hadn't been time to make amends with either one since we were in the middle of closing an issue, but I figured things would fall into place when Lily and I moved into our new apartment. The bed movers finally came at 11.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mom and I hitched a ride with them over to my new building where my dad and Alex were schmoozing with the doorman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who, bizarrely enough, was a dead ringer for John Galliano, with my boxes piled against a wall in the lobby.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andy, glad you're here. Mr. Fisher here won't open the apartment unless there's a tenant present. My dad said with a huge smile on his face, which is very smart of him. He added, winking at the doorman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, is Lily not here yet? She said she'd be here by ten, ten thirty. Nope, haven't seen her. Should I call her? Alex asked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I guess so. Ask her if she needs any help. Alex nodded. You go with your parents. I'll call. Our apartment was number 8C and it faced southwest, which from what I'd heard was a good thing. I walked in expecting to be hit with an overpowering smell of sulfur or perhaps see a few bats winging their way around our ceiling, but it was surprisingly clean and bright.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The kitchen was on the right, a narrow, one-person wide strip, with white tile floors and reasonably white Formica cabinets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The kitchen opened a living room, which had already been divided in two by a temporary wall to create a second bedroom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of course, that meant that all the windows had been cut out of the living room entirely, but that was okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bedroom was a decent size, definitely bigger than the one I just left.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bathroom was between the living room and the real bedroom and was done in Pepto pink tiling and pink paint. Oh well, could be kitschy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A tiny closet, ceiling fan, and a small dirty window that looked directly into an apartment in the building next door. Lily had wanted this one and I'd happily agreed. She preferred having the extra space since she spent so much time in her bedroom studying, but I'd rather have the light in the balcony entrance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thanks, Lil. I whispered to myself. What'd you say, honey? Mom asked, coming up behind me. Oh nothing, just that Lily did really, really well. I had no idea what to expect, but this is great, don't you think?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She looked like she was trying to find the most tactful way of saying something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, for New York it's a great apartment. It's just hard to imagine paying so much and getting so little.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, your sister and Kyle only pay $1400 a month total for their condo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they have central air, marble bathrooms, brand new dishwasher and washer dryer, and three bedrooms and two bathrooms. She pointed out, as if she were the first to make this realization,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For $2,280, you could get a beachfront townhouse in LA.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I know, but believe it or not, this is a great deal. I think we'll be very happy here. She hugged me. I think you will be too, as long as you don't work too hard to enjoy it. She said lightly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My dad walked in and opened the duffel bag that he'd been dragging around all day and pulled out a maroon box emblazoned with Limited Edition across the front. Scrabble. The collector's edition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where the board came mounted on its own lazy Susan and the square had little raised borders so the letters didn't slide around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'd been admiring them together in specialty game stores for the past ten years, but no occasion had ever warranted purchasing one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh dad, you shouldn't have. Oh, I just love it. Use it in good health, he said, hugging me back. Or better yet, to kick your old man's ass as I know you will.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was about to tell him that I'd learned from the best, but Alex had walked in, and he didn't look happy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's wrong? I immediately asked as he fidgeted with his sneakers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, nothing at all. He lied while glancing in the direction of my parents.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here, I brought a box. Let's go get a few more, my dad said, moving toward the door. Mr. Fisher has some sort of a cart. We could bring a bunch up at once. Be right back. I looked at Alex, and we both waited until we'd heard the elevator door open and close.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, I just talked to Lily, he said slowly. She's not still mad at me, is she? No, I don't think it's that. So what is it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She was where? Is she okay? Oh my god, was she mugged or raped? I have to go to her right away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andy, she was arrested. He said quietly. Arrested? She was arrested? Andy, you're shrieking. It's not so bad. Actually, it's kind of funny.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alex Feynman, you better fucking tell me right now what happened with my best friend. Okay, okay, relax. Alex was clearly enjoying this. She was out with some guy last night she referred to as Tongue Ring Boy. Do we know who that is? I stared at him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, they went out for dinner and Tung Ring Boy was walking her home and she thought it'd be fun to flash him right there on the street outside the restaurant.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're telling me my friend got arrested for showing her breasts? That's ridiculous. I see women every day who are practically topless and that's in the workplace. I was shrieking again, but I couldn't help it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her bottom. Alex was looking at his shoes again and his face was so red I couldn't tell if he was embarrassed or hysterical. Her what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her breasts, her lower half, like all of it, front and back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An ear to ear grin had finally broken out and he looked so delighted that I thought he might wet himself. Oh, say it isn't true. I moaned, wondering what my friend had gotten herself into now. And a cop saw her and arrested her? No, evidently two little kids saw her do it and pointed it out to their mother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh god. So the mother asked her to pull her pants back up and Lily told her what she could do with her opinions


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the woman went and found a cop standing on the next street over. Oh stop, oh please just stop. It gets better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the time the woman and the cop came back, Lily and Tongue Ring Boy were going at it on the street. Pretty hot and heavy from what she said. My best friend from 8th grade now gets naked and hooks up on street corners? Andy, calm down. Really, she's fine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only reason the cop arrested her was because she gave him the finger when he asked if she had in fact pulled her pants down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh my god, I can't take it anymore. This is what it must feel like to be a mother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But they let her go with just a warning and she's going back to her apartment to recover. Sounds like she was pretty drunk. I mean, why else would someone flip off a police officer? So don't worry, let's get you moved in and then we can go see her if you want.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I couldn't wait until later, I had to see what had happened. She picked up on the fourth ring right before I clicked into voicemail, as if she'd been debating whether or not to answer it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are you okay? I asked her the second I heard her voice. Hey Andy, hope I'm not screwing up the move at all. You don't need me right? Sorry about all this. No, I don't care about that. I care about you. Did you stay overnight? In jail?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well yeah, I guess you could say that. It wasn't so bad. Nothing like TV or anything. I just slept in this room with one other totally harmless girl who was in for something just as stupid. The guards were totally cool. It really wasn't a big deal. No bars or anything. She laughed, but it sounded hollow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why didn't you call me? You know I would have been there in a second and not left until they let you go. So why didn't you call me?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't call because I figured you were either working or really, really tired, and I didn't want to bother you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I thought back to what I'd been doing the night before and the only thing that stuck in my mind was watching Dirty Dancing on TNT for the 68th time in my life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What does too tired have to do with it when you need help? Lil, I don't get it. Look, Andy, let's drop it, okay? You work constantly, day and night, and lots of times on weekends. If I'd really needed you, I would've called, and I know you would've come running.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I swear, it wasn't so bad. Please, can we forget it? I'm exhausted and I really need a shower and my own bed. Can I call you later? Uhm, uh, sure. I managed. We hung up and I stood in the living room staring at the phone until my mom walked in to announce that they were going to take Alex and me out for lunch. What's wrong, Andy?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And where's Lily? I figured she'd need some help with her stuff too, but we're not gonna stick around much after three. Is she on her way? No, she's, uh, she got sick last night. It's been coming on for a few days, I guess, so she probably won't move in till tomorrow. That was just her on the phone. Well, you sure she's alright?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do you think we should go over there? I always feel so badly for that girl.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No real parents, just that cranky old bat of a grandmother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She put her hand on my shoulder as if to drive home the pain. She's lucky she's got you for a friend. Otherwise she'd be all alone in the world. My voice caught in my throat, but after a few seconds I managed a few words.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I guess so, but she's fine. Just going to sleep it off. Let's get sandwiches, okay? The doorman said there's a great deli four blocks down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just three years after the second opium war ended, another king in another country managed to drive the British and all other foreign invaders out of his homeland.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The King's name was Dost Muhammad Khan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he ruled in Afghanistan, a rocky, parched country that lay sandwiched between Russia to the north and India to the south.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the time that Dost Mohammad became its leader, Afghanistan had already been invaded over and over again. First, the Mongols had taken the country over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then a prince of India named Babur had added part of Afghanistan to his Indian empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Persia, which lay along Afghanistan's western border, moved in to take over the rest of Afghanistan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two hundred years later, a heroic Afghan chief named Mirwais Hotoki Khan drove the Persians out. At first, Mirwais Khan had worked for the Persians. He even lived at the Persian royal court. But then the Persians shot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The king assigned a cruel, ruthless Persian governor to run Mirwais Khan's home, the eastern city of Kandahar. Mirwais Khan saw his people suffering.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Arrested and killed for no reason. So he invited the governor and his bodyguard to a country picnic. And had them both killed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then Mirwais Khan led an army into Kandahar and drove the Persians out of his country. But when Mirwais Khan died after six years of rule, the Persians invaded Afghanistan once again. Another hero arose to push back the foreign invaders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was a native Afghan who had served in the bodyguard of the Persian Shah. He fought against the Persians, pushed them back out of his country, and ruled for 26 years over all the different tribes who lived in Afghanistan. He became known as Durani.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which means pearl. Because his rule was as valuable as a jewel to the people of Afghanistan. But then Durrani died.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the tribes began to quarrel about who should be king next. Finally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One soldier managed to take control of Kabul, the largest, most important city in Afghanistan. His name was Dost Mohammad Khan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At first, Dost Mohammad Khan was Khan, or chief, only in the city of Kabul. But he spent the next ten years fighting to spread his power around the surrounding countryside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finally, the other leaders of Afghanistan agreed to recognize him as their leader. They gave him the title of Amir.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or commander. Because it would be his job to lead the Afghan people in war against their enemies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Adost Muhammad was a skilled warrior and general, a tall, keen-eyed, energetic man who preferred plain soldiers' clothes to fancy court costumes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he soon learned that fighting alone would not protect Afghanistan from invasion. To keep his country independent, Ghost Muhammad would have to scheme and plot. You see.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Afghanistan lay right between Russia and British-run India. Russia and Britain were enemies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Neither country wanted the other to control the country between their two borders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Russia and Britain each tried to convince Dost Muhammad to sign an alliance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Russian and British strategies to get control of Afghanistan became known as the Great Game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The first move in a great game came from Russia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Russian government convinced Persia to join Russia in an invasion of Western Afghanistan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The combined Persian-Russian army could easily overcome the west of the country, and then march on towards Kabul, where Dost Muhammad ruled.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when the British saw this army on the move, they sent a message to the Shah of Persia. The message warned the Persians that if the invasion continued, Persia would be considered an enemy of Britain and would suffer the consequences.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Shah of Persia wasn't particularly afraid of Dost Mohammad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he didn't want to make enemies with the entire British Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the Persian soldiers all withdrew from Afghanistan. Britain had won the first match in the great game. Now the British try to move of their own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They planned to lend a lot of money to Dost Mohammad so that he could use it to hire soldiers to fight against the Persians and the Russians. This would keep the Russians out of Afghanistan. It would also put Dost Mohammad in debt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A loan of money, one British diplomat wrote, would give us a great hold upon him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead of taking the money, Dost Muhammad decided that he too would join in the great game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As long as British soldiers would help him drive out the Indians who still lived in the southern parts of Afghanistan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the British government refused, Dost Muhammad asked the Russians for help instead. At this, the British grew angry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead of helping Dost Muhammad drive the Indians out of Afghanistan, the British sent sepoys, Indian soldiers under British command, and English soldiers from India northward into Afghanistan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dost Muhammad had put his son in control of this fortress, but his son had neglected to wall up all of the fortress's gates. When the Indian British Army discovered that one of the gates was not bricked up, they blew it up


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Captured the fortress, and then stormed on towards the center of Dost Muhammad's kingdom, the city of Kabul.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dost Muhammad wanted to stand and fight, but his soldiers, seeing the overwhelming British force, had begun to desert him. He had to flee into India.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Meanwhile, the Indian British Army occupied the city of Kabul and grew more and more unpopular. They ate food that belonged to Afghans, took whatever they wanted from the markets, and treated the people of Kabul with contempt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finally, the Afghans had had enough. In Kabul, angry Afghans killed a British official before soldiers could arrive to protect him. Then they besieged the army's headquarters. When another British official arrived to settle things down, the rebels killed him as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The British Indian Army decided that it was time to leave Kabul, but now winter had come.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The soldiers marched south towards India in freezing cold, with Afghan fighters following them and attacking from behind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As this tiny remainder approached the border, the rebels made a final attack against them. Only one wounded man escaped. The army that had invaded Afghanistan had been completely destroyed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The British gave up the idea of conquering Afghanistan, but they were angry over the massacre of their army.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Troops of British soldiers marched into Afghanistan, burning, killing, and looting. When they had destroyed dozens of villages and killed hundreds of Afghans, they withdrew. Their revenge was over. Now Dost Mohammad returned from India. His kingdom had shrunk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Persians had taken advantage of the chaos to invade the west.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Other warlords had seized bits of the country for themselves. All Dost Muhammad had left was the city of Kabul.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Twelve years after the disastrous British invasion of Afghanistan, Dost Muhammad signed a treaty with Britain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This treaty promised that he would not attack the British and that the British would stay out of Afghanistan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the Sepoy Mutiny broke out in India, two years after the treaty was signed, Dost Muhammad kept to his part of the treaty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He did not go down into India and join the seaports against the British.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Haddast Muhammad turned against the British.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One British general said later, I do not see how any part of the country north of Bengal could be saved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Meanwhile, Ghost Muhammad kept on expanding his territory. He added Kandahar to his kingdom, and gave it to one of his sons to rule.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finally, Afghanistan was free of invaders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two weeks later, Dost Muhammad died late one night in his own bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When she answered one of my calls right after midnight, she told me we got the apartment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's amazing, Lil. I can't thank you enough. I swear I'll make it up to you. I promise. And then I had a thought. Be spontaneous.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Call an Elias car and get up to Harlem and thank your best friend in person. Yes, that was it. Lil, are you home? I'm coming up to celebrate, okay? I thought she'd be thrilled, but she was quiet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Don't bother, she said quietly. I've got a bottle of SoCo and Tongue Ring Boy is here. I've got everything I want. It stung, but I understood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lily rarely got mad, but when she did, no one could talk her out of it until she was good and ready.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I heard liquid swishing into a glass and ice clinking, and I heard her take a deep, long swig. Okay, but call me if you need anything, okay? Don't worry about me, I'm just fine. Another gulp. I'll talk to you later. And hey, congratulations to us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, congratulations to us. I repeated, but she'd already hung up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'd called Alex on his cell to ask if I could go over to his place, but he didn't sound as delighted to hear from me as I'd hoped.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andy, you know I'd love to see you, but, well, I'm not with Max and the guys. You're never really around during the week anymore, so I made plans to see them tonight. Oh well, I could come meet you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Listen, any other night, that'd be great, but tonight is definitely just a guy's night out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, sure, okay. I was going to meet Lily to celebrate the new apartment, but we, uh, sort of got in a fight. She doesn't understand why I can't really talk from work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, Andy, I have to say sometimes I don't totally understand either. I mean, I know she's a tough lady. It just seems that you take everything pretty seriously when it comes to her, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He sounded like he was trying very hard to keep his tone accommodating and nonconfrontational.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe that's because I do. I shot back at him. Pissed off at him for not wanting to see me and for taking Lily's side. Even though she had a point and so did he. It's my life, you know. My career, my future. What the hell am I supposed to do? Treat it like a joke?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andy, you're twisting my words. You know that's not what I meant. But I was already screaming back. I couldn't help myself. First Lily and now Alex, both on top of Miranda. All day, every day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A big fucking joke, huh? That's what my job is to both of you. Oh Andy, you work in fashion, how hard could it be? I mimicked hating myself more with every passing second.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, excuse me if we can't all be do-gooders or PhD candidates. Excuse me if- Calm me when you calm down. He stated, and he hung up. Hung up! I waited for him to call back, but he never did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andrea, it's Emily. I heard a voice croak from the phone. Can you hear me?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She rasped before breaking into hacking coughs. Really sick. Anything I can do?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I asked, trying to sound casual while I racked my brain thinking of why she'd called me to tell me that she didn't feel well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As far as we were both concerned, it was completely irrelevant. She'd be at work on Monday whether she felt well or not. She coughed deeply and I heard phlegm rattling in her lungs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, yeaah, actually, god, I can't believe this is happening to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What? What's happening? I can't go to Paris with Miranda for the spring shows. I have mono. What?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The doctor called today with the blood results, and as of right now, I'm not allowed to leave my apartment for the next three weeks. Three weeks? She had to be kidding. Em, she's going to kill you. You have to go. Does she know yet? There is a foreboding silence on the other end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, yeaah, she knows. I had my doctor call her, actually, because she didn't really think that having mono really qualified me as sick. So he had to tell her that I could infect her and everyone else, and anyway, her sentence trailed off, and her tone was suggesting of something far, far worse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A deep mucousy cough shook her voice, and I thought for a moment that she might very well die right there on the phone with me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm serious. She said something about the assistance they give her abroad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being idiots and that even you'd be better to have around than them. Oh well, when you put it like that sign me up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're the luckiest fucking person in the world. I've been waiting two years for this trip, and now I can't go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I already called Jeffy to tell him to start calling in clothes for you. Allison will help you out with makeup. Talk to Stefan accessories for bags and shoes and jewelry. You only have a week, so get on it first thing tomorrow, okay? I still don't really believe she expects me to do this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well believe it, because she sure wasn't kidding, since I'm not going to be able to come to the office at all this week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're also going to- What? You're not even going to come into the office?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I am not supposed to leave my apartment for a cup of coffee. Never mind go to work for the day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Miranda understands that, so you'll need to pick up the slack. She understands that. Come on, tell me what she really said. Just give me that small pleasure. After all, my life will be hell for the next few weeks. Emily sighed, and I could feel her eyes roll over the phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I didn't actually talk to her, but my doctor said she kept asking if Mono is a real disease. But when he assured her that it was, she was very understanding. I laughed out loud. I'm sure she was, Em.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sure she was. Don't worry about a thing, okay?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just concentrate on feeling better and I'll take care of everything else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I hung up with Emily and found Lily stretched out on the couch, smoking a cigarette and sipping a clear liquid that was definitely not water.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I thought we weren't allowed to smoke in here, I said flopping down next to her. Not that I care, but that was your rule.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew you wouldn't care, she said, taking a leisurely drag off her cigarette. I'm procrastinating and it helps me concentrate. What do you have to do? I asked, lighting my own cigarette and tossing back the lighter. She was taking 17 credits this semester in an effort to pull up her GPA after the debacle last spring.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I watched as she took another drag and washed it down with a healthy gulp of her non-water beverage. It didn't appear that she was on the right track.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She sighed heavily, meaningfully and let the cigarette hang suspended from the corner of her mouth as she spoke.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It flapped up and down, threatening to fall at any moment, and, combined with her wild unwashed hair and smeared eye makeup, made her look, just for a moment, like a defendant on judge duty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An article for some totally random, esoteric, academic journal that no one will ever read but I still have to write just so I can say I'm published. That's annoying. When's it due? Tomorrow? Lily looked completely unfazed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tomorrow, for real? She shot me a warning look, a quick reminder that I was supposed to be on her team. Yes, tomorrow. It really blows considering that Freudian Boy is the one who's assigned to edit it. No one seems to care that he's a candidate in Psych, not Russian Lit. They're just short copy editors, so he's mine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's no way I'm getting that to him on time. Screw him. Once again, she poured some of the liquid down her throat, making an obvious effort not to taste it and grimaced.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, what happened? Granted, it's been a few months, but last I heard you were taking things slow and he was perfect. Of course, that was before that, that thing you dragged home, but another warning look, this time followed by a glare.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I tried to talk to her about the whole freak boy incident a few dozen times, but she immediately changed the subject. I could tell she was embarrassed. She had acknowledged that he was vile.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But she wouldn't participate in any discussion whatsoever about the excessive drinking that was responsible for the whole episode.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, well, apparently at some point that night I called him from Obar and begged him to come meet me. She said, avoiding eye contact. So, did he come and see you talking to, uh, someone else? I was trying not to push her away even more by being critical of her. No, not quite, she said bitterly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He came all the way from Morningside Heights, only to find me not there. Apparently he called my cell phone, and Kenny answered and wasn't all that nice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kenny. That thing I dragged home, remember? She said it sarcastically, but this time she smiled. Aha! I'm guessing Freudian boy didn't take that well. Not so much. Whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Easy come, easy go, right? She scampered off to the kitchen with her empty glass, and I saw her pour from a half-full bottle of kettle one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mr. Feynman is here to see Ms. Sacks, the doorman announced.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The last and final message was from my mom, and it too sounded strange and ambiguous. Hi honey, it's mom. Listen, no emergency, everything's fine, but it'd be great if you could call me back when you hear this. We'll be up for a while, so anytime is fine, but tonight is definitely better than tomorrow. We both hope you're having a wonderful time, and we'll talk to you later. Love you!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was definitely strange. Both Alex and my mother had called me in Paris, and both had requested that I call them back regardless of what time I got the message. I dialed my mother first.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey, it's me, is everything okay? I was going to call you guys tomorrow, it's just that things have been so hectic. But wait until I tell you about the night I just had. Honey, I don't mean to interrupt you, but something's happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We got a call today from Lenox Hill Hospital and it seems Lily's been in an accident. And although it's quite conceivably the most cliched expression in the English language, my heart stopped for just a moment. What? What are you talking about? What kind of an accident?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She was clearly trying to keep her voice steady and her words rational, following what was sure to have been my dad's suggestion of passing along to me a feeling of calm and control.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't until this point that I noticed my mom was crying also.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andy, I'm putting dad on. He spoke to the doctors most recently. I love you, honey.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hi honey, how are you? My dad's voice sounded deep and reassuring. Dad, will you please tell me what happened? None of this makes any sense. Lily doesn't have a car and she hates to drive. I'd worked myself up to nearly hysterical, but again his voice was commanding and soothing all in one. Take a deep breath, I'll tell you everything I know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The accident happened yesterday, but we just found out about it today. Yesterday? How could this have happened yesterday and no one called me? Sweetie, they did call you. Lily had filled out the front information page in her daily planner and had listed you as her emergency contact, since her grandmother's really not doing all that well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, I guess the hospital called you at home and on your cell, but of course you weren't checking either one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When no one called them back or showed up, they went through a planner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I noticed that we have the same last name as you, and so the hospital called here to see if we knew how to reach you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mom and I couldn't remember where you were staying, so we called Alex for the name of the hotel. Oh my god, it was a day ago! Has she been alone this whole time?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My choking had subsided, but the tears continued to pour down my cheeks in hot angry streaks, and my throat felt as though it had been scraped raw with a pumice stone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Honey, I've spoken to her doctor a half dozen times already, and I have complete confidence that she's getting the best attention.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nothing was making sense anymore. The words were refusing to take on meaning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Honey, try and calm down. Mom and I are doing everything we can to make sure that Lily gets the best help. She's not going to be alone. Oh my god, I have to come home. Dad, I have to come home! She doesn't have anybody but me. And I'm across the Atlantic. Oh, but that fucking party is the night after tomorrow and she'll definitely fire me if I'm not there.