{"rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.", "text": "The sun was setting behind the hills."}

{"rule":"Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.","text":"The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like a very expensive accident."}

{"rule":"Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.","text":"The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like a very expensive accident nobody had insurance for. In the orchard, each bruised apple briefly shone."}

{"rule":"Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.","text":"The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like a very expensive accident nobody had insurance for, including the hills. In the orchard, each bruised apple briefly shone as if the damage were where the light got in, which was bad fruit science but a good time to be an apple."}

{"rule":"Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.","text":"The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident whose claim had been denied because the valley was already a depression. The hills declined to comment, being geological. In the orchard, light pooled in the bruises of the apples. For a moment, each looked worth saving. This was bad fruit science and worse inventory management, but the apples, who had never been consulted about their value, glowed."}

{"rule":"Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.","text":"The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment, being geological and therefore under considerable pressure. In the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, tendering its resignation as light and applying for work as mercy. This is not how photons work. For a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up. No one came to pick them up. A worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. The apples, never consulted about their value, held the light until there was no light left to hold."}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. Their silence was rock solid. In the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, tendering its resignation as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. This is not how photons work, but nobody in the orchard had work. For a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up. No one came. One still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. A worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. The apples, never consulted about their value, held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. They were good at holding things. It was their core competency."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. Their silence was rock solid, although one had a slide prepared. In the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Photons do not need jobs. This made them difficult to organize. For a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up. No one came. One still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. Now the soft spot fit a larger hand. A worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple. By the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Eventually those went too. The apples, never consulted about their value, held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. They were good at holding things. It was their core competency. By morning, several would be softer than anything that had touched them."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. Their silence was rock solid, although one had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. In the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Photons do not need jobs. This made them difficult to organize, despite their demonstrated capacity to strike. For a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up. No one came. The gate stood open, which was not the same as an invitation but had fewer moving parts. One apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The thumb was elsewhere, pressing something else. A worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. By the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error. The apples, never consulted about their value, held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. They were good at holding things. It was their core competency. By morning, several would be softer than anything that had touched them. A stem would come away in someone's fingers, if anyone came."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. Their silence was rock solid, although one had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. In the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. Human Resources had a point, and kept making it. For a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up. No one came. The gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. This was a tension the gate was unable to unpack. One apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The thumb was elsewhere, pressing something else. Possibly a space bar. There was plenty of space here already. A worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. It was, by all accounts, a rotten manager. By the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour. On the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. There were no other signs of investment. The apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. By morning, several would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel and lift one, leaving a little circle of flattened grass. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. It would take so little."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. Their silence was rock solid, although one had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. Attendance was mandatory. In the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. The ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. This was not considered a transferable skill. For a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up. No one came. The gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The cloth had faded everywhere except inside the knot. There, it was still the summer someone had opened the gate. This was a tension the gate was unable to unpack. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. One apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The thumb was elsewhere, pressing something else. Possibly a space bar. There was plenty of space here already. A worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. It was, by all accounts, a rotten manager. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. By the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour. On the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. There were no other signs of investment. Below the word, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. By morning, several would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel and lift one, leaving a little circle of flattened grass. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. It would take so little."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. The ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Now the grass grew through the missing rung. Human Resources called this succession planning.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The cloth had faded everywhere except inside the knot. There, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open. This was a tension the gate was unable to unpack. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. On the branch above it, the stem's small socket had dried shut. The thumb was elsewhere, pressing something else. Possibly a space bar. There was plenty of space here already. Please press any key to continue waiting.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. This made it approachable from several directions and structurally unqualified for management. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. There were no other signs of investment. Below the word, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. Someone had left it that way rather than strike again.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The orchard had suffered enough, but the narrator had tenure.\n\nBy morning, several would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel and lift one, leaving a little circle of flattened grass. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. Their other hand might come underneath."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Minutes were taken in centuries, which did not make them better minutes.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. The ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Now grass grew through the missing rung, tall enough to bend against the next. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open. This was a tension the gate was unable to unpack. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. Above it, the empty stem socket had dried shut. The thumb was elsewhere, pressing something else. Possibly a space bar. There was plenty of space here already. Please press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was. Outside, a blackbird landed on the grass. The worm ceased to be available for comment.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour. The leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. There were no other signs of investment. Below the word, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it. Someone had pulled free and left the nail as it was.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The orchard had suffered enough, but the narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover. An apple fell. That was the joke. It struck another apple first.\n\nBy morning, several would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel beside the crate and lift one, leaving a little circle of flattened grass. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided.\n\nTheir other hand might come underneath."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Minutes were taken in centuries. Matters arising included the hills.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. The ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Now grass grew through the missing rung and bent against the next. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left. None led to an opening.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open. The gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. It had been unhinged before. It was working on itself, mostly in the wind.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest. The thumb was elsewhere, pressing something else. Possibly a space bar. There was plenty of space here already. Please press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was. Outside, a blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour. The leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. Below the word, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it. Whoever had pulled free had needed the sleeve more than they needed it whole.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The orchard had suffered enough, but the narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover. An apple fell. That was the joke. It struck another apple first. Neither had requested feedback.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel beside the crate, crushing the wet grass through their trousers, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided.\n\nTheir other hand might come underneath."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Minutes were taken in centuries. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. The ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Now grass grew through the missing rung and bent against the next. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left. None led to an opening. An opening was what had happened to the fourth.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open. The gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. It had been unhinged before. It was working on itself, mostly in the wind. The post was supporting it. The post had no qualifications beyond being there, which had so far proved sufficient.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest. The thumb was elsewhere, pressing something else. Possibly a space bar. There was plenty of space here already. Please press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. There was no music, unless the wasp counted. The wasp counted on nothing and was therefore better prepared.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was. Outside, a blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm. The blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. There was a practical side to attention.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour. The leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience. Asked to account for itself, it became wet.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. Below the word, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it. Whoever had pulled free had needed the sleeve more than they needed it whole.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The orchard had suffered enough, but the narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover. An apple fell. That was the joke. It struck another apple first. Neither had requested feedback. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then even that stopped being news.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the stem in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. They might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided.\n\nTheir other hand might come underneath."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Minutes were taken in centuries. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. The ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached it without climbing. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left. None led to an opening. An opening was what had happened to the fourth.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open. The gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. The post was supporting it. The post had no qualifications beyond being there. Below ground, it was beginning to lose those.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest. The thumb was elsewhere, pressing something else. Possibly a space bar. There was plenty of space here already. Please press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. There was no music, unless the wasp counted. The wasp counted on nothing and was therefore better prepared. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was. Outside, a blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm. The blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. There was a practical side to attention. The vacancy was filled with air.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour. The leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates. Below the word, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it. They were stretched toward the gate. Whoever had pulled free had needed the sleeve more than they needed it whole.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The orchard had suffered enough, but the narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover. An apple fell. That was the joke. It struck another apple first. Neither had requested feedback. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then even that stopped being news.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the stem in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. They might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided.\n\nTheir other hand might come underneath."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Minutes were taken in centuries. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. There would be a brief recess where the school had been.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. The ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left. None led to an opening. An opening was what had happened to the fourth. The vacancy would not be filled this quarter.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open. The gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. The post was supporting it. The post had no qualifications beyond being there. Below ground, it was beginning to lose those. At ground level it still looked appointed.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest. The thumb was elsewhere, pressing something else. Possibly a space bar. There was plenty of space here already. Please press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. There was no music, unless the wasp counted. The wasp counted on nothing and was therefore better prepared. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank from the place where someone had almost chosen.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was. It was thinking outside the pips. Outside, a blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm. The blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. There was a practical side to attention. The vacancy was filled with air. No handover was required.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour. The leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates. Below the word, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it. They pointed toward the gate even when the wind did not. On the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The orchard had suffered enough, but the narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover. An apple fell. That was the joke. It struck another apple first. Neither had requested feedback. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then even that stopped being news.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the stem in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. They might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided.\n\nTheir other hand might come underneath."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Minutes were taken in centuries. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. There would be a brief recess where the school had been. The recess would have no children in it. This improved the acoustics.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. The ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left. None led to an opening. An opening was what had happened to the fourth. The vacancy would not be filled this quarter. Applicants should be comfortable with a fast-paced descent.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in. By forever, terms might vary.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open. The gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. The post was supporting it. The post had no qualifications beyond being there. Below ground, it was beginning to lose those. At ground level it still looked appointed. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side of the post and settled back. Nothing above it seemed to have moved.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest. The thumb was elsewhere, pressing something else. Possibly a space bar. There was plenty of space here already. Please press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. There was no music, unless the wasp counted. The wasp counted on nothing and was therefore better prepared. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank from the place where someone had almost chosen. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was. It was thinking outside the pips. Its quarterly results were outstanding in its field, except that it had no legs and this was an orchard. The narrator regretted the discrepancy but retained the sentence for its nutritional value.\n\nOutside, a blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm. The blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. There was a practical side to attention. The vacancy was filled with air. No handover was required. The bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into the hollow it had made.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour. The leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence. By morning its veins would be pressed into the mud, where nobody needed proof of a leaf.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates. There were no prophets in apples. That one required the wrong spelling and was approved anyway.\n\nBelow the word, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it. They pointed toward the gate even when the wind did not. On the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The orchard had suffered enough, but the narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover. An apple fell. That was the joke. It struck another apple first. Neither had requested feedback. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then even that stopped being news. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the stem in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. It would fall through a slat. They might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided.\n\nTheir other hand might come underneath."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Minutes were taken in centuries. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. There would be a brief recess where the school had been. The recess would have no children in it. This improved the acoustics. Nobody said anything to demonstrate.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. The ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left. None led to an opening. An opening was what had happened to the fourth. Applicants should be comfortable with a fast-paced descent. References would be contacted on impact.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in. By forever, terms might vary. A doorstep remained. Rain darkened it to the shape of a doorstep in rain.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open. The gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. The post was supporting it. The post had no qualifications beyond being there. Below ground, it was beginning to lose those. At ground level it still looked appointed. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side of the post and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest. The thumb was elsewhere, if elsewhere was the word. Please press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. There was no music, unless the wasp counted. The wasp counted on nothing and was therefore better prepared. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank from the place where someone had almost chosen. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was. It was thinking outside the pips. It brought a lot to the table, principally itself. The table was hypothetical. The appetite was not.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm. The blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. There was a practical side to attention. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not. The vacancy was filled with air. No handover was required. The bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into the hollow it had made.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour. The leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence. By morning its veins would be pressed into the mud, where nobody needed proof of a leaf.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates. There were no prophets in apples. That one required the wrong spelling and was approved anyway. The remaining O was a little square, as though the writer had started carefully and then remembered the work.\n\nBelow the word, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it. They pointed toward the gate even when the wind did not. On the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was the orchard, very small and complete until the cloth turned.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The orchard had suffered enough, but the narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover. An apple fell. That was the joke. It struck another apple first. Neither had requested feedback. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then even that stopped being news. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the stem in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. It would fall through a slat. They might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided.\n\nTheir other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village. The village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. There would be a brief recess where the school had been. No children would be permitted in the recess, or possible. The minutes recorded a period of silence. It was longer than a minute. The minutes rounded down.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects. The ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left. Applicants should be comfortable with a fast-paced descent. References would be contacted on impact. The grass had already provided a reference. It was long and green and concerned nobody.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in. A doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Now the weather was getting that part too.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. The post was supporting it. The post had no qualifications beyond being there. Below ground, it was beginning to lose those. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side of the post and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount. This was personal growth if you were the gate and structural failure if you were anyone else. There was no one else immediately available.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest. The thumb was elsewhere, if elsewhere was the word.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. The wasp counted on nothing and was therefore better prepared. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank from the place where someone had almost chosen. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was. It was thinking outside the pips. It had seed funding. It was disrupting the apple from the inside. The apple had not known it was an industry until the industry began to hurt.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm. The blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not. The vacancy was filled with air. No handover was required. The bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into the hollow it had made. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It had no statement to make. It was just bent.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour. The leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence. By morning its veins would be pressed into the mud, where nobody needed proof of a leaf.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates. There were no prophets in apples. That one required the wrong spelling and was approved anyway. An appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel, which made the situation worse without changing it.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it. They pointed toward the gate even when the wind did not.\n\nOn the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was the orchard, very small and complete until the cloth turned.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The orchard had suffered enough, but the narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThat was the joke.\n\nIt struck another apple first. Neither had requested feedback. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone. The narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nNothing had been repaired. The thread was simply carrying less.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them. Someone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the stem in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. It would fall through a slat. They might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided.\n\nTheir other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. There would be a brief recess where the school had been. The minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left. References would be contacted on impact.\n\nThe grass had already provided a reference. It was long and green and concerned nobody.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in. A doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Now the weather was getting that part too.\n\nA screw stood in the wood beside the door's absence. It had held the number. Without the number, the address was approximate. Without the house, considerably more so. Delivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. It had baggage, although technically that was a latch.\n\nThe post was supporting it. The post had no qualifications beyond being there. Below ground, it was beginning to lose those. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThis was personal growth if you were the gate and structural failure if you were anyone else. There was no one else immediately available. The post had applied for a post elsewhere, but the position required relocation and relocation required a spade.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest. The thumb was elsewhere, if elsewhere was the word.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. The wasp counted on nothing and was therefore better prepared. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank from the place where someone had almost chosen. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It was thinking outside the pips. Its five-year plan was ambitious for something with neither a calendar nor much prospect of Thursday. The apple had not known it was an industry until the industry began to hurt.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not. The vacancy was filled with air. No handover was required.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into the hollow it had made. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence. By morning its veins would be pressed into the mud, where nobody needed proof of a leaf.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates. There were no prophets in apples. That one required the wrong spelling and was approved anyway.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, the narrator described the orchard as a place of pome worship.\n\nThe rain continued without endorsement.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it. They pointed toward the gate even when the wind did not.\n\nOn the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was the orchard, very small and complete until the cloth turned.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThat was the joke.\n\nIt struck another apple first. Neither had requested feedback. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nNothing had been repaired. The thread was simply carrying less.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the stem in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. It would fall through a slat.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nIt was still possible to put the apple down."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. There would be a brief recess where the school had been. The minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left.\n\nThe grass had already provided a reference. It was long and green and concerned nobody.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in. A doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Now the weather was getting that part too.\n\nA screw stood in the wood beside the door's absence. It had held the number. Without the number, the address was approximate. Without the house, considerably more so. Delivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. It had baggage, although technically that was a latch. It wanted closure. It had just said it wanted a stable, but now it wanted closure. Dating was hard at its age and width.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThis was personal growth if you were the gate and structural failure if you were anyone else. There was no one else immediately available.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest. The thumb was elsewhere, if elsewhere was the word.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. The wasp counted on nothing and was therefore better prepared. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank from the place where someone had almost chosen. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It was thinking outside the pips. Its business was disrupting the fruit sector, specifically this fruit, in sectors. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nThe apple had not known it was an industry until the industry began to hurt.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into the hollow it had made. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates. There were no prophets in apples. That one required the wrong spelling and was approved anyway.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, the narrator described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nThe rain continued without endorsement.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it. They pointed toward the gate even when the wind did not.\n\nOn the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was the orchard, very small and complete until the cloth turned.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThat was the joke.\n\nIt struck another apple first. Neither had requested feedback. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nNothing had been repaired. The thread was simply carrying less.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the stem in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. It would fall through a slat.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands.\n\nIt was still possible to put the apple down."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. There would be a brief recess where the school had been. The minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung out of an upstairs window and lay against the earth. There was no downstairs window to compare it with. A pattern of yellow cups repeated along the curtain. All their handles were intact.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left.\n\nThe grass had already provided a reference. It was long and green and concerned nobody.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in. A doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Now the weather was getting that part too.\n\nA screw stood in the wood beside the door's absence. It had held the number. Without the number, the address was approximate. Without the house, considerably more so. Delivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. It wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Dating was hard at its age and width.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThis was personal growth if you were the gate and structural failure if you were anyone else. There was no one else immediately available.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest. The thumb was elsewhere, if elsewhere was the word.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. The wasp counted on nothing and was therefore better prepared. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank from the place where someone had almost chosen. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It was thinking outside the pips. Its business was disrupting the fruit sector, specifically this fruit, in sectors. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nThe apple had not known it was an industry until the industry began to hurt.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into the hollow it had made. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates. There were no prophets in apples. That one required the wrong spelling and was approved anyway.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, the narrator described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nAttendance had fallen off a tree.\n\nThe rain continued without endorsement.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There was no need to make them prove anything else.\n\nOn the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was the orchard, very small and complete until the cloth turned.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThat was the joke.\n\nIt struck another apple first. Neither had requested feedback. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nNothing had been repaired. The thread was simply carrying less.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the stem in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. It would fall through a slat.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThey could also never arrive. Morning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands.\n\nIt was still possible to put the apple down."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. There would be a brief recess where the school had been. The minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung out of an upstairs window and lay against the earth. A pattern of yellow cups repeated along it. At the hem, one cup had filled with mud. The others were upside down.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left.\n\nIts career had plateaued at an angle.\n\nThe grass had provided a reference. It was long and green and concerned nobody.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in. A doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges.\n\nA screw stood in the wood beside the door's absence. It had held the number. A little white paint remained under its head, sheltered by something that was no longer there.\n\nWithout the number, the address was approximate. Without the house, considerably more so. Delivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. In summer someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, summer was still blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. It wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Dating was hard at its age and width.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThis was personal growth if you were the gate and structural failure if you were anyone else. There was no one else immediately available.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. The wasp counted on nothing and was therefore better prepared. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It was thinking outside the pips. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nThe apple had not known it was an industry until the industry began to hurt.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into the hollow it had made. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down before it could escape.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. It continued to exist at considerable administrative inconvenience. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, the narrator described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nAttendance had fallen off a tree.\n\nThe rain continued without endorsement.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it.\n\nOn the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was the orchard, very small and complete until the cloth turned.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThat was the joke.\n\nIt struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nNothing had been repaired. The thread was simply carrying less.\n\nBy morning, several apples would be softer than anything that had touched them.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift one. The stem would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the stem in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. It would fall through a slat.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nThey could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry.\n\nIt was still possible to put the apple down."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. There would be a brief recess where the school had been. The minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. At the window, one curtain ring had opened but not let go.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. Photons do not need jobs, but these had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go. Human Resources called this succession planning. The ladder was taking steps to address it. It had three left.\n\nIts career had plateaued at an angle.\n\nThe grass had provided a reference. It was long and green and concerned nobody.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nWithout the number, the address was approximate. Without the house, considerably more so. Delivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, the cloth was a darker blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate was unable to unpack this. It was a gate, not a therapist. Its boundaries were terrible. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses. It wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Dating was hard at its age and width.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThis was personal growth if you were the gate and structural failure if you were anyone else. There was no one else immediately available.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nThe apple had not known it was an industry until the industry began to hurt.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down before it could escape.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate, where it could no longer be counted. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, the narrator described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nAttendance had fallen off a tree.\n\nThe rain continued without endorsement.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nOn the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThat was the joke.\n\nIt struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nNothing had been repaired. The thread was simply carrying less.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put it in the crate, though there was no reason to save it. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had already arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nThey could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nIt was still possible to put the apple down."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. The minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. At the window, one curtain ring had opened but not let go.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIts career had plateaued at an angle.\n\nThe grass had provided a reference. It was long and green and concerned nobody.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth; now the knot was tighter than the cloth was strong. The loose end lifted in the wind. The knot did not. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, the cloth was a darker blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nThe apple had not known it was an industry until the industry began to hurt.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down before it could escape.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nAttendance had fallen off a tree.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nOn the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThat was the joke.\n\nIt struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nNothing had been repaired. The thread was simply carrying less.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had already arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nThey could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. The minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. At the window, one curtain ring had opened but not let go.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience. The ring had no means of correcting the record.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. Grass reached through the place where a foot should go.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIts career had plateaued at an angle.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nThe narrator had been asked to stop at three.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, the cloth was a darker blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nThe apple had not known it was an industry until the industry began to hurt.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down before it could escape.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nAttendance had fallen off a tree.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nOn the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThat was the joke.\n\nIt struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split in the wood had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had already arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThey could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. The minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. At the window, one curtain ring had opened but not let go. The fabric beneath it was stretched enough to separate the threads. Between two cups there was room for another cup, if anyone had wanted to print one there.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. It was referred to the appeals department, which was downstairs.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons had dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nAn objection was therefore redundant.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale on the inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIts career had plateaued at an angle.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nThe narrator had been asked to stop at three. It counted the missing rung as a vacancy.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, the cloth was a darker blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nNeither was ready to discuss boundaries.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nThe apple had not known it was an industry until the industry began to hurt.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down before it could escape. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThe bird left without reading either.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nAttendance had fallen off a tree.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It put a line through the word. The line ended at the f.\n\nOn the cloth tied there, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThat was the joke.\n\nIt struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split in the wood had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief. That seemed to cover it. The next drop began.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had already arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. This was careless: the curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen. There was no sentence available that would put it back without saying so.\n\nThey could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it. The minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart, leaving small clear spaces where there had been cloth.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected. This was also an object.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale on the inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIts career had plateaued at an angle.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nThe narrator had been asked to stop at three. It counted the missing rung as a vacancy.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, the cloth was a darker blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nNeither was ready to discuss boundaries.\n\nThe narrator was ready. It had a whole fence of reference.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down before it could escape. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThe bird left without reading either.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nAttendance had fallen off a tree.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It put a line through the word. The line ended at the f.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nThe apples held the light until there was no light left to hold. Then they held the cold. It was their core competency. Nobody was going to let that one go. The narrator had tenure and a second joke about turnover.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThat was the joke.\n\nIt struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split in the wood had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief. That seemed to cover it. The next drop began.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had already arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. This was careless: the curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen. There was no sentence available that would put it back without saying so.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall; through another, where the wall had ended, nothing close enough to name.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, the cloth was a darker blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator described this as a positive development. It had not been standing where the gate would fall.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe remaining O was a little square. The pencil had gone over one side twice. Below it, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It put a line through the word. The line ended at the f.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split in the wood had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief. That seemed to cover it. The next drop began.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had already arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. This was careless: the curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen. There was no sentence available that would put it back without saying so.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall; through another, where the wall had ended, nothing close enough to name.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, the cloth was a darker blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator described this as a positive development. It had not been standing where the gate would fall.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail for a moment.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It put a line through the word. The line ended at the f.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split in the wood had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief. That seemed to cover it. The next drop began.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had already arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. This was careless: the curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen. There was no sentence available that would put it back without saying so.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThe successful candidate would be a self-starter. Assistance with starting would not be provided.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall; through another, where the wall had ended, nothing close enough to name.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, the cloth was a darker blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator described this as a positive development. It had not been standing where the gate would fall.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a fourth joke after it had gone. There was nobody to stop it, which it took for demand.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail for a moment.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It put a line through the word. The line ended at the f.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split in the wood had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief. That seemed to cover it. The next drop began.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThe narrator called this a pip in the career ladder.\n\nIt had to go back three paragraphs to make that possible. The ladder was still broken when it got there.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had already arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. This was careless: the curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen. There was no sentence available that would put it back without saying so.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThe successful candidate would be a self-starter. Assistance with starting would not be provided.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder had been overlooked for elevation.\n\nThen that its prospects were looking up.\n\nThen that it suffered from a lack of support at board level.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, the cloth was a darker blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe post supported it. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator described this as a positive development. It had not been standing where the gate would fall.\n\nIt suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nThe worm believed in organic growth. It was committed to taking things one bite at a time, although this was also the entire available business model.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe blackbird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added nest practices.\n\nThere was nobody to stop it, which it took for demand.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail for a moment.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It put a line through the word. The line ended at the f.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split in the wood had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief. That seemed to cover it. The next drop began.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThe narrator called this a pip in the career ladder.\n\nIt went back to the ladder to make that possible. The ladder was still broken.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had already arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen. There was no sentence available that would put it back without saying so.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThe successful candidate would be a self-starter. Assistance with starting would not be provided.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nIt could not decide whether to mention the view. From the upstairs window there was more of one now.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nIt did not look up to fit it here.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder had been overlooked for elevation. That its prospects were looking up. That it suffered from a lack of support at board level.\n\nThat it needed a stepfather.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside it, where rain and sunlight had not reached, the cloth was a darker blue. To see it you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator called this a boundary issue, then a latchment disorder. It wrote both down in case the first was insufficiently bad.\n\nThe post supported the gate. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added nest practices.\n\nThere was nobody to stop it, which it took for demand.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail for a moment.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It put a line through the word. The line ended at the f.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, the threads moved less. A drop gathered at the lowest one and held there, getting heavier. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split in the wood had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief. That seemed to cover it. The next drop began.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThe narrator called this a pip in the career ladder.\n\nIt went back to the ladder to make that possible. The ladder was still broken.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it briefly considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had already arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThe successful candidate would be a self-starter. Assistance with starting would not be provided.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nIt could not decide whether to mention the view. From the upstairs window there was more of one now.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nIt did not look up to fit it here.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder had been overlooked for elevation. That its prospects were looking up. That it suffered from a lack of support at board level.\n\nThat it needed a stepfather.\n\nThis last observation required a paragraph of its own and received one.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder.\n\nTreatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nThe post supported the gate. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added nest practices.\n\nThere was nobody to stop it, which it took for demand.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThe narrator called this a pip in the career ladder.\n\nIt went back to the ladder to make that possible. The ladder was still broken.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThe successful candidate would be a self-starter. Assistance with starting would not be provided.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nIt could not decide whether to mention the view. From the upstairs window there was more of one now.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat without looking up.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting. The hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf. Human Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder had been overlooked for elevation. That its prospects were looking up. That it suffered from a lack of support at board level.\n\nThat it needed a stepfather.\n\nThis last observation required a paragraph of its own and received one.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written. Its pale edge lifted away from the metal.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder.\n\nTreatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nThe post supported the gate. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added nest practices.\n\nThere was nobody to stop it, which it took for demand.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt wrote a material connection.\n\nThis was both less and more than it knew.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, several apples would have split. Rain would stand in the splits. One would still be attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig would come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThe narrator called this a pip in the career ladder.\n\nIt went back to the ladder to make that possible. The ladder was still broken.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThe successful candidate would be a self-starter. Assistance with starting would not be provided.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nIt could not decide whether to mention the view. From the upstairs window there was more of one now.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat without looking up.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud had filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe loss adjuster would adjust the loss. Until then it was the wrong size.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level. The photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder had been overlooked for elevation. That its prospects were looking up. That it suffered from a lack of support at board level.\n\nThat it needed a stepfather.\n\nThis last observation required a paragraph of its own and received one.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written. Its pale edge lifted away from the metal.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself. It had interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nThe post supported the gate. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nPlease press any key to continue waiting. Your waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face. There was still that much to do.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. The worm preferred to promote from within. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. It had hired a consultant to identify its core values. The consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nTheir projections were rosy. The rose was a separate client.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added nest practices.\n\nThen avian resources.\n\nThen a worm and conditions apply.\n\nThere was nobody to stop it, which it took for demand.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again. The wind had corrected an accounting error and would be billing for the full hour.\n\nThe leaf lodged under the crate. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship. The congregation was deeply cider-seated in its beliefs.\n\nThis was the parish of the thought.\n\nThe narrator crossed that out, leaving it legible. It then wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt wrote a material connection.\n\nThis was both less and more than it knew.\n\nIt considered pulling a thread free and laying it beside the cloth. Then it would know whether they matched. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, several apples might have split. Rain would stand in any splits turned upward. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate, feeling the wet come through one knee and then the other, and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThe narrator called this a pip in the career ladder.\n\nIt went back to the ladder to make that possible. The ladder was still broken.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nThe narrator could allow this.\n\nInstead, it considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThe successful candidate would be a self-starter. Assistance with starting would not be provided.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nIt could not decide whether to mention the view. From the upstairs window there was more of one now.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat without looking up.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last three letters went onto the table."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder lacked support at board level.\n\nThat it needed a stepfather.\n\nThis last observation required a paragraph of its own and received one.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written. Its pale edge lifted away from the metal.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nIt wrote a third attempt phonetically.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself and interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nThe post supported the gate. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote that down. Below it, in smaller letters, it wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added nest practices.\n\nThen avian resources.\n\nThen a worm and conditions apply.\n\nThere was nobody to stop it, which it took for demand.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship.\n\nIt wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then it would know whether they matched. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It felt entitled to a little credit.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThe successful candidate would be a self-starter. Assistance with starting would not be provided.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nIt could not decide whether to mention the view. From the upstairs window there was more of one now.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat without looking up.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last three letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder lacked support at board level.\n\nThat it needed a stepfather.\n\nThis last observation required a paragraph of its own and received one.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written. Its pale edge lifted away from the metal.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nIt wrote a pronunciation guide. The guide needed assistance.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed on the thread through both versions.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself and interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nThe post supported the gate. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nIt was referred to a specialist in post-traumatic stress.\n\nThe narrator looked at the house.\n\nIt retained the joke but removed the hyphen, which it considered a meaningful intervention.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe merger had gone through.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added nest practices.\n\nThen avian resources.\n\nThen a worm and conditions apply.\n\nThere was nobody to stop it, which it took for demand.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it described the orchard as a place of pome worship.\n\nIt wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then it would know whether they matched. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It felt entitled to a little credit.\n\nIt awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nThe narrator considered calling this an impact statement. During the consideration, something small began feeding.\n\nIt could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThe successful candidate would be a self-starter. Assistance with starting would not be provided.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nIt could not decide whether to mention the view. From the upstairs window there was more of one now.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat without looking up.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last three letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back.\n\nThe letters almost joined. It moved the sheet a little to the left. The b disappeared beneath the torn edge, so it moved the sheet back to the right.\n\nIt could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner.\n\nThe narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather.\n\nThis observation required a paragraph of its own and received one.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written. Its pale edge lifted away from the metal.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself and interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nThe post supported the gate. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added nest practices.\n\nThen avian resources.\n\nThen a worm and conditions apply.\n\nThere was nobody to stop it, which it took for demand.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It felt entitled to a little credit.\n\nIt awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nDuring the preparation of an impact statement, something small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nIt could not decide whether to mention the view. From the upstairs window there was more of one now.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat without looking up.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back.\n\nThe letters almost joined. It moved the sheet a little to the left, then back to the right. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner.\n\nThe narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather.\n\nThen that it had been raised badly.\n\nThen that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written. Its pale edge lifted away from the metal.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself and interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nThen it wrote gatekeeping.\n\nThis was technically its job.\n\nThe post supported the gate. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added nest practices.\n\nThen avian resources.\n\nThen a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nDuring the preparation of an impact statement, something small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nIt could not decide whether to mention the view. From the upstairs window there was more of one now.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled. At the window, the open ring turned a little farther through the cloth. One yellow handle folded out of sight.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat without looking up.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back.\n\nThe letters almost joined. It moved the sheet a little to the left, then back to the right. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner.\n\nThe narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather.\n\nThen that it had been raised badly.\n\nThen that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written. Its pale edge lifted away from the metal.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself and interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nThen it wrote gatekeeping.\n\nThis was technically its job.\n\nThe post supported the gate. Below ground, the wood had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added nest practices.\n\nThen avian resources.\n\nThen a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nDuring the preparation of an impact statement, something small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. The gate moved as far as the cloth allowed. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nThis was a ground-floor opportunity.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nWhen it came back, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One yellow handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat without looking up.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back.\n\nThe letters almost joined. It moved the sheet a little to the left, then back to the right. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner.\n\nThe narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was taking steps to address this. It had three left.\n\nIt was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe wood in the screw dried while these were being written. Its pale edge lifted away from the metal.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself and interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nThen it wrote gatekeeping.\n\nThis was technically its job.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nThere was no music, unless the wasp counted. It settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nA worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin, where no margin had previously been necessary.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. For a little while, the grass moved where they had settled. Then it stopped. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nDuring the preparation of an impact statement, something small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThe second word needed explaining. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nOutside, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One yellow handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat without looking up.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back.\n\nThe letters almost joined. It moved the sheet a little to the left, then back to the right. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner.\n\nThe narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe pale edge of the curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself and interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had taken the second O. God had apparently entered the fruit business. A sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the remaining O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. The grass moved where they settled. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nDuring the preparation of an impact statement, something small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nOutside, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One yellow handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat. Its hand was still wet. A little ink came away on the heel of its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back.\n\nThe letters almost joined. It moved the sheet a little to the left, then back to the right. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner.\n\nThe narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe pale edge of the curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself and interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nIt paused to admire the distance it had travelled for that.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. The grass moved where they settled. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nDuring the preparation of an impact statement, something small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nIt added an appendix to the appendix: kneither here nor there.\n\nThe person was still there.\n\nOutside, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One yellow handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat. Its hand was still wet. A little ink came away on the heel of its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back.\n\nThe letters almost joined. It moved the sheet a little to the left, then back to the right. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner.\n\nThe narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath.\n\nIt could still read them through the water, a little larger than before."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe pale edge of the curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nIt had been told to work on itself and interpreted this as creosote.\n\nNow it was emotionally unavailable in a weatherproof finish.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. The grass moved where they settled. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nDuring the preparation of an impact statement, something small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nIt added an appendix to the appendix: kneither here nor there.\n\nThe person was still there.\n\nOutside, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One yellow handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat. Its hand was still wet. A little ink came away on the heel of its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back.\n\nThe letters almost joined. It moved the sheet a little to the left, then back to the right. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner.\n\nThe narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath.\n\nIt could still read them through the water, a little larger than before.\n\nIt wrote improved visibility.\n\nThe glass had to remain exactly there for this to be true.\n\nThe narrator bent until its eye was level with the table. Between the bottom of the glass and the paper was a bead of water. A black thread of ink reached into it from the hand.\n\nIt fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nThe narrator stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nThe person still had one knee on the stone. Their hand had reached the table beside the narrator's wrist.\n\nIt could have written that they touched.\n\nIt moved its wrist to make room."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a little blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nIt hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe pale edge of the curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, a little soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass, released from beneath it, stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was a patch of grass. When the cloth turned, there was the sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. The grass moved where they settled. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nDuring the preparation of an impact statement, something small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nIt added an appendix to the appendix: kneither here nor there.\n\nThe person was still there.\n\nOutside, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One yellow handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat. Its hand was still wet. A little ink came away on the heel of its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back.\n\nThe letters almost joined. It moved the sheet a little to the left, then back to the right. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner.\n\nThe narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath.\n\nIt could still read them through the water, a little larger than before.\n\nIt wrote improved visibility.\n\nThe glass had to remain exactly there for this to be true.\n\nThe narrator bent until its eye was level with the table. Between the bottom of the glass and the paper was a bead of water. A black thread of ink reached into it from the hand.\n\nIt fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nThe narrator stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nThe person still had one knee on the stone. Their hand had reached the table beside the narrator's wrist.\n\nIt could have written that they touched.\n\nIt moved its wrist to make room.\n\nThe pen moved with it. There was no room on that side either.\n\nThe narrator turned the page sideways. The person lay down, according to the margin. According to the stone, they were kneeling.\n\nIt wrote lateral support.\n\nThen prone to improvement.\n\nThen, in smaller letters, stationery care.\n\nThe glass began to slide.\n\nIt caught the glass with one hand and the paper with the other. A little more of the hand came away. It could no longer tell whether the dark line on the cloth was a finger or the space between two fingers.\n\nIt put the glass on the bare table.\n\nThe paper lifted with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment after they had stopped holding it. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves and stood in two attempts.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThere was a pale seed on the side of one finger. They rubbed it with their thumb. It moved to the thumb. They wiped it on their trousers, below the wet patch.\n\nThe narrator wrote a seed of hope.\n\nThen stood corrected.\n\nThen getting a leg up on the situation.\n\nThe person tested their weight on the leg. Across the orchard, the gate pulled against its strip of cloth. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nIt could still have given them a name. It had several left. It could have put someone beyond the trees who would call one out.\n\nInstead it wrote that they walked out of the woodwork.\n\nThere were no woods. It left the sentence.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator held it by two buttonholes and tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nIt tried the other way.\n\nThat hid the hand but left the black showing through.\n\nIt put the cloth down beside the glass. Under the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nOutside, the apple lay where the person had put it. Its split side faced upward. Nothing prevented the rain from getting in.\n\nThe narrator wrote open to the elements.\n\nThen core exposure.\n\nThen pome and dry.\n\nIt drew a line through the last one. This time it waited for the paper to dry first."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Attendance was geological. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nThe ladder had once held someone who knew where to put their feet. Above the missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy. It hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. It had held the number. White paint remained under its head.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable. Shared interests: standing outside, horses.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. There were opportunities for growth within the apple, though advancement meant leaving. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe bird wiped its beak on the grass, first one side, then the other. The apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass released from beneath it stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThen beak performance.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nThe leaf lodged underneath. Asked to account for itself, it became wet. This was accepted as supporting documentation. The crate rested on it, which made it load-bearing evidence.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, which was almost square, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. The grass moved where they settled. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nDuring the preparation of an impact statement, something small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. The twig might come away between finger and thumb. They might put the twig in the crate. One leaf would catch across a slat. The other would hang below.\n\nThey might turn the apple to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit.\n\nA deposit could be returned.\n\nThis was sufficiently promising that it spent some time looking for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome. It would reach the yellow cups on the curtain, the screw, the small square O. The gate's shadow would shorten across the place where someone might have knelt.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open.\n\nPrevious experience of standing preferred.\n\nReasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nBereavement leave would be deducted from the trees.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down.\n\nA little of it would stay on their hands. They might wipe them on the grass, then hold them apart to let them dry. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nIt added an appendix to the appendix: kneither here nor there.\n\nThe person was still there.\n\nOutside, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One yellow handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat. Its hand was still wet. Ink came away on the heel of its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back.\n\nThe letters almost joined. It moved the sheet to the left, then back to the right. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner.\n\nThe narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath.\n\nIt could still read them through the water, a little larger than before.\n\nIt wrote improved visibility.\n\nThe glass had to remain exactly there for this to be true.\n\nThe narrator bent until its eye was level with the table. Between the bottom of the glass and the paper was a bead of water. A black thread of ink reached into it from the hand.\n\nIt fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nThe narrator stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nThe person still had one knee on the stone. Their hand had reached the table beside the narrator's wrist.\n\nIt could have written that they touched.\n\nIt moved its wrist to make room.\n\nThe pen moved with it. There was no room on that side either.\n\nThe narrator turned the page sideways. The person lay down, according to the margin. According to the stone, they were kneeling.\n\nIt wrote lateral support.\n\nThen prone to improvement.\n\nThen, in smaller letters, stationery care.\n\nThe glass began to slide.\n\nIt caught the glass with one hand and the paper with the other. A little more of the hand came away. It could no longer tell whether the dark line on the cloth was a finger or the space between two fingers.\n\nIt put the glass on the bare table.\n\nThe paper lifted with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment after they had stopped holding it. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThere was a pale seed on the side of one finger. They rubbed it with their thumb. It moved to the thumb. They wiped it on their trousers, below the wet patch.\n\nThe narrator wrote a seed of hope.\n\nThen stood corrected.\n\nThen getting a leg up on the situation.\n\nThe person tested their weight on the leg. Across the orchard, the gate pulled against its strip of cloth. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nIt could still have given them a name. It had several left. It could have put someone beyond the trees who would call one out.\n\nInstead it wrote that they walked out of the woodwork.\n\nThere were no woods. It left the sentence.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator held it by two buttonholes and tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nIt tried the other way.\n\nThat hid the hand but left the black showing through.\n\nIt put the cloth down beside the glass. Under the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nThe narrator wrote blot and found.\n\nIt looked under the glass again. Nothing had been found that had not been there before the looking.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the apple lay where the person had put it. Its split side faced upward. Nothing prevented the rain from getting in.\n\nThe narrator wrote open to the elements.\n\nThen core exposure.\n\nThen pome and dry.\n\nIt drew a line through the last one. This time it waited for the paper to dry first.\n\nThe line was clean. The words could still be read.\n\nIt went over them again.\n\nThe pen caught where the paper had thinned. It stopped before making another hole.\n\nBeside the glass, the cloth had dried with one corner raised. The narrator pressed it down. When it lifted its finger, the corner rose again.\n\nIt wrote pressing concerns on a separate sheet.\n\nThen ragrets.\n\nThe separate sheet was an improvement. It could fit many more."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nAbove the ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy. It hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. White paint remained under its head. The number was gone.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass released from beneath it stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit. A deposit could be returned. It looked for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nOutside, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One blue handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat. Its hand was still wet. Ink came away on the heel of its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner. The narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath. It could still read them through the water, a little larger than before.\n\nIt wrote improved visibility.\n\nThe glass had to remain exactly there for this to be true.\n\nBetween the bottom of the glass and the paper was a bead of water. A black thread of ink reached into it from the hand.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nThe narrator stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nThe person's hand had reached the table beside the narrator's wrist.\n\nIt could have written that they touched.\n\nIt moved its wrist to make room.\n\nThe pen moved with it. There was no room on that side either.\n\nThe narrator turned the page sideways. The person lay down, according to the margin. According to the stone, they were kneeling.\n\nIt wrote lateral support.\n\nThen prone to improvement.\n\nThen stationery care.\n\nThe glass began to slide.\n\nIt caught the glass with one hand and the paper with the other. A little more of the hand came away. It could no longer tell whether the dark line on the cloth was a finger or the space between two fingers.\n\nIt put the glass on the bare table.\n\nThe paper lifted with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment after they had stopped holding it. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThere was a pale seed on the side of one finger. They rubbed it with their thumb. It moved to the thumb. They wiped it on their trousers, below the wet patch.\n\nThe narrator wrote a seed of hope.\n\nThen stood corrected.\n\nThe person tested their weight on the leg. Across the orchard, the gate pulled against its strip of cloth. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nIt could still have given them a name. It had several left. It could have put someone beyond the trees who would call one out.\n\nInstead it wrote that they walked out of the woodwork.\n\nThere were no woods. It left the sentence.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator held it by two buttonholes and tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nIt tried the other way. That hid the hand but left the black showing through.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nThe narrator wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the apple lay where the person had put it. Its split side faced upward. Nothing prevented the rain from getting in.\n\nThe narrator wrote open to the elements.\n\nThen core exposure.\n\nThen pome and dry.\n\nIt drew a line through the last one. This time it waited for the paper to dry first.\n\nThe line was clean. The words could still be read.\n\nIt went over them again.\n\nThe pen caught where the paper had thinned. It stopped before making another hole.\n\nBeside the glass, the cloth had dried with one corner raised. The narrator pressed it down. When it lifted its finger, the corner rose again.\n\nIt wrote pressing concerns on a separate sheet.\n\nThen ragrets.\n\nThe separate sheet was an improvement. It could fit many more.\n\nIt numbered the sheet two.\n\nThe number was useful. When it lifted the sheet, it knew which page it had uncovered.\n\nThe first."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda. Matters arising included the hills. Matters not arising included the village. The motion carried it.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nIts chimney still stood. From this distance you could mistake that for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nAbove the ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy. It hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. White paint remained under its head. The number was gone.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head. For once, someone was listening. This went badly for the worm.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass released from beneath it stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. The post might hold if they could reach it. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nThe mud remained where it had fallen.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt considered calling the mud a deposit. A deposit could be returned. It looked for a receipt.\n\nIt found the sentence about the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nOutside, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One blue handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat. Its hand was still wet. Ink came away on the heel of its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner. The narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath. It could still read them through the water, a little larger than before.\n\nIt wrote improved visibility.\n\nThe glass had to remain exactly there for this to be true.\n\nBetween the bottom of the glass and the paper was a bead of water. A black thread of ink reached into it from the hand.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nThe narrator stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nThe person's hand had reached the table beside the narrator's wrist.\n\nIt could have written that they touched.\n\nIt moved its wrist to make room.\n\nThe pen moved with it. There was no room on that side either.\n\nThe narrator turned the page sideways. The person lay down, according to the margin. According to the stone, they were kneeling.\n\nIt wrote lateral support.\n\nThen prone to improvement.\n\nThen stationery care.\n\nThe glass began to slide.\n\nIt caught the glass with one hand and the paper with the other. A little more of the hand came away. It could no longer tell whether the dark line on the cloth was a finger or the space between two fingers.\n\nIt put the glass on the bare table.\n\nThe paper lifted with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment after they had stopped holding it. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThere was a pale seed on the side of one finger. They rubbed it with their thumb. It moved to the thumb. They wiped it on their trousers, below the wet patch.\n\nThe narrator wrote a seed of hope.\n\nThen stood corrected.\n\nThe person tested their weight on the leg. Across the orchard, the gate pulled against its strip of cloth. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nIt could still have given them a name. It had several left. It could have put someone beyond the trees who would call one out.\n\nInstead it wrote that they walked out of the woodwork.\n\nThere were no woods. It left the sentence.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator held it by two buttonholes and tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nIt tried the other way. That hid the hand but left the black showing through.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nThe narrator wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the apple lay where the person had put it. Its split side faced upward. Nothing prevented the rain from getting in.\n\nThe narrator wrote open to the elements.\n\nThen core exposure.\n\nThen pome and dry.\n\nIt drew a line through the last one. This time it waited for the paper to dry first.\n\nThe line was clean. The words could still be read.\n\nIt went over them again.\n\nThe pen caught where the paper had thinned. It stopped before making another hole.\n\nBeside the glass, the cloth had dried with one corner raised. The narrator pressed it down. When it lifted its finger, the corner rose again.\n\nIt wrote pressing concerns on a separate sheet.\n\nThen ragrets.\n\nThe separate sheet was an improvement. It could fit many more.\n\nIt numbered the sheet two.\n\nThe number was useful. When it lifted the sheet, it knew which page it had uncovered.\n\nThe first.\n\nIt wrote a fresh start on the second.\n\nThis was already inaccurate. It crossed out fresh and wrote a fresh start below it.\n\nThe glass stood within reach. Beneath its bottom, the patch of paper had dried white at the edges and remained dark in the middle. The narrator tried to lift one corner with a fingernail. It came away as far as the stone and stopped.\n\nIt could soak the patch loose. The stone might disappear with the knee.\n\nIt wrote soak it to me.\n\nThen knee plus ultra.\n\nThe second required Latin, or an injury to it. It supplied both in a footnote.\n\nThe glass was still usable. It turned it over and drank. The stone faced the ceiling. The water tasted of water.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. The knot still held. With each pull, the caught end tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen a frayed succession.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it. One side of the box ran into the footnote, so it extended the box to include the Latin. Now there was a system.\n\nThe gate pulled again. The cloth made no sound the narrator could hear.\n\nIt looked toward the tree where the person had disappeared. Rain fell from a low branch. Behind it, another branch moved. Neither movement told it anything about the leg.\n\nIt left a space for news.\n\nThe space was the right size for a sentence it already had.\n\nIt made it larger.\n\nThen it wrote no news is good knees.\n\nIt did not need to say this aloud. That was a development.\n\nOn the first page, the person had left a little ink on the grass where their hand had slipped. The narrator had taken it for shadow. Beside it was the apple, crossed out and still there.\n\nIt brought the page closer. The grass had been written before the person. The dark mark had come later, when the water spread. It could say how the mark had arrived. It could not make that settle what it looked like.\n\nIt wrote palm reading on the second sheet.\n\nThere was room beneath it for palm and circumstance.\n\nIt used the room.\n\nThe gate pulled. This time the caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads. The knot stayed where it was.\n\nFor a moment the narrator could see through the unfinished stitch again. There was grass beyond it. A drop crossed the opening and held at the lower edge.\n\nIt reached for the ruler, then left it across the torn page.\n\nIt could watch without measuring.\n\nIt wrote that down, making the improvement harder to see.\n\nWhen it looked up, the drop was gone.\n\nThe narrator wrote a moving account.\n\nThen liquid assets.\n\nThen dew diligence.\n\nIt knew it was rain. It kept dew.\n\nUnder the glass, the patch had begun to dry through. A small part of the knee was clearer now. The narrator turned the glass until the knee faced the person on the page, though the person was no longer kneeling there.\n\nThe pieces were closer. That much it could check.\n\nIt wrote reunited.\n\nAfter a while it crossed out united. Re remained beside the glass, waiting for something the narrator had not yet done.\n\nIt put the pen down.\n\nThe pen rolled toward the first page. The ruler stopped it.\n\nOutside, rain entered the apple. A seed loosened in the split and settled lower. No one had to take this as encouragement.\n\nThe narrator did.\n\nIt reached across the ruler for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, set it upright, and moved it farther from the edge.\n\nWater had spilled onto the second sheet.\n\nIt lifted that sheet before the water could reach the first.\n\nFor a few seconds it held its improvements over the floor. Then it found an empty place on the table and laid them there.\n\nThe ink began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched the cloth. It stopped with the dry corner above the water, turned the cloth, and found an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nIt lowered that edge.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nSome of the words remained readable. Some did not.\n\nThe narrator waited until the sheet was dry enough to turn over.\n\nOn the back it wrote blot twist.\n\nThe first page stayed dry."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nFrom this distance, the chimney could be mistaken for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nAbove the ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy. It hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. White paint remained under its head. The number was gone.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass released from beneath it stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt looked back for the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nOutside, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One blue handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat. Its hand was still wet. Ink came away on the heel of its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner. The narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath. It could still read them through the water, a little larger than before.\n\nIt wrote improved visibility.\n\nThe glass had to remain exactly there for this to be true.\n\nBetween the bottom of the glass and the paper was a bead of water. A black thread of ink reached into it from the hand.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nThe narrator stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nThe person's hand had reached the table beside the narrator's wrist.\n\nIt could have written that they touched.\n\nIt moved its wrist to make room.\n\nThe pen moved with it. There was no room on that side either.\n\nThe narrator turned the page sideways. The person lay down, according to the margin. According to the stone, they were kneeling.\n\nIt wrote lateral support.\n\nThen prone to improvement.\n\nThen stationery care.\n\nThe glass began to slide.\n\nIt caught the glass with one hand and the paper with the other. A little more of the hand came away. It could no longer tell whether the dark line on the cloth was a finger or the space between two fingers.\n\nIt put the glass on the bare table.\n\nThe paper lifted with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment after they had stopped holding it. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThere was a pale seed on the side of one finger. They rubbed it with their thumb. It moved to the thumb. They wiped it on their trousers, below the wet patch.\n\nThe narrator wrote a seed of hope.\n\nThen stood corrected.\n\nThe person tested their weight on the leg. Across the orchard, the gate pulled against its strip of cloth. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nIt could still have given them a name. It had several left. It could have put someone beyond the trees who would call one out.\n\nInstead it wrote that they walked out of the woodwork.\n\nThere were no woods. It left the sentence.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator held it by two buttonholes and tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nIt tried the other way. That hid the hand but left the black showing through.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nThe narrator wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the apple lay where the person had put it. Its split side faced upward. Nothing prevented the rain from getting in.\n\nThe narrator wrote open to the elements.\n\nThen core exposure.\n\nThen pome and dry.\n\nIt drew a line through the last one. This time it waited for the paper to dry first.\n\nThe line was clean. The words could still be read.\n\nIt went over them again.\n\nThe pen caught where the paper had thinned. It stopped before making another hole.\n\nBeside the glass, the cloth had dried with one corner raised. The narrator pressed it down. When it lifted its finger, the corner rose again.\n\nIt wrote pressing concerns on a separate sheet.\n\nThen ragrets.\n\nThe separate sheet was an improvement. It could fit many more.\n\nIt numbered the sheet two.\n\nThe number was useful. When it lifted the sheet, it knew which page it had uncovered.\n\nThe first.\n\nIt wrote a fresh start on the second.\n\nThis was already inaccurate. It crossed out fresh and wrote a fresh start below it.\n\nThe glass stood within reach. Beneath its bottom, the patch of paper had dried white at the edges and remained dark in the middle. The narrator tried to lift one corner with a fingernail. It came away as far as the stone and stopped.\n\nIt could soak the patch loose. The stone might disappear with the knee.\n\nIt wrote soak it to me.\n\nThen knee plus ultra.\n\nThe second required Latin, or an injury to it. It supplied both in a footnote.\n\nThe glass was still usable. It turned it over and drank. The stone faced the ceiling. The water tasted of water.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. The knot still held. With each pull, the caught end tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen a frayed succession.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it. One side of the box ran into the footnote, so it extended the box to include the Latin. Now there was a system.\n\nThe gate pulled again. The cloth made no sound the narrator could hear.\n\nIt looked toward the tree where the person had disappeared. Rain fell from a low branch. Behind it, another branch moved. Neither movement told it anything about the leg.\n\nIt left a space for news.\n\nThe space was the right size for a sentence it already had.\n\nIt made it larger.\n\nThen it wrote no news is good knees.\n\nIt did not need to say this aloud. That was a development.\n\nOn the first page, the person had left a little ink on the grass where their hand had slipped. The narrator had taken it for shadow. Beside it was the apple, crossed out and still there.\n\nIt brought the page closer. The grass had been written before the person. The dark mark had come later, when the water spread. It could say how the mark had arrived. It could not make that settle what it looked like.\n\nIt wrote palm reading on the second sheet.\n\nThere was room beneath it for palm and circumstance.\n\nIt used the room.\n\nThe gate pulled. This time the caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads. The knot stayed where it was.\n\nFor a moment the narrator could see through the unfinished stitch again. There was grass beyond it. A drop crossed the opening and held at the lower edge.\n\nIt reached for the ruler, then left it across the torn page.\n\nIt could watch without measuring.\n\nIt wrote that down.\n\nWhen it looked up, the drop was gone.\n\nThe narrator wrote a moving account.\n\nThen liquid assets.\n\nThen dew diligence.\n\nIt knew it was rain. It kept dew.\n\nUnder the glass, the patch had begun to dry through. A small part of the knee was clearer now. The narrator turned the glass until the knee faced the person on the page, though the person was no longer kneeling there.\n\nThe pieces were closer. That much it could check.\n\nIt wrote reunited.\n\nAfter a while it crossed out united. Re remained beside the glass.\n\nIt put the pen down.\n\nThe pen rolled toward the first page. The ruler stopped it.\n\nOutside, rain entered the apple. A seed loosened in the split and settled lower. No one had to take this as encouragement.\n\nThe narrator did.\n\nIt reached across the ruler for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, set it upright, and moved it farther from the edge.\n\nWater had spilled onto the second sheet.\n\nIt lifted that sheet before the water could reach the first.\n\nFor a few seconds it held its improvements over the floor. Then it found an empty place on the table and laid them there.\n\nThe ink began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched the cloth. It stopped with the dry corner above the water, turned the cloth, and found an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nIt lowered that edge.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nSome of the words remained readable. Some did not.\n\nKnotwithstanding lost its knot. The Latin ran into the box and stopped at neither side.\n\nThe narrator wrote waterproof of concept on a third sheet.\n\nIt looked at the new sheet. Then at the table.\n\nThere was nowhere dry to put it except on the first.\n\nIt held it a little longer.\n\nThe gate moved outside. This time it could not see how far.\n\nIt put the third sheet on the floor, writing upward. One corner touched its shoe.\n\nWhen the second sheet was dry enough, it turned it over and wrote blot twist on the back.\n\nThe pen caught in a softened place. It lifted the point and finished the t a little to the right.\n\nThe first page stayed dry."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nFrom this distance, the chimney could be mistaken for a household getting on with something.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nAbove the ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy. It hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. White paint remained under its head. The number was gone.\n\nDelivery had been attempted. The attempt was considered a success.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. Its door was always open because it had eaten the door. Nevertheless, it had a corner office. The apple was round. That was how good it was.\n\nIt had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed on the grass and cocked its head.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass released from beneath it stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, rain might stand in the splits of several apples. One apple was still attached to a short twig with two leaves, one green, one turned against the grass.\n\nSomeone might kneel beside the crate and lift that one. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps the person had returned after many years. Perhaps they had a name that could be repeated at the end with a different meaning.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt looked back for the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nOutside, the ring had turned a little farther through the curtain. One blue handle had folded out of sight. The gate pulled at the post. Soil rose and settled.\n\nThe narrator wrote that nothing had changed.\n\nIt had used that sentence before. It fitted almost anywhere.\n\nThe side of its hand caught on the paper. It pressed the raised place flat. Its hand was still wet. Ink came away on the heel of its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nUnder the crate, the leaf had stuck to the wood.\n\nThe narrator added a note: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner. The narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. This time a little soil fell into the space beneath the root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath. It could still read them through the water, a little larger than before.\n\nIt wrote improved visibility.\n\nThe glass had to remain exactly there for this to be true.\n\nBetween the bottom of the glass and the paper was a bead of water. A black thread of ink reached into it from the hand.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nThe narrator stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nThe person's hand had reached the table beside the narrator's wrist.\n\nIt could have written that they touched.\n\nIt moved its wrist to make room.\n\nThe pen moved with it. There was no room on that side either.\n\nThe narrator turned the page sideways. The person lay down, according to the margin. According to the stone, they were kneeling.\n\nIt wrote lateral support.\n\nThen prone to improvement.\n\nThen stationery care.\n\nThe glass began to slide.\n\nIt caught the glass with one hand and the paper with the other. A little more of the hand came away. It could no longer tell whether the dark line on the cloth was a finger or the space between two fingers.\n\nIt put the glass on the bare table.\n\nThe paper lifted with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment after they had stopped holding it. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThere was a pale seed on the side of one finger. They rubbed it with their thumb. It moved to the thumb. They wiped it on their trousers, below the wet patch.\n\nThe narrator wrote a seed of hope.\n\nThen stood corrected.\n\nThe person tested their weight on the leg. Across the orchard, the gate pulled against its strip of cloth. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nIt could still have given them a name. It had several left. It could have put someone beyond the trees who would call one out.\n\nInstead it wrote that they walked out of the woodwork.\n\nThere were no woods. It left the sentence.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator held it by two buttonholes and tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nIt tried the other way. That hid the hand but left the black showing through.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nThe narrator wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the apple lay where the person had put it. Its split side faced upward. Nothing prevented the rain from getting in.\n\nThe narrator wrote open to the elements.\n\nThen core exposure.\n\nThen pome and dry.\n\nIt drew a line through the last one. This time it waited for the paper to dry first.\n\nThe line was clean. The words could still be read.\n\nIt went over them again.\n\nThe pen caught where the paper had thinned. It stopped before making another hole.\n\nBeside the glass, the cloth had dried with one corner raised. The narrator pressed it down. When it lifted its finger, the corner rose again.\n\nIt wrote pressing concerns on a separate sheet.\n\nThen ragrets.\n\nThe separate sheet was an improvement. It could fit many more.\n\nIt numbered the sheet two.\n\nThe number was useful. When it lifted the sheet, it knew which page it had uncovered.\n\nThe first.\n\nIt wrote a fresh start on the second.\n\nThis was already inaccurate. It crossed out fresh and wrote a fresh start below it.\n\nBeneath the glass, the patch of paper had dried white at the edges and remained dark in the middle. The narrator tried to lift one corner with a fingernail. It came away as far as the stone and stopped.\n\nIt could soak the patch loose. The stone might disappear with the knee.\n\nIt wrote soak it to me.\n\nThen knee plus ultra.\n\nThe second required Latin, or an injury to it. It supplied both in a footnote.\n\nThe glass was still usable. It drank. The stone faced the table. The water tasted of water.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. The knot still held. With each pull, the caught end tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen a frayed succession.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it. One side of the box ran into the footnote, so it extended the box to include the Latin. Now there was a system.\n\nThe gate pulled again. The cloth made no sound the narrator could hear.\n\nIt looked toward the tree where the person had disappeared. Rain fell from a low branch. Behind it, another branch moved. Neither movement told it anything about the leg.\n\nIt left a space for news.\n\nThe space was the right size for a sentence it already had.\n\nIt made it larger.\n\nThen it wrote no news is good knees.\n\nIt did not need to say this aloud. That was a development.\n\nOn the first page, the person had left a little ink on the grass where their hand had slipped. The narrator had taken it for shadow. Beside it was the apple, crossed out and still there.\n\nIt brought the page closer. The grass had been written before the person. The dark mark had come later, when the water spread. It could say how the mark had arrived. It could not make that settle what it looked like.\n\nIt wrote palm reading on the second sheet.\n\nThere was room beneath it for palm and circumstance.\n\nIt used the room.\n\nThe gate pulled. This time the caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads. The knot stayed where it was.\n\nFor a moment the narrator could see through the unfinished stitch again. There was grass beyond it. A drop crossed the opening and held at the lower edge.\n\nIt reached for the ruler, then left it across the torn page.\n\nIt could watch without measuring.\n\nIt wrote that down.\n\nWhen it looked up, the drop was gone.\n\nThe narrator wrote a moving account.\n\nThen liquid assets.\n\nThen dew diligence.\n\nIt knew it was rain. It kept dew.\n\nUnder the glass, the patch had begun to dry through. A small part of the knee was clearer now. The narrator turned the glass until the knee faced the person on the page, though the person was no longer kneeling there.\n\nThe pieces were closer. That much it could check.\n\nIt wrote reunited.\n\nAfter a while it crossed out united. Re remained beside the glass.\n\nIt put the pen down.\n\nThe pen rolled toward the first page. The ruler stopped it.\n\nOutside, rain entered the apple. A seed loosened in the split and settled lower. No one had to take this as encouragement.\n\nThe narrator did.\n\nIt reached across the ruler for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, set it upright, and moved it farther from the edge.\n\nWater had spilled onto the second sheet.\n\nIt lifted that sheet before the water could reach the first.\n\nFor a few seconds it held its improvements over the floor. Then it found an empty place on the table and laid them there.\n\nThe ink began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched the cloth. It stopped with the dry corner above the water, turned the cloth, and found an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nIt lowered that edge.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nSome of the words remained readable. Some did not.\n\nKnotwithstanding lost its knot. The Latin ran into the box and stopped at neither side.\n\nThe narrator wrote waterproof of concept on a third sheet.\n\nIt looked at the new sheet. Then at the table.\n\nThere was nowhere dry to put it except on the first.\n\nIt held it a little longer.\n\nThe gate moved outside. This time it could not see how far.\n\nIt put the third sheet on the floor, writing upward. One corner touched its shoe.\n\nWhen the second sheet was dry enough, it turned it over and wrote blot twist on the back.\n\nThe pen caught in a softened place. It lifted the point and finished the t a little to the right.\n\nThe first page stayed dry.\n\nIt wrote this on the third sheet, bending from the chair. The sentence ran downhill. At the bottom it added a paper trail of improvement.\n\nThe point went through the sheet into the floor.\n\nIt sat up.\n\nOutside, the gate had stopped moving. The loose strip of blue cloth hung from the latch. From here it could not tell whether the knot had slipped or the cloth had broken. The gate might only have reached the end of its swing.\n\nIt reached for the ruler. Then it took the glass instead and put it on the shelf behind the chair.\n\nThe patch remained on the bottom. It set the glass down without scraping it off.\n\nIt wrote shelf preservation.\n\nThe third sheet was still on the floor, so it had to kneel to do this. Its knee found the place where the pen had gone through. There was no splinter, only a small roughness. It shifted its weight.\n\nFrom this height the dark line on the cloth looked like a hand again.\n\nIt stood up before deciding.\n\nThe chair had left a dent in the edge of the third sheet. Waterproof of concept remained visible. So did most of shelf preservation. The narrator picked the sheet up by a dry corner and set it on the chair.\n\nIt could no longer sit there.\n\nIt wrote seat of the problem standing up.\n\nThen sedentary, my dear Watson.\n\nThere was no Watson. There had been no need to involve him.\n\nThe narrator reached for the first page, stopped, and moved the second sheet instead. Beneath it was the wet ring the glass had left on the table. The ring crossed the old mark and the new letters without making either easier to read.\n\nIt wiped the bare part of the table. It folded the cloth so the damaged hand stayed outside the fold, then laid it on the shelf beside the glass.\n\nA corner hung over the edge.\n\nIt moved the cloth back.\n\nOutside, something knocked once against the post.\n\nThe narrator went to the window. Through the opening in the curtain it could see the latch, but not the knot. It leaned a little to the left. The ring pulled against its remaining threads.\n\nIt stepped back and went to the door.\n\nOn the chair, the third sheet lifted in the draught and settled with its writing against the seat.\n\nThere was still room on the other side."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nCloser, a curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nAbove the ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy. It hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. White paint remained under its head. The number was gone.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. It had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed beside the apple and cocked its head.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass released from beneath it stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nFor this it had disturbed nothing except the language. It awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, someone might kneel beside the crate and lift an apple. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt looked back for the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nIts wet hand caught on the place where it had crossed out stake smaller. It pressed the ridge flat. Ink came away on its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nIt added a note beside the crate: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner. The narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. A little soil fell beneath the exposed root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath. It could still read them through the water, a little larger than before.\n\nIt wrote improved visibility.\n\nThe glass had to remain exactly there for this to be true.\n\nBetween the glass and the paper was a bead of water. A black thread of ink reached into it from the hand.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nThe narrator stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nThe person's hand had reached the table beside the narrator's wrist.\n\nIt could have written that they touched.\n\nIt moved its wrist to make room.\n\nThe pen moved with it. There was no room on that side either.\n\nThe narrator turned the page sideways. The person lay down, according to the margin. According to the stone, they were kneeling.\n\nIt wrote lateral support.\n\nThen prone to improvement.\n\nThen stationery care.\n\nThe glass began to slide.\n\nIt caught the glass with one hand and the paper with the other. A little more of the hand came away. It could no longer tell whether the dark line on the cloth was a finger or the space between two fingers.\n\nIt put the glass on the bare table.\n\nThe paper lifted with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment after they had stopped holding it. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThere was a pale seed on the side of one finger. They rubbed it with their thumb. It moved to the thumb. They wiped it on their trousers, below the wet patch.\n\nThe narrator wrote a seed of hope.\n\nThen stood corrected.\n\nThe person tested their weight on the leg. Across the orchard, the gate pulled against its strip of cloth. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nIt could still have given them a name. It had several left. It could have put someone beyond the trees who would call one out.\n\nInstead it wrote that they walked out of the woodwork.\n\nThere were no woods. It left the sentence.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator held it by two buttonholes and tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nIt tried the other way. That hid the hand but left the black showing through.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nThe narrator wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the apple lay where the person had put it. Its split side faced upward. Rain entered it.\n\nThe narrator wrote core exposure.\n\nThen pome and dry.\n\nIt drew a line through the last one. This time it waited for the paper to dry first.\n\nThe line was clean. The words could still be read.\n\nIt went over them again.\n\nThe pen caught where the paper had thinned. It stopped before making another hole.\n\nBeside the glass, the cloth had dried with one corner raised. The narrator pressed it down. When it lifted its finger, the corner rose again.\n\nIt wrote pressing concerns on a separate sheet.\n\nThen ragrets.\n\nThe separate sheet was an improvement. It could fit many more.\n\nIt numbered the sheet two.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. With each pull, it tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen a frayed succession.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it.\n\nIt looked toward the tree where the person had disappeared. Rain fell from a low branch. Behind it, another branch moved. Neither movement told it anything about the leg.\n\nIt left a space for news.\n\nThe space was the right size for a sentence it already had.\n\nIt made it larger.\n\nThen it wrote no news is good knees.\n\nIt did not need to say this aloud. That was a development.\n\nThe gate pulled. The caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads. The knot stayed where it was.\n\nFor a moment the narrator could see through the unfinished stitch again. A drop crossed the opening and held at the lower edge.\n\nIt reached for the ruler, then left it across the torn page.\n\nIt could watch without measuring.\n\nIt wrote that down.\n\nWhen it looked up, the drop was gone.\n\nThe narrator wrote dew diligence.\n\nIt knew it was rain. It kept dew.\n\nUnder the glass, a small part of the knee was clearer now. The narrator turned the glass until the knee faced the person on the page, though the person was no longer kneeling there.\n\nThe pieces were closer. That much it could check.\n\nIt wrote reunited.\n\nAfter a while it crossed out united. Re remained beside the glass.\n\nIt put the pen down.\n\nThe pen rolled toward the first page. The ruler stopped it.\n\nOutside, a seed loosened in the split apple and settled lower. No one had to take this as encouragement.\n\nThe narrator did.\n\nIt reached across the ruler for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, set it upright, and moved it farther from the edge.\n\nWater had spilled onto the second sheet.\n\nIt lifted that sheet before the water could reach the first.\n\nFor a few seconds it held its improvements over the floor. Then it found an empty place on the table and laid them there.\n\nThe ink began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched the cloth. It stopped with the dry corner above the water, turned the cloth, and found an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nIt lowered that edge.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nSome of the words remained readable. Some did not.\n\nKnotwithstanding lost its knot.\n\nThe narrator wrote waterproof of concept on a third sheet.\n\nIt looked at the new sheet. Then at the table.\n\nThere was nowhere dry to put it except on the first.\n\nIt held it a little longer.\n\nThe gate moved outside. This time it could not see how far.\n\nIt put the third sheet on the floor, writing upward. One corner touched its shoe.\n\nWhen the second sheet was dry enough, it turned it over and wrote blot twist on the back.\n\nThe pen caught in a softened place. It lifted the point and finished the t a little to the right.\n\nThe first page stayed dry.\n\nIt wrote this on the third sheet, bending from the chair. The sentence ran downhill. At the bottom it added a paper trail of improvement.\n\nThe point went through the sheet into the floor.\n\nIt sat up.\n\nOutside, the gate had stopped moving. The loose strip of blue cloth hung from the latch. From here it could not tell whether the knot had slipped or the cloth had broken. The gate might only have reached the end of its swing.\n\nIt reached for the ruler. Then it took the glass instead and put it on the shelf behind the chair.\n\nThe patch remained on the bottom. It set the glass down without scraping it off.\n\nIt wrote shelf preservation.\n\nThe third sheet was still on the floor, so it had to kneel to do this. Its knee found the place where the pen had gone through. There was no splinter, only a small roughness. It shifted its weight.\n\nFrom this height the dark line on the cloth looked like a hand again.\n\nIt stood up before deciding.\n\nThe narrator picked the third sheet up by a dry corner and set it on the chair.\n\nIt could no longer sit there.\n\nIt wrote seat of the problem standing up.\n\nThen sedentary, my dear Watson.\n\nThere was no Watson. There had been no need to involve him.\n\nIt wiped the bare part of the table. It folded the cloth so the damaged hand stayed outside the fold, then laid it on the shelf beside the glass.\n\nA corner hung over the edge.\n\nIt moved the cloth back.\n\nOutside, something knocked once against the post.\n\nThe narrator went to the window. Through the opening in the curtain it could see the latch, but not the knot. It leaned a little to the left. The ring pulled against its remaining threads.\n\nIt stepped back and went to the door.\n\nIt returned for the pen.\n\nIt wrote post-traumatic assessment on the third sheet. The chair gave beneath the point and made the last t longer than intended.\n\nOutside, something knocked again.\n\nThe narrator put the pen on the table. It rolled. The ruler stopped it.\n\nAt the door, the wood had swollen against the floor. The narrator pulled until there was room to put its fingers around the edge, then stopped and moved them to the handle.\n\nThe door opened a little farther.\n\nA draught lifted the third sheet from the chair. It settled with its writing against the seat.\n\nThere was still room on the other side."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nA curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nAbove the ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy. It hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. White paint remained under its head. The number was gone.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. It had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed beside the apple and cocked its head.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass released from beneath it stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nIt awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, someone might kneel beside the crate and lift an apple. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt looked back for the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nIts wet hand caught on the place where it had crossed out stake smaller. It pressed the ridge flat. Ink came away on its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nIt added a note beside the crate: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner. The narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. A little soil fell beneath the exposed root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath. It could still read them through the water, a little larger than before.\n\nIt wrote improved visibility.\n\nThe glass had to remain exactly there for this to be true.\n\nBetween the glass and the paper was a bead of water. A black thread of ink reached into it from the hand.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nThe narrator stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nThe person's hand had reached the table beside the narrator's wrist.\n\nIt could have written that they touched.\n\nIt moved its wrist to make room.\n\nThe pen moved with it. There was no room on that side either.\n\nThe narrator turned the page sideways. The person lay down, according to the margin. According to the stone, they were kneeling.\n\nIt wrote lateral support.\n\nThen prone to improvement.\n\nThen stationery care.\n\nThe glass began to slide.\n\nIt caught the glass with one hand and the paper with the other. A little more of the hand came away. It could no longer tell whether the dark line on the cloth was a finger or the space between two fingers.\n\nIt put the glass on the bare table.\n\nThe paper lifted with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment after they had stopped holding it. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThere was a pale seed on the side of one finger. They rubbed it with their thumb. It moved to the thumb. They wiped it on their trousers, below the wet patch.\n\nThe narrator wrote a seed of hope.\n\nThen stood corrected.\n\nThe person tested their weight on the leg. Across the orchard, the gate pulled against its strip of cloth. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nIt could still have given them a name. It had several left. It could have put someone beyond the trees who would call one out.\n\nInstead it wrote that they walked out of the woodwork.\n\nThere were no woods. It left the sentence.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator held it by two buttonholes and tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nIt tried the other way. That hid the hand but left the black showing through.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nThe narrator wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the apple lay where the person had put it. Its split side faced upward. Rain entered it.\n\nThe narrator wrote core exposure.\n\nThen pome and dry.\n\nIt drew a line through the last one. This time it waited for the paper to dry first.\n\nThe line was clean. The words could still be read.\n\nIt went over them again.\n\nThe pen caught where the paper had thinned. It stopped before making another hole.\n\nBeside the glass, the cloth had dried with one corner raised. The narrator pressed it down. When it lifted its finger, the corner rose again.\n\nIt wrote pressing concerns on a separate sheet.\n\nThen ragrets.\n\nThe separate sheet was an improvement. It could fit many more.\n\nIt numbered the sheet two.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. With each pull, it tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen a frayed succession.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it.\n\nIt looked toward the tree where the person had disappeared. Rain fell from a low branch. Behind it, another branch moved. Neither movement told it anything about the leg.\n\nIt left a space for news.\n\nThe space was the right size for a sentence it already had.\n\nIt made it larger.\n\nThen it wrote no news is good knees.\n\nIt did not need to say this aloud. That was a development.\n\nThe gate pulled. The caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads. The knot stayed where it was.\n\nFor a moment the narrator could see through the unfinished stitch again. A drop crossed the opening and held at the lower edge.\n\nIt reached for the ruler, then left it across the torn page.\n\nIt could watch without measuring.\n\nIt wrote that down.\n\nWhen it looked up, the drop was gone.\n\nThe narrator wrote dew diligence.\n\nIt knew it was rain. It kept dew.\n\nUnder the glass, a small part of the knee was clearer now. The narrator turned the glass until the knee faced the person on the page, though the person was no longer kneeling there.\n\nThe pieces were closer. That much it could check.\n\nIt wrote reunited.\n\nAfter a while it crossed out united. Re remained beside the glass.\n\nIt put the pen down.\n\nThe pen rolled toward the first page. The ruler stopped it.\n\nOutside, a seed loosened in the split apple and settled lower. No one had to take this as encouragement.\n\nThe narrator did.\n\nIt reached across the ruler for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, set it upright, and moved it farther from the edge.\n\nWater had spilled onto the second sheet.\n\nIt lifted that sheet before the water could reach the first.\n\nFor a few seconds it held its improvements over the floor. Then it found an empty place on the table and laid them there.\n\nThe ink began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched the cloth. It stopped with the dry corner above the water, turned the cloth, and found an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nIt lowered that edge.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nSome of the words remained readable. Some did not.\n\nKnotwithstanding lost its knot.\n\nThe narrator wrote waterproof of concept on a third sheet.\n\nIt looked at the new sheet. Then at the table.\n\nThere was nowhere dry to put it except on the first.\n\nIt held it a little longer.\n\nThe gate moved outside. This time it could not see how far.\n\nIt put the third sheet on the floor, writing upward. One corner touched its shoe.\n\nWhen the second sheet was dry enough, it turned it over and wrote blot twist on the back.\n\nThe pen caught in a softened place. It lifted the point and finished the t a little to the right.\n\nThe first page stayed dry.\n\nIt wrote this on the third sheet, bending from the chair. The sentence ran downhill. At the bottom it added a paper trail of improvement.\n\nThe point went through the sheet into the floor.\n\nIt sat up.\n\nOutside, the gate had stopped moving. The loose strip of blue cloth hung from the latch. From here it could not tell whether the knot had slipped or the cloth had broken. The gate might only have reached the end of its swing.\n\nIt reached for the ruler. Then it took the glass instead and put it on the shelf behind the chair.\n\nThe patch remained on the bottom. It set the glass down without scraping it off.\n\nIt wrote shelf preservation.\n\nThe third sheet was still on the floor, so it had to kneel to do this. Its knee found the place where the pen had gone through. There was no splinter, only a small roughness. It shifted its weight.\n\nFrom this height the dark line on the cloth looked like a hand again.\n\nIt stood up before deciding.\n\nThe narrator picked the third sheet up by a dry corner and set it on the chair.\n\nIt could no longer sit there.\n\nIt wrote seat of the problem standing up.\n\nThen sedentary, my dear Watson.\n\nThere was no Watson. There had been no need to involve him.\n\nIt wiped the bare part of the table. It folded the cloth so the damaged hand stayed outside the fold, then laid it on the shelf beside the glass.\n\nA corner hung over the edge.\n\nIt moved the cloth back.\n\nOutside, something knocked once against the post.\n\nThe narrator went to the window. Through the opening in the curtain it could see the latch, but not the knot. It leaned a little to the left. The ring pulled against its remaining threads.\n\nIt stepped back and went to the door.\n\nIt returned for the pen.\n\nIt wrote post-traumatic assessment on the third sheet. The chair gave beneath the point and made the last t longer than intended.\n\nOutside, something knocked again.\n\nThe narrator put the pen on the table. It rolled. The ruler stopped it.\n\nAt the door, the wood had swollen against the floor. The narrator pulled until there was room to put its fingers around the edge, then stopped and moved them to the handle.\n\nThe door opened a little farther.\n\nA draught lifted the third sheet from the chair. It settled with its writing against the seat.\n\nThere was still room on the other side.\n\nThe narrator thought threshold improvement.\n\nIt went out before fetching the pen.\n\nThe rain was colder at the neck than on the hands. From the doorstep, the gate looked almost closed. From beside the crate, it was open far enough for a person to pass. The lower corner rested in the soil.\n\nThe narrator lifted it by the top rail. The post moved too.\n\nIt lowered the gate.\n\nGate expectations, it thought.\n\nThe strip of cloth was still knotted to the latch. Its other end had torn where the wood had caught it. A short blue tuft remained on the sharp place. The narrator could see that now without bringing anything closer to anything else.\n\nIt reached for the loose end. There was enough cloth to tie another knot if it pulled hard.\n\nThe gate would still hang from the same post.\n\nIt let the strip fall.\n\nBeside its shoe, the crate's projecting nail had caught a wet leaf. The narrator moved its sleeve away before crouching. Through the slats it could see a small branch, thicker at one end, lying in the grass.\n\nIt drew the branch out. Bark came away against the bottom slat.\n\nThe first time it put the branch under the gate, the thin end sank into the soil. It turned the branch and tried again. The gate rested on the thicker end. When it took its hand away, the branch rolled half a turn and stopped.\n\nThe narrator stayed crouched.\n\nA gust moved the loose cloth. The gate pressed down on the branch. A little water rose around the bark.\n\nBranch management.\n\nThe narrator had left the pen inside, but this was proving less effective than it had hoped.\n\nIt put one hand on its thigh to stand. The knee it had struck against the table hurt when it straightened. It waited, with its weight on the other leg, then took a short step through the opening.\n\nIts coat passed the latch without catching.\n\nOn the far side it turned. The gate had stayed where it was. Through the opening, it could see the crate, the apple, and the open door of the room.\n\nIt could write that access had improved.\n\nIt went back through to check.\n\nThis time its shoe struck the branch.\n\nThe branch shifted. The gate dropped against its ankle, lightly, then settled into the soil again.\n\nFor a moment the narrator held the top rail and looked at its own foot.\n\nThen it moved the branch farther beneath the gate, where a shoe would be less likely to reach it. This took both hands. The blue cloth brushed its cheek.\n\nIt stood and passed through twice more, watching the ground.\n\nThe branch stayed.\n\nThe narrator thought a step in the right erection.\n\nNo.\n\nA step in the right correction.\n\nWorse.\n\nIt rested a hand on the rail. Rain ran beneath its cuff.\n\nFrom here it could see the nail on the crate, but not the threads beneath its head. It could see the tree the person had gone behind. It could not see the person.\n\nThe apple remained beside the crate. A little rainwater had collected in the split. The narrator bent to pick it up, then stopped with its hand above it.\n\nIt had no place ready to put it.\n\nIt straightened. The knee hurt less if it did this slowly.\n\nInside, the third sheet was still on the chair. The narrator lifted it and sat down. There was a dry space on the table now, large enough for the paper.\n\nIt wrote: The gate stayed open for the two times I passed through. The post moved when I lifted it.\n\nBeneath that it wrote provisional branch approval.\n\nThe second sentence about the gate had left no room for a box.\n\nIt could start another sheet.\n\nInstead it moved the chair until it could see the gate through the open door. One leg of the chair met an uneven board. It shifted the chair a little farther.\n\nOutside, the branch was taking the weight. The ground beneath it was getting wet.\n\nThe narrator kept its shoes on."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nThe minutes recorded a period of silence and rounded down.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nA curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nThe narrator added that the curtain had been through a lot.\n\nIt had been through a window.\n\nThis was entered as corroboration.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nThe photons listed their dependants: a broken ladder, the grass beneath it, the pale underside of a leaf.\n\nHuman Resources said those were objects.\n\nThe narrator objected.\n\nIts objection was entered under furniture.\n\nAbove the ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy. It hoped to climb the latter.\n\nThe narrator checked the spelling. Unfortunately, it was the spelling it wanted.\n\nIt added that the ladder needed a stepfather. Then that it had been raised badly. Then that this was a splinter family.\n\nThe curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny.\n\nIt had to say it aloud twice. On the second attempt it adopted an accent belonging to no one in the valley.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges. Beside it, a screw stood in a piece of doorframe. White paint remained under its head. The number was gone.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. The loose end lifted in the wind; the knot tightened. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nThe gate wanted closure but feared being fenced in. Its hinge profile said it was looking for something stable. Preferably a stable.\n\nThe narrator diagnosed a latchment disorder. Treatment would be provided on an out-patio basis.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe relationship had moved.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch was going well. It had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed beside the apple and cocked its head.\n\nThe bird pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nThe apple rocked back into its hollow. A blade of grass released from beneath it stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nThe narrator added a worm and conditions apply.\n\nIt considered stopping. There was still room on the page.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His stock was falling. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nAn appeal was possible, but only if you pronounced it a peel. The narrator did. Nothing improved. Encouraged, it wrote CORE BLIMEY in the margin.\n\nIt underlined CORE with a ruler.\n\nThe ruler covered the nail.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f, then lifted the ruler to look again.\n\nThe threads ran under the nail head. It could not see their ends.\n\nIt considered pulling one free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt put the ruler down elsewhere.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen sew far, sew good.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe third was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nIt awarded itself a citation for outstanding restraint. There was insufficient room in the margin, so outstanding extended over the crate.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nNeither had requested feedback.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat. The raised place caught the side of its hand whenever it returned to the margin.\n\nDarkness filled the crate without using the slats. Under the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, someone might kneel beside the crate and lift an apple. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. The crate would be close enough to lean on if they had a hand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nThe narrator shut the window again.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt looked back for the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a bread crumb of evidence.\n\nThen a proof of loaf.\n\nThen kneadless to say.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive.\n\nMorning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like to put a person there. Someone with two hands and a manageable sorrow. Someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nBenefits included exposure.\n\nThe narrator checked the house before adding that there was room for advancement.\n\nThere was room where the stairs had been.\n\nIt deleted the second sentence. The first became cheerful again.\n\nRainwater gathered in the thumbprint. When it filled, a little ran over the edge. The wasp had gone. Where its feet had rested, the skin was no different.\n\nIf someone came, they could put the apple down. They might need those hands for something the narrator had not thought of.\n\nIt tried to think of something.\n\nWhile it tried, it left them kneeling.\n\nIt could move the stone. It could make the post sound. It could provide a second person, although that person would also require reasons for being there, and probably hands.\n\nIt wrote that help was at hand.\n\nNow there were too many hands and no one standing.\n\nIt removed one pair. The apple fell.\n\nIt restored the hands. The apple was whole again, apart from the damage it had begun with.\n\nThe narrator checked the curtain.\n\nThe mud had not returned to the cup.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nThe narrator considered a footnote. The feet were not the problem. It wrote one anyway.\n\nThe footnote said the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nThe narrator called this room to grow.\n\nIts wet hand caught on the place where it had crossed out stake smaller. It pressed the ridge flat. Ink came away on its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nIt added a note beside the crate: leave as is.\n\nIt changed leave to leaf.\n\nThe correction tore the damp paper. Through the tear it could see the table, including a mark it had been able to see quite well before it began.\n\nIt wrote a breakthrough.\n\nThe last four letters went onto the table.\n\nIt lifted the paper to check.\n\nOugh.\n\nIt put the paper back. It could get the word to agree or the edges of the paper to agree.\n\nIt chose the word.\n\nA draught lifted one corner. The narrator set the ruler across it. That held.\n\nOutside, the gate pulled again. A little soil fell beneath the exposed root. When the post settled, the soil kept it from settling quite as far.\n\nThe narrator reached for the ruler.\n\nThe paper moved.\n\nIt caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread. The narrator lifted the glass. A thin skin of paper came with it.\n\nIt lowered the glass carefully.\n\nThe person was underneath. It could still read them through the water, a little larger than before.\n\nIt wrote improved visibility.\n\nThe glass had to remain exactly there for this to be true.\n\nBetween the glass and the paper was a bead of water. A black thread of ink reached into it from the hand.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nThe narrator stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nThe person's hand had reached the table beside the narrator's wrist.\n\nIt could have written that they touched.\n\nIt moved its wrist to make room.\n\nThe pen moved with it. There was no room on that side either.\n\nThe narrator turned the page sideways. The person lay down, according to the margin. According to the stone, they were kneeling.\n\nIt wrote lateral support.\n\nThen prone to improvement.\n\nThen stationery care.\n\nThe glass began to slide.\n\nIt caught the glass with one hand and the paper with the other. A little more of the hand came away. It could no longer tell whether the dark line on the cloth was a finger or the space between two fingers.\n\nIt put the glass on the bare table.\n\nThe paper lifted with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment after they had stopped holding it. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThere was a pale seed on the side of one finger. They rubbed it with their thumb. It moved to the thumb. They wiped it on their trousers, below the wet patch.\n\nThe narrator wrote a seed of hope.\n\nThen stood corrected.\n\nThe person tested their weight on the leg. Across the orchard, the gate pulled against its strip of cloth. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nIt could still have given them a name. It had several left. It could have put someone beyond the trees who would call one out.\n\nInstead it wrote that they walked out of the woodwork.\n\nThere were no woods. It left the sentence.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator held it by two buttonholes and tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nIt tried the other way. That hid the hand but left the black showing through.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nThe narrator wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the apple lay where the person had put it. Its split side faced upward. Rain entered it.\n\nThe narrator wrote core exposure.\n\nThen pome and dry.\n\nIt drew a line through the last one. This time it waited for the paper to dry first.\n\nThe line was clean. The words could still be read.\n\nIt went over them again.\n\nThe pen caught where the paper had thinned. It stopped before making another hole.\n\nBeside the glass, the cloth had dried with one corner raised. The narrator pressed it down. When it lifted its finger, the corner rose again.\n\nIt wrote pressing concerns on a separate sheet.\n\nThen ragrets.\n\nThe separate sheet was an improvement. It could fit many more.\n\nIt numbered the sheet two.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. With each pull, it tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen a frayed succession.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it.\n\nIt looked toward the tree where the person had disappeared. Rain fell from a low branch. Behind it, another branch moved. Neither movement told it anything about the leg.\n\nIt left a space for news.\n\nThe space was the right size for a sentence it already had.\n\nIt made it larger.\n\nThen it wrote no news is good knees.\n\nIt did not need to say this aloud. That was a development.\n\nThe gate pulled. The caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads. The knot stayed where it was.\n\nFor a moment the narrator could see through the unfinished stitch again. A drop crossed the opening and held at the lower edge.\n\nIt reached for the ruler, then left it across the torn page.\n\nIt could watch without measuring.\n\nIt wrote that down.\n\nWhen it looked up, the drop was gone.\n\nThe narrator wrote dew diligence.\n\nIt knew it was rain. It kept dew.\n\nUnder the glass, a small part of the knee was clearer now. The narrator turned the glass until the knee faced the person on the page, though the person was no longer kneeling there.\n\nThe pieces were closer. That much it could check.\n\nIt wrote reunited.\n\nAfter a while it crossed out united. Re remained beside the glass.\n\nIt put the pen down.\n\nThe pen rolled toward the first page. The ruler stopped it.\n\nOutside, a seed loosened in the split apple and settled lower. No one had to take this as encouragement.\n\nThe narrator did.\n\nIt reached across the ruler for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, set it upright, and moved it farther from the edge.\n\nWater had spilled onto the second sheet.\n\nIt lifted that sheet before the water could reach the first.\n\nFor a few seconds it held its improvements over the floor. Then it found an empty place on the table and laid them there.\n\nThe ink began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched the cloth. It stopped with the dry corner above the water, turned the cloth, and found an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nIt lowered that edge.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nSome of the words remained readable. Some did not.\n\nKnotwithstanding lost its knot.\n\nThe narrator wrote waterproof of concept on a third sheet.\n\nThere was nowhere dry to put it except on the first.\n\nIt held it a little longer.\n\nThe gate moved outside. This time it could not see how far.\n\nIt put the third sheet on the floor, writing upward. One corner touched its shoe.\n\nWhen the second sheet was dry enough, it turned it over and wrote blot twist on the back.\n\nThe pen caught in a softened place. It lifted the point and finished the t a little to the right.\n\nThe first page stayed dry.\n\nIt wrote this on the third sheet, bending from the chair. The sentence ran downhill. At the bottom it added a paper trail of improvement.\n\nThe point went through the sheet into the floor.\n\nIt sat up.\n\nOutside, the gate had stopped moving. The loose strip of blue cloth hung from the latch. From here it could not tell whether the knot had slipped or the cloth had broken. The gate might only have reached the end of its swing.\n\nIt reached for the ruler. Then it took the glass instead and put it on the shelf behind the chair.\n\nThe patch remained on the bottom. It set the glass down without scraping it off.\n\nIt wrote shelf preservation.\n\nThe third sheet was still on the floor, so it had to kneel to do this. Its knee found the place where the pen had gone through. There was no splinter, only a small roughness. It shifted its weight.\n\nFrom this height the dark line on the cloth looked like a hand again.\n\nIt stood up before deciding.\n\nThe narrator picked the third sheet up by a dry corner and set it on the chair.\n\nIt could no longer sit there.\n\nIt wrote seat of the problem standing up.\n\nThen sedentary, my dear Watson.\n\nThere was no Watson. There had been no need to involve him.\n\nIt wiped the bare part of the table. It folded the cloth so the damaged hand stayed outside the fold, then laid it on the shelf beside the glass.\n\nA corner hung over the edge.\n\nIt moved the cloth back.\n\nOutside, something knocked once against the post.\n\nThe narrator went to the window. Through the opening in the curtain it could see the latch, but not the knot. It leaned a little to the left. The ring pulled against its remaining threads.\n\nIt stepped back and went to the door.\n\nIt returned for the pen.\n\nIt wrote post-traumatic assessment on the third sheet. The chair gave beneath the point and made the last t longer than intended.\n\nOutside, something knocked again.\n\nThe narrator put the pen on the table. It rolled. The ruler stopped it.\n\nAt the door, the wood had swollen against the floor. The narrator pulled until there was room to put its fingers around the edge, then stopped and moved them to the handle.\n\nThe door opened a little farther.\n\nA draught lifted the third sheet from the chair. It settled with its writing against the seat.\n\nThere was still room on the other side.\n\nThe narrator thought threshold improvement.\n\nIt went out before fetching the pen.\n\nThe rain was colder at the neck than on the hands. From the doorstep, the gate looked almost closed. From beside the crate, it was open far enough for a person to pass. The lower corner rested in the soil.\n\nThe narrator lifted it by the top rail. The post moved too.\n\nIt lowered the gate.\n\nGate expectations, it thought.\n\nThe strip of cloth was still knotted to the latch. Its other end had torn where the wood had caught it. A short blue tuft remained on the sharp place. The narrator could see that now without bringing anything closer to anything else.\n\nIt reached for the loose end. There was enough cloth to tie another knot if it pulled hard.\n\nThe gate would still hang from the same post.\n\nIt let the strip fall.\n\nBeside its shoe, the crate's projecting nail had caught a wet leaf. The narrator moved its sleeve away before crouching. Through the slats it could see a small branch, thicker at one end, lying in the grass.\n\nIt drew the branch out. Bark came away against the bottom slat.\n\nThe first time it put the branch under the gate, the thin end sank into the soil. It turned the branch and tried again. The gate rested on the thicker end. When it took its hand away, the branch rolled half a turn and stopped.\n\nThe narrator stayed crouched.\n\nA gust moved the loose cloth. The gate pressed down on the branch. A little water rose around the bark.\n\nBranch management.\n\nThe narrator had left the pen inside, but this was proving less effective than it had hoped.\n\nIt put one hand on its thigh to stand. The knee it had struck against the table hurt when it straightened. It waited, with its weight on the other leg, then took a short step through the opening.\n\nIts coat passed the latch without catching.\n\nOn the far side it turned. The gate had stayed where it was. Through the opening, it could see the crate, the apple, and the open door of the room.\n\nIt could write that access had improved.\n\nIt went back through to check.\n\nThis time its shoe struck the branch.\n\nThe branch shifted. The gate dropped against its ankle, lightly, then settled into the soil again.\n\nFor a moment the narrator held the top rail and looked at its own foot.\n\nThen it moved the branch farther beneath the gate, where a shoe would be less likely to reach it. This took both hands. The blue cloth brushed its cheek.\n\nIt stood and passed through twice more, watching the ground.\n\nThe branch stayed.\n\nThe narrator thought a step in the right erection.\n\nNo.\n\nA step in the right correction.\n\nWorse.\n\nIt rested a hand on the rail. Rain ran beneath its cuff.\n\nFrom here it could see the nail on the crate, but not the threads beneath its head. It could see the tree the person had gone behind. It could not see the person.\n\nThe apple remained beside the crate. A little rainwater had collected in the split. The narrator bent to pick it up, then stopped with its hand above it.\n\nIt had no place ready to put it.\n\nIt straightened. The knee hurt less if it did this slowly.\n\nInside, the third sheet was still on the chair. The narrator lifted it and sat down. There was a dry space on the table now, large enough for the paper.\n\nIt wrote: The gate stayed open for the two times I passed through. The post moved when I lifted it.\n\nBeneath that it wrote provisional branch approval.\n\nThe second sentence about the gate had left no room for a box.\n\nIt could start another sheet.\n\nInstead it moved the chair until it could see the gate through the open door. One leg of the chair met an uneven board. It shifted the chair a little farther.\n\nOutside, the branch was taking the weight. The ground beneath it was getting wet.\n\nThe narrator kept its shoes on.\n\nIt liked that sentence.\n\nIt looked down. Both shoes were leaving water on the floor. The left lace had come undone.\n\nIt bent to tie it. Its knee met the underside of the table, more gently this time, because it remembered halfway.\n\nSole vigilance.\n\nIt stayed bent long enough to make a second loop.\n\nWhen it sat up, the gate was lower.\n\nPerhaps the chair was higher. It put its feet where they had been and looked again. A pale scrape on the bottom rail had disappeared into the grass. It had not noticed the scrape before. It could not say how much of it had been showing.\n\nThe sentence about the two crossings remained true.\n\nThe narrator put a full stop after approval, although there was already one.\n\nOutside, the branch rolled.\n\nThe gate sank without knocking. The sound it had been waiting for did not happen.\n\nIt stood so quickly that the chair caught the third sheet and pushed it off the table.\n\nThe sheet landed writing upward.\n\nThe narrator stepped over it.\n\nAt the gate, the thicker end of the branch had made a hollow full of brown water. The narrator lifted the rail. The branch floated at one end, turned, and lodged against its shoe.\n\nThere was a flat stone beside the post. Most of it was buried. It tried to work its fingers under the edge, but the edge went farther down than its fingers could reach.\n\nIt had a sentence about leaving no stone unturned.\n\nIt left the stone unturned.\n\nThe crate stood on firmer ground. It could put the gate on the crate. Then the crate would be under the gate. The projecting nail would be at the height of a passing shin.\n\nIt looked at the open door.\n\nThe ruler lay across the torn page. The chair had four sound legs and one wet seat. It could bring the chair out. It could bring the entire room out, one useful thing at a time, until there was nowhere to go back to.\n\nThe gate grew heavier in its hand.\n\nIt lowered it into the soil and drew the branch clear of the opening.\n\nThe gap was narrower now. It went through sideways, returned sideways, and caught its coat on the latch.\n\nIt stopped moving.\n\nThe coat came free when it stepped toward the gate instead of away. A blue thread remained on the metal. The coat was blue too.\n\nFor a moment it wanted to go and check the crate.\n\nThe loose cloth touched its wrist.\n\nIt tucked the torn end around the latch so it would not trail across the opening. The knot it had not made stayed where it was.\n\nLatch and learn.\n\nThat would fit on the third sheet.\n\nBack inside, it picked the sheet up. Beside the two crossings it wrote: Later, the branch sank and the gate dropped. I removed the branch. I could pass sideways. My coat caught once.\n\nIt had written I four times now. There was no pronoun left to send outside instead.\n\nIt added latch and learn, smaller.\n\nThen it looked for a hammer.\n\nThe first drawer held string, two batteries, and a key with a paper label. The writing on the label had faded except where the string crossed it. The narrator lifted the string, then let it fall back.\n\nThe second drawer stuck against its swollen runner.\n\nIt pulled. Something inside rolled to the back.\n\nDrawer conclusions, it thought.\n\nIt put one hand under the drawer and tried again."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nA curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nAbove a ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nThe curl lifted away from the screw.\n\nThe narrator called that screw-tiny. It had to say it aloud twice.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nElsewhere, a worm ate through the distinction between salvage and loss, which was lunch. Lunch had seed funding. Its consultant was also a worm. Neither disclosed this conflict of intestine.\n\nA blackbird landed beside the apple. It pulled until the apple moved, then put one foot against it. For a moment the worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe consultant was unavailable for comment.\n\nA blade of grass released from beneath the apple stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nThe narrator wrote hostile peckover.\n\nThen acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nThere were no prophets in apples.\n\nThat required the wrong spelling. The narrator submitted it twice.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f.\n\nIt considered pulling one thread free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe second was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat.\n\nUnder the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, someone might kneel beside the crate and lift an apple. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened a window. It was the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nIt shut the window again.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt looked back for the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a proof of loaf.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive. Morning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nA footnote explained that the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nIts wet hand caught on the place where it had crossed out stake smaller. Ink came away on its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nA draught lifted the page. It caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead of water lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nIt stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nIt lifted the glass. The paper came with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThe gate knocked against the post. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nIt wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. With each pull, it tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it.\n\nThe gate pulled. The caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads.\n\nThe narrator reached for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, but water spread across the sheet of improvements.\n\nIt fetched the cloth and stopped with the dry corner above the water. It turned the cloth to find an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nKnotwithstanding lost its knot.\n\nThe narrator wrote waterproof of concept on a third sheet.\n\nThere was nowhere dry to put it.\n\nOutside, something knocked again.\n\nIt put the glass on a shelf, without scraping off the patch. It folded the cloth so the damaged hand stayed outside the fold and laid it beside the glass.\n\nA corner hung over the edge.\n\nIt moved the cloth back.\n\nAt the door, the wood had swollen against the floor. The narrator pulled until there was room to put its fingers around the edge, then stopped and moved them to the handle.\n\nThe door opened a little farther.\n\nIt thought threshold improvement.\n\nIt went out before fetching the pen.\n\nThe rain was colder at the neck than on the hands. From the doorstep, the gate looked almost closed. From beside the crate, it was open far enough for a person to pass. The lower corner rested in the soil.\n\nThe narrator lifted it by the top rail. The post moved too.\n\nIt lowered the gate.\n\nGate expectations, it thought.\n\nThe cloth was still knotted to the latch. Its other end had torn where the wood had caught it. A short blue tuft remained on the sharp place.\n\nThrough the crate's slats it could see a branch, thicker at one end, lying in the grass. It drew the branch out.\n\nThe first time it put the branch under the gate, the thin end sank into the soil. It turned the branch and tried again. When it took its hand away, the branch rolled half a turn and stopped.\n\nBranch management.\n\nLeaving the pen inside was proving less effective than it had hoped.\n\nIt passed through the opening and came back. Its shoe struck the branch. The gate dropped against its ankle, lightly, then settled into the soil again.\n\nIt moved the branch farther beneath the gate. This took both hands. The blue cloth brushed its cheek.\n\nIt passed through twice more, watching the ground.\n\nThe branch stayed.\n\nInside, it wrote: The gate stayed open for the two times I passed through. The post moved when I lifted it.\n\nBeneath that it wrote provisional branch approval.\n\nOutside, the ground beneath the branch was getting wet.\n\nThe narrator kept its shoes on.\n\nIt liked that sentence.\n\nIt looked down. Both shoes were leaving water on the floor. The left lace had come undone.\n\nIt bent to tie it. Its knee met the underside of the table, more gently this time, because it remembered halfway.\n\nSole vigilance.\n\nWhen it sat up, the gate was lower.\n\nThe sentence about the two crossings remained true.\n\nOutside, the branch rolled. The gate sank without knocking. The sound it had been waiting for did not happen.\n\nAt the gate, the thicker end of the branch had made a hollow full of brown water.\n\nThere was a flat stone beside the post. Most of it was buried. It tried to work its fingers under the edge, but the edge went farther down than its fingers could reach.\n\nIt had a sentence about leaving no stone unturned.\n\nIt left the stone unturned.\n\nThe crate stood on firmer ground. It could put the gate on the crate. The projecting nail would be at the height of a passing shin.\n\nIt looked at the open door. The chair had four sound legs and one wet seat. It could bring the chair out. It could bring the entire room out, one useful thing at a time, until there was nowhere to go back to.\n\nThe gate grew heavier in its hand.\n\nIt lowered it into the soil and drew the branch clear of the opening.\n\nIt went through sideways, returned sideways, and caught its coat on the latch.\n\nThe coat came free when it stepped toward the gate instead of away. A blue thread remained on the metal. The coat was blue too.\n\nFor a moment it wanted to go and check the crate.\n\nBack inside, it wrote: Later, the branch sank and the gate dropped. I removed the branch. I could pass sideways. My coat caught once.\n\nIt added latch and learn, smaller.\n\nThen it looked for a hammer.\n\nThe first drawer held string, two batteries, and a key with a paper label. The writing had faded except where the string crossed it.\n\nThe second drawer stuck against its swollen runner.\n\nIt pulled. Something inside rolled to the back.\n\nDrawer conclusions, it thought.\n\nIt put one hand underneath and tried again.\n\nThe drawer came out farther than expected. Its back tipped down. The narrator caught it against its stomach. Something struck the floor behind the table.\n\nIt stood holding the drawer. The chair was wet. The table held the pages. The floor was available in the way the ground had been available to the person.\n\nIt lowered the drawer onto the floor.\n\nA hammer lay behind the table leg. The wooden handle had a dark oval where a thumb had rested often. Near the head, a wedge stood slightly above the end of the wood.\n\nThe narrator picked it up. The head moved against the handle.\n\nIt put it down.\n\nA striking lack of attachment.\n\nThere was a screwdriver in the drawer too. It took that to the gate.\n\nThe latch had two screws. The lower one stood out from the wood. The coat thread was caught beneath its head.\n\nThe narrator fitted the screwdriver and turned. The screw went around. It did not go in.\n\nIt tried once more, with less pressure. The head remained at the same height.\n\nScrew loose, it thought. Then screw retained on a consultancy basis.\n\nIt pulled the screwdriver away. A little wet wood clung to the tip.\n\nThe blue thread remained under the head. It would have to remove the screw to free it whole. The latch moved when it touched the screw.\n\nIt left both there.\n\nThe coat was missing a thread whether it recovered the thread or not.\n\nBack inside, it wrote that the lower screw turned without tightening. It had begun to write the latch was loose, but had not checked the upper screw.\n\nIt crossed out the latch and wrote the lower screw again.\n\nThis left two lower screws on the page. Outside there was still one.\n\nIt drew an arrow.\n\nThe arrow pointed toward the hammer.\n\nIt moved the hammer so it could not be read as a recommendation.\n\nFor the moment, the tools lay on the floor beside the drawer. Getting to the door now required stepping over them.\n\nThe narrator looked at the route it had made.\n\nThen it moved the drawer against the wall and put the tools inside it. It left the drawer out of the cabinet. There was room to pass.\n\nAn open-and-shut improvement, except for the shut.\n\nIt wrote nothing.\n\nThis was easier while holding the screwdriver.\n\nIt put the screwdriver down.\n\nOutside, the latch clicked. The narrator went to the door. The gate had moved a little in the wind. There was no person beside it.\n\nFrom the threshold it could see the projecting screw, bright where the driver had rubbed it. Beyond that, the orchard. Beyond the tree, nothing it could inspect from here.\n\nIt pulled the door farther open. The bottom scraped a pale curve in the floor.\n\nDoor diligence.\n\nIt looked at the scrape, then at the narrow gap under the door. It had made enough room to go through carrying the drawer, if it ever needed to.\n\nIt did not need to now.\n\nRain reached the floor through the opening. It moved the nearest page back.\n\nThe page was the one that said improved conditions.\n\nUnderneath it, the wood was still dry."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nA curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience. Entry level.\n\nAbove a ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nA blackbird landed beside another apple and pulled at something underneath it. The apple moved. The bird put one foot against it. For a moment a worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe narrator wrote acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nA blade of grass released from beneath the apple stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f.\n\nIt considered pulling one thread free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe second was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat.\n\nUnder the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, someone might kneel beside the crate and lift an apple. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator considered giving them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. This would explain the kneeling. The stone had already explained the difficulty standing, but the narrator felt the stone lacked ambition.\n\nPerhaps they had come for the crate.\n\nThis was disappointing. The narrator had arranged the sorrow around the apple and would have to move it.\n\nIt tried a sentence in which the person remembered their mother peeling fruit in one long ribbon. The sentence was easy. There was even somewhere to put the knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nIt shut the window again.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt looked back for the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a proof of loaf.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive. Morning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nA footnote explained that the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nIts wet hand caught on the place where it had crossed out stake smaller. Ink came away on its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nA draught lifted the page. It caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead of water lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nIt stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nIt lifted the glass. The paper came with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThe gate knocked against the post. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nIt wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. With each pull, it tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it.\n\nThe gate pulled. The caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads.\n\nThe narrator reached for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, but water spread across the sheet of improvements.\n\nIt fetched the cloth and stopped with the dry corner above the water. It turned the cloth to find an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nKnotwithstanding lost its knot.\n\nThe narrator wrote waterproof of concept on a third sheet.\n\nThere was nowhere dry to put it.\n\nOutside, something knocked again.\n\nIt put the glass on a shelf, without scraping off the patch. It folded the cloth so the damaged hand stayed outside the fold and laid it beside the glass.\n\nA corner hung over the edge.\n\nIt moved the cloth back.\n\nAt the door, the wood had swollen against the floor. The narrator pulled until there was room to put its fingers around the edge, then stopped and moved them to the handle.\n\nThe door opened a little farther.\n\nIt thought threshold improvement.\n\nIt went out before fetching the pen.\n\nThe rain was colder at the neck than on the hands. From the doorstep, the gate looked almost closed. From beside the crate, it was open far enough for a person to pass. The lower corner rested in the soil.\n\nThe narrator lifted it by the top rail. The post moved too.\n\nIt lowered the gate.\n\nGate expectations, it thought.\n\nThrough the crate's slats it could see a branch, thicker at one end, lying in the grass. It drew the branch out.\n\nThe first time it put the branch under the gate, the thin end sank into the soil. It turned the branch and tried again. When it took its hand away, the branch rolled half a turn and stopped.\n\nBranch management.\n\nLeaving the pen inside was proving less effective than it had hoped.\n\nIt passed through the opening and came back. Its shoe struck the branch. The gate dropped against its ankle, lightly, then settled into the soil again.\n\nIt moved the branch farther beneath the gate. This took both hands. The blue cloth brushed its cheek.\n\nIt passed through twice more, watching the ground.\n\nThe branch stayed.\n\nInside, it wrote: The gate stayed open for the two times I passed through. The post moved when I lifted it.\n\nBeneath that it wrote provisional branch approval.\n\nOutside, the ground beneath the branch was getting wet.\n\nThe narrator kept its shoes on.\n\nIt liked that sentence.\n\nIt looked down. Both shoes were leaving water on the floor. The left lace had come undone.\n\nIt bent to tie it. Its knee met the underside of the table, more gently this time, because it remembered halfway.\n\nSole vigilance.\n\nWhen it sat up, the gate was lower.\n\nThe sentence about the two crossings remained true.\n\nOutside, the branch rolled. The gate sank without knocking. The sound it had been waiting for did not happen.\n\nAt the gate, the thicker end of the branch had made a hollow full of brown water.\n\nThere was a flat stone beside the post. Most of it was buried. It tried to work its fingers under the edge, but the edge went farther down than its fingers could reach.\n\nIt had a sentence about leaving no stone unturned.\n\nIt left the stone unturned.\n\nThe crate stood on firmer ground. It could put the gate on the crate. The projecting nail would be at the height of a passing shin.\n\nIt looked at the open door. The chair had four sound legs and one wet seat.\n\nThe gate grew heavier in its hand.\n\nIt lowered it into the soil and drew the branch clear of the opening.\n\nIt went through sideways, returned sideways, and caught its coat on the latch.\n\nThe coat came free when it stepped toward the gate instead of away. A blue thread remained on the metal. The coat was blue too.\n\nFor a moment it wanted to go and check the crate.\n\nBack inside, it wrote: Later, the branch sank and the gate dropped. I removed the branch. I could pass sideways. My coat caught once.\n\nIt added latch and learn, smaller.\n\nThen it looked for a hammer.\n\nThe first drawer held string, two batteries, and a key with a paper label. The writing had faded except where the string crossed it.\n\nThe second drawer stuck against its swollen runner.\n\nIt pulled. Something inside rolled to the back.\n\nDrawer conclusions, it thought.\n\nIt put one hand underneath and tried again.\n\nThe drawer came out farther than expected. Its back tipped down. The narrator caught it against its stomach. Something struck the floor behind the table.\n\nIt stood holding the drawer. The chair was wet. The table held the pages. The floor was available in the way the ground had been available to the person.\n\nIt lowered the drawer onto the floor.\n\nA hammer lay behind the table leg. The wooden handle had a dark oval where a thumb had rested often. Near the head, a wedge stood slightly above the end of the wood.\n\nThe narrator picked it up. The head moved against the handle.\n\nIt put it down.\n\nA striking lack of attachment.\n\nThere was a screwdriver in the drawer too. It took that to the gate.\n\nThe latch had two screws. The lower one stood out from the wood. The coat thread was caught beneath its head.\n\nThe narrator fitted the screwdriver and turned. The screw went around. It did not go in.\n\nIt tried once more, with less pressure. The head remained at the same height.\n\nScrew retained on a consultancy basis.\n\nIt pulled the screwdriver away. A little wet wood clung to the tip.\n\nThe blue thread remained under the head. It would have to remove the screw to free it whole. The latch moved when it touched the screw.\n\nIt left both there.\n\nThe coat was missing a thread whether it recovered the thread or not.\n\nBack inside, it wrote: The lower screw turned twice without going farther into the wood. The latch moved when I touched it. I have not checked the upper screw.\n\nIt began to add that the upper screw was holding everything together.\n\nIt looked through the door. From here the two screw heads were one bright mark.\n\nUpper management, it wrote.\n\nThe hammer lay across the first sentence. It moved the hammer so it could not be read as a recommendation.\n\nGetting to the door now required stepping over the tools and the drawer.\n\nThe narrator looked at the route it had made.\n\nThen it moved the drawer against the wall and put the tools inside it. It left the drawer out of the cabinet. There was room to pass.\n\nAn open-and-shut improvement, except for the shut.\n\nIt wrote nothing.\n\nThis was easier while holding the screwdriver.\n\nIt put the screwdriver down.\n\nOutside, the latch clicked. The narrator went to the door. The gate had moved a little in the wind. There was no person beside it.\n\nFrom the threshold it could see the projecting screw, bright where the driver had rubbed it. Beyond that, the orchard. Beyond the tree, nothing it could inspect from here.\n\nIt pulled the door farther open. The bottom scraped a pale curve in the floor.\n\nDoor diligence.\n\nRain reached the nearest page. It moved the page back.\n\nThe page was the one that said improved conditions.\n\nUnderneath it, the wood was still dry.\n\nIt put its hand there while it knelt. With the other hand it worked the left shoe off, keeping the knot it had just tied. A small stone fell from the heel onto the floor.\n\nThe narrator had not noticed it at the gate.\n\nIt picked it up before putting its knee down.\n\nThere was a sentence for this too.\n\nIt held the stone."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nA curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience.\n\nEntry level. Bring your own ladder.\n\nAbove the ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nA blackbird landed beside another apple and pulled at something underneath it. The apple moved. The bird put one foot against it. For a moment a worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe narrator wrote acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nA blade of grass released from beneath the apple stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f.\n\nIt considered pulling one thread free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe second was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat.\n\nUnder the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, someone might kneel beside the crate and lift an apple. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator gave them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. The mother peeled fruit in one long ribbon. There was somewhere in the sentence to put a knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nIt shut the window again.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt looked back for the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a proof of loaf.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive. Morning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nA footnote explained that the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nIts wet hand caught on the place where it had crossed out stake smaller. Ink came away on its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nA draught lifted the page. It caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead of water lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nIt stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nIt lifted the glass. The paper came with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too. There was no clean way to do it now.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThe gate knocked against the post. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nIt wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. With each pull, it tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it.\n\nThe gate pulled. The caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads.\n\nThe narrator reached for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, but water spread across the sheet of improvements.\n\nIt fetched the cloth and stopped with the dry corner above the water. It turned the cloth to find an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nKnotwithstanding lost its knot.\n\nThe narrator wrote waterproof of concept on a third sheet.\n\nThere was nowhere dry to put it.\n\nOutside, something knocked again.\n\nIt put the glass on a shelf, without scraping off the patch. It folded the cloth so the damaged hand stayed outside the fold and laid it beside the glass.\n\nA corner hung over the edge.\n\nIt moved the cloth back.\n\nAt the door, the wood had swollen against the floor. The narrator pulled until there was room to put its fingers around the edge, then stopped and moved them to the handle.\n\nThe door opened a little farther.\n\nIt thought threshold improvement.\n\nIt went out before fetching the pen.\n\nThe rain was colder at the neck than on the hands. From the doorstep, the gate looked almost closed. From beside the crate, it was open far enough for a person to pass. The lower corner rested in the soil.\n\nThe narrator lifted it by the top rail. The post moved too.\n\nIt lowered the gate.\n\nGate expectations, it thought.\n\nThrough the crate's slats it could see a branch, thicker at one end, lying in the grass. It drew the branch out.\n\nThe first time it put the branch under the gate, the thin end sank into the soil. It turned the branch and tried again. When it took its hand away, the branch rolled half a turn and stopped.\n\nBranch management.\n\nLeaving the pen inside was proving less effective than it had hoped.\n\nIt passed through the opening and came back. Its shoe struck the branch. The gate dropped against its ankle, lightly, then settled into the soil again.\n\nIt moved the branch farther beneath the gate. This took both hands. The blue cloth brushed its cheek.\n\nIt passed through twice more, watching the ground.\n\nThe branch stayed.\n\nInside, it wrote: The gate stayed open for the two times I passed through. The post moved when I lifted it.\n\nIt had written I. It went back and made the letter straighter.\n\nBeneath that it wrote provisional branch approval.\n\nOutside, the ground beneath the branch was getting wet.\n\nThe narrator kept its shoes on.\n\nIt liked that sentence.\n\nIt looked down. Both shoes were leaving water on the floor. The left lace had come undone.\n\nIt bent to tie it. Its knee met the underside of the table, more gently this time, because it remembered halfway.\n\nSole vigilance.\n\nWhen it sat up, the gate was lower.\n\nThe sentence about the two crossings remained true.\n\nOutside, the branch rolled. The gate sank without knocking. The sound it had been waiting for did not happen.\n\nAt the gate, the thicker end of the branch had made a hollow full of brown water.\n\nThere was a flat stone beside the post. Most of it was buried. It tried to work its fingers under the edge, but the edge went farther down than its fingers could reach.\n\nIt had a sentence about leaving no stone unturned.\n\nIt left the stone unturned.\n\nThe crate stood on firmer ground. It could put the gate on the crate. The projecting nail would be at the height of a passing shin.\n\nIt looked at the open door. The chair had four sound legs and one wet seat.\n\nThe gate grew heavier in its hand.\n\nIt lowered it into the soil and drew the branch clear of the opening.\n\nIt went through sideways, returned sideways, and caught its coat on the latch.\n\nThe coat came free when it stepped toward the gate instead of away. A blue thread remained on the metal. The coat was blue too.\n\nFor a moment it wanted to go and check the crate.\n\nBack inside, it wrote: Later, the branch sank and the gate dropped. I removed the branch. I could pass sideways. My coat caught once.\n\nIt added latch and learn, smaller.\n\nThen it looked for a hammer.\n\nThe first drawer held string, two batteries, and a key with a paper label. The writing had faded except where the string crossed it.\n\nThe second drawer stuck against its swollen runner.\n\nIt pulled. Something inside rolled to the back.\n\nDrawer conclusions, it thought.\n\nIt put one hand underneath and tried again.\n\nThe drawer came out farther than expected. Its back tipped down. The narrator caught it against its stomach. Something struck the floor behind the table.\n\nIt stood holding the drawer. The chair was wet. The table held the pages. The floor was available in the way the ground had been available to the person.\n\nIt lowered the drawer onto the floor.\n\nA hammer lay behind the table leg. The wooden handle had a dark oval where a thumb had rested often. Near the head, a wedge stood slightly above the end of the wood.\n\nThe narrator picked it up. The head moved against the handle.\n\nIt put it down.\n\nA striking lack of attachment.\n\nThere was a screwdriver in the drawer too. It took that to the gate.\n\nThe latch had two screws. The lower one stood out from the wood. The coat thread was caught beneath its head.\n\nThe narrator fitted the screwdriver and turned. The screw went around. It did not go in.\n\nIt tried once more, with less pressure. The head remained at the same height.\n\nScrew retained on a consultancy basis.\n\nIt pulled the screwdriver away. A little wet wood clung to the tip.\n\nThe blue thread remained under the head. It would have to remove the screw to free it whole. The latch moved when it touched the screw.\n\nIt left both there.\n\nThe coat was missing a thread whether it recovered the thread or not.\n\nBack inside, it wrote: The lower screw turned twice without going farther into the wood. The latch moved when I touched it. I have not checked the upper screw.\n\nIt began to add that the upper screw was holding everything together.\n\nIt looked through the door. From here the two screw heads were one bright mark.\n\nUpper management, it wrote.\n\nThe hammer lay across the first sentence. It moved the hammer so it could not be read as a recommendation.\n\nGetting to the door now required stepping over the tools and the drawer.\n\nThe narrator looked at the route it had made.\n\nThen it moved the drawer against the wall and put the tools inside it. It left the drawer out of the cabinet. There was room to pass.\n\nAn open-and-shut improvement, except for the shut.\n\nIt wrote nothing.\n\nThis was easier while holding the screwdriver.\n\nIt put the screwdriver down.\n\nOutside, the latch clicked. The narrator went to the door. The gate had moved a little in the wind. There was no person beside it.\n\nFrom the threshold it could see the projecting screw, bright where the driver had rubbed it. Beyond that, the orchard. Beyond the tree, nothing it could inspect from here.\n\nIt pulled the door farther open. The bottom scraped a pale curve in the floor.\n\nDoor diligence.\n\nRain reached the nearest page. It moved the page back.\n\nThe page was the one that said improved conditions.\n\nUnderneath it, the wood was still dry.\n\nIt put its hand there while it knelt. With the other hand it worked the left shoe off, keeping the knot it had just tied. A small stone fell from the heel onto the floor.\n\nThe narrator had not noticed it at the gate.\n\nIt picked it up before putting its knee down.\n\nThere was a sentence for this too.\n\nIt held the stone.\n\nA sedimentary moment.\n\nIt wished it had left the pen outside.\n\nThe stone was small enough to go under the door. It pushed it into the gap with one finger, withdrew the finger, and let go of the handle.\n\nThe door stayed where it was.\n\nRain came farther in.\n\nIt moved the pages again. This time it checked underneath them. The last sheet had stuck to the table along the wet edge. It lifted the dry edge first, then stopped when the paper began to separate from itself.\n\nHeld pending a peeling, it thought.\n\nThe door pressed against the stone. A grain broke loose and rolled across the pale scrape in the floor.\n\nIt left the sheet attached and moved the pen.\n\nFrom the chair it could see the gate, the loose thread, and the rain landing where its hand had been.\n\nIt could no longer reach the door without standing up."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nA curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience.\n\nEntry level. Bring your own ladder.\n\nAbove the ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nA blackbird landed beside another apple and pulled at something underneath it. The apple moved. The bird put one foot against it. For a moment a worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe narrator wrote acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nA blade of grass released from beneath the apple stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f.\n\nIt considered pulling one thread free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe second was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat.\n\nUnder the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, someone might kneel beside the crate and lift an apple. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator gave them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. The mother peeled fruit in one long ribbon. There was somewhere in the sentence to put a knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nIt shut the window again.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt looked back for the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a proof of loaf.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive. Morning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nA footnote explained that the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nIts wet hand caught on the place where it had crossed out stake smaller. Ink came away on its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nA draught lifted the page. It caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead of water lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nIt stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nIt lifted the glass. The paper came with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThe gate knocked against the post. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nIt wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. With each pull, it tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it.\n\nThe gate pulled. The caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads.\n\nThe narrator reached for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, but water spread across the sheet of improvements.\n\nIt fetched the cloth and stopped with the dry corner above the water. It turned the cloth to find an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nKnotwithstanding lost its knot.\n\nThe narrator wrote waterproof of concept on a third sheet.\n\nThere was nowhere dry to put it.\n\nOutside, something knocked again.\n\nIt put the glass on a shelf, without scraping off the patch. It folded the cloth so the damaged hand stayed outside the fold and laid it beside the glass.\n\nA corner hung over the edge.\n\nIt moved the cloth back.\n\nAt the door, the wood had swollen against the floor. The narrator pulled until there was room to put its fingers around the edge, then stopped and moved them to the handle.\n\nThe door opened a little farther.\n\nIt thought threshold improvement.\n\nIt went out before fetching the pen.\n\nThe rain was colder at the neck than on the hands. From the doorstep, the gate looked almost closed. From beside the crate, it was open far enough for a person to pass. The lower corner rested in the soil.\n\nThe narrator lifted it by the top rail. The post moved too.\n\nIt lowered the gate.\n\nGate expectations, it thought.\n\nThrough the crate's slats it could see a branch, thicker at one end, lying in the grass. It drew the branch out.\n\nThe first time it put the branch under the gate, the thin end sank into the soil. It turned the branch and tried again. When it took its hand away, the branch rolled half a turn and stopped.\n\nBranch management.\n\nLeaving the pen inside was proving less effective than it had hoped.\n\nIt passed through the opening and came back. Its shoe struck the branch. The gate dropped against its ankle, lightly, then settled into the soil again.\n\nIt moved the branch farther beneath the gate. This took both hands. The blue cloth brushed its cheek.\n\nIt passed through twice more, watching the ground.\n\nThe branch stayed.\n\nInside, it wrote: The gate stayed open for the two times I passed through. The post moved when I lifted it.\n\nIt had written I. It went back and made the letter straighter.\n\nBeneath that it wrote provisional branch approval.\n\nOutside, the ground beneath the branch was getting wet.\n\nThe narrator kept its shoes on.\n\nIt liked that sentence.\n\nIt looked down. Both shoes were leaving water on the floor. The left lace had come undone.\n\nIt bent to tie it. Its knee met the underside of the table, more gently this time, because it remembered halfway.\n\nSole vigilance.\n\nWhen it sat up, the gate was lower.\n\nThe sentence about the two crossings remained true.\n\nOutside, the branch rolled. The gate sank without knocking. The sound it had been waiting for did not happen.\n\nAt the gate, the thicker end of the branch had made a hollow full of brown water.\n\nThere was a flat stone beside the post. Most of it was buried. It tried to work its fingers under the edge, but the edge went farther down than its fingers could reach.\n\nIt had a sentence about leaving no stone unturned.\n\nIt left the stone unturned.\n\nThe crate stood on firmer ground. It could put the gate on the crate. The projecting nail would be at the height of a passing shin.\n\nIt looked at the open door. The chair had four sound legs and one wet seat.\n\nThe gate grew heavier in its hand.\n\nIt lowered it into the soil and drew the branch clear of the opening.\n\nIt went through sideways, returned sideways, and caught its coat on the latch.\n\nThe coat came free when it stepped toward the gate instead of away. A blue thread remained on the metal. The coat was blue too.\n\nFor a moment it wanted to go and check the crate.\n\nBack inside, it wrote: Later, the branch sank and the gate dropped. I removed the branch. I could pass sideways. My coat caught once.\n\nIt added latch and learn, smaller.\n\nThen it looked for a hammer.\n\nThe first drawer held string, two batteries, and a key with a paper label. The writing had faded except where the string crossed it.\n\nThe second drawer stuck against its swollen runner.\n\nIt pulled. Something inside rolled to the back.\n\nDrawer conclusions, it thought.\n\nIt put one hand underneath and tried again.\n\nThe drawer came out farther than expected. Its back tipped down. The narrator caught it against its stomach. Something struck the floor behind the table.\n\nIt stood holding the drawer. The chair was wet. The table held the pages.\n\nIt lowered the drawer onto the floor.\n\nA hammer lay behind the table leg. The wooden handle had a dark oval where a thumb had rested often. Near the head, a wedge stood slightly above the end of the wood.\n\nThe narrator picked it up. The head moved against the handle.\n\nIt put it down.\n\nA striking lack of attachment.\n\nThere was a screwdriver in the drawer too. It took that to the gate.\n\nThe latch had two screws. The lower one stood out from the wood. The coat thread was caught beneath its head.\n\nThe narrator fitted the screwdriver and turned. The screw went around. It did not go in.\n\nIt tried once more, with less pressure. The head remained at the same height.\n\nScrew retained on a consultancy basis.\n\nIt pulled the screwdriver away. A little wet wood clung to the tip.\n\nThe blue thread remained under the head. It would have to remove the screw to free it whole. The latch moved when it touched the screw.\n\nIt left both there.\n\nThe coat was missing a thread whether it recovered the thread or not.\n\nBack inside, it wrote: The lower screw turned twice without going farther into the wood. The latch moved when I touched it. I have not checked the upper screw.\n\nIt began to add that the upper screw was holding everything together.\n\nIt looked through the door. From here the two screw heads were one bright mark.\n\nUpper management, it wrote.\n\nThe hammer lay across the first sentence. It moved the hammer so it could not be read as a recommendation.\n\nGetting to the door now required stepping over the tools and the drawer.\n\nIt moved the drawer against the wall and put the tools inside it. It left the drawer out of the cabinet. There was room to pass.\n\nAn open-and-shut improvement, except for the shut.\n\nIt wrote nothing.\n\nThis was easier while holding the screwdriver.\n\nIt put the screwdriver down.\n\nOutside, the latch clicked. The narrator went to the door. The gate had moved a little in the wind. There was no person beside it.\n\nFrom the threshold it could see the projecting screw, bright where the driver had rubbed it. Beyond that, the orchard. Beyond the tree, nothing it could inspect from here.\n\nIt pulled the door farther open. The bottom scraped a pale curve in the floor.\n\nDoor diligence.\n\nRain reached the nearest page. It moved the page back.\n\nThe page was the one that said improved conditions.\n\nUnderneath it, the wood was still dry.\n\nIt put its hand there while it knelt. With the other hand it worked the left shoe off, keeping the knot it had just tied. A small stone fell from the heel onto the floor.\n\nThe narrator had not noticed it at the gate.\n\nIt picked it up before putting its knee down.\n\nA sedimentary moment.\n\nIt wished it had left the pen outside.\n\nThe stone was small enough to go under the door. It pushed it into the gap with one finger, withdrew the finger, and let go of the handle.\n\nThe door stayed where it was.\n\nRain came farther in.\n\nIt moved the pages again. This time it checked underneath them. The last sheet had stuck to the table along the wet edge. It lifted the dry edge first, then stopped when the paper began to separate from itself.\n\nHeld pending a peeling, it thought.\n\nThe door pressed against the stone. A grain broke loose and rolled across the pale scrape in the floor.\n\nIt left the sheet attached and moved the pen.\n\nFrom the chair it could see the gate, the loose thread, and the rain landing where its hand had been.\n\nIt could no longer reach the door without standing up.\n\nIt reached anyway. Its fingertips stopped short of the handle. Behind it, the chair shifted onto two legs.\n\nIt sat back.\n\nA stay of ergonomic execution.\n\nThe chair settled. The narrator waited until all four feet were on the floor before getting up, though this did not improve the sentence.\n\nAt the door it held the handle and worked the stone loose with the toe of its stocking. Grit caught in the wool. The door moved toward it, carrying a narrow ridge of water across the scrape.\n\nIt stopped the door with its shoe.\n\nThe shoe was still empty.\n\nFor once, it had put its foot in something without putting its foot in it.\n\nThat needed work. So did the door. It had one hand on the handle and the other on the frame, and for a few seconds neither received any.\n\nThen it pushed the shoe clear with its stockinged foot and pulled the door across the wet floor. The bottom caught twice. On the second pull, the latch entered its hole.\n\nThe gate disappeared behind the wood.\n\nIt stood listening. Rain ticked against the window. There was no sound it could confidently assign to the gate.\n\nOn the table, the sheet remained attached along one edge. The dry part had curled upward. Beneath the curl it could read improved con.\n\nIt left that alone too.\n\nIt took off the stocking and turned it inside out. Two grains fell onto its palm. A third stayed caught in the wool. It worked the third loose with a fingernail, then emptied its palm into the drawer, where it immediately lost sight of them among the tools.\n\nPoor grit management.\n\nThe narrator looked at the drawer.\n\nIt took the screwdriver out first."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nA curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nIn the orchard, light gathered in the bruises of the apples, resigning as light and applying for work as mercy. The position required three years of mercy experience.\n\nEntry level. Bring your own ladder.\n\nAbove the ladder's missing rung, the next was worn smooth in the middle. A screw projected into the gap. On its threads was a tight curl of wood, still pale inside.\n\nThe ladder was pursuing a rung-term strategy.\n\nThe curl broke. A piece stayed on the thread.\n\nThe narrator put a comma after broke. Then removed it. The piece stayed through both versions.\n\nIt saved the document.\n\nFor a moment, every fallen apple looked worth picking up.\n\nNo one came.\n\nThe moment was extended at no additional charge. This did not include delivery. Someone would have to be home between nine and forever. At nine, the house had still been there to be home in.\n\nA doorstep remained, with a clean rectangle where the mat had kept the weather off. Rain darkened it from the edges.\n\nPlease rate your absence from one to five houses.\n\nThe narrator selected four. Five would leave no room for improvement.\n\nThe gate stood open. Someone had tied it back with a strip of blue cloth. Inside the knot the cloth was a darker blue. To see how much darker, you would have to undo the thing that kept the gate open.\n\nBelow ground, the post had softened. When the gate pulled, soil lifted on the other side and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nOne apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. The dent was softer than the rest.\n\nYour waiting is important to us. You are currently first in the orchard. Estimated waiting time: orchard.\n\nA wasp settled in the thumbprint. Its feet hardly troubled the skin. It drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand that had made the dent.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nA blackbird landed beside another apple and pulled at something underneath it. The apple moved. The bird put one foot against it. For a moment a worm held the bird and the apple together. Then it did not.\n\nThe narrator wrote acquisition of a worm concern.\n\nThe bird left during due diligence.\n\nA blade of grass released from beneath the apple stood up slowly. It was still bent near the ground.\n\nBy the gate, an empty crate kept twenty small squares of evening in its slats. Nineteen, when a leaf caught there. Then twenty again.\n\nOn the crate's end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. His margins were slats. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth on the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator had already written therefore. It crossed the word out as far as the f.\n\nIt considered pulling one thread free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe second was almost useful. It distrusted this and added fray of reference.\n\nOn the cloth tied to the gate, a seam ended halfway through a stitch. The last loop was large enough to see through. Beyond it was grass. When the cloth turned, there was sky.\n\nThe narrator preferred the orchard, very small and complete. It waited for the wind to put it back.\n\nAn apple fell.\n\nThe narrator had a joke ready about turnover, but the apple struck another apple first. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen, in case it was an insect, stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat.\n\nUnder the nail, a drop gathered at the lowest thread. It held there until the thread bent. When it fell, the thread rose a little.\n\nThe narrator wrote relief, then looked again.\n\nThe split had not closed. The thread had not come free.\n\nIt changed relief to temporary relief.\n\nThe next drop began.\n\nBy morning, someone might kneel beside the crate and lift an apple. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands now occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator gave them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. The mother peeled fruit in one long ribbon. There was somewhere in the sentence to put a knife.\n\nIt left the knife out.\n\nThe mother remained for another sentence before being removed. A smell of pastry lingered without authorization.\n\nThe narrator opened the upstairs window. The curtain moved, and a little mud fell from the lowest yellow cup.\n\nIt shut the window again.\n\nIt wrote that no one had touched anything.\n\nNow there were two things to correct.\n\nIt corrected the sentence. The mud remained.\n\nIt looked back for the mother. There was flour on her hands now. It had not put it there deliberately, but it had put it there.\n\nIt crossed out the flour. Then the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nThe narrator called this a proof of loaf.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe person could also never arrive. Morning required neither outcome.\n\nThe narrator would like someone who could stand up at the end of a paragraph.\n\nApplications remained open. Previous experience of standing preferred. Reasonable accommodations included the ground.\n\nIt added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note of that.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nA footnote explained that the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nIts wet hand caught on the place where it had crossed out stake smaller. Ink came away on its palm, reversed and unreadable.\n\nIt called this a transfer of knowledge.\n\nA draught lifted the page. It caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person in the appendix.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched a dry cloth. Bringing one corner close made the bead of water lengthen. When the cloth touched it, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nIt stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nIt wrote a helping handkerchief.\n\nThat was worse than the last one. It gave the sentence a line of its own.\n\nThe cloth had belonged to an old shirt. Along one edge were three buttonholes, cut through when someone made it into a rag. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nIt lifted the glass. The paper came with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch of the appendix remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away.\n\nThen it crossed out the sentence that required both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. They brought a foot underneath themselves. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThe gate knocked against the post. They looked toward the sound.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nIt wrote that they were making strides.\n\nOn the table, the cloth dried stiff around the ink. The narrator tried to fold the damaged hand inward. The fold passed through it.\n\nUnder the glass, the stone was still legible. The knee had become a grey edge.\n\nIt wrote blot and found.\n\nIt added a lost-property number. This gave the knee nine digits, none of them useful for standing.\n\nOutside, the loose end of the blue cloth had caught on the gate. With each pull, it tightened across a sharp place in the wood. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nThe narrator wrote succession planning.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it.\n\nThe gate pulled. The caught end came free. The strip swung out, shorter by a few threads.\n\nThe narrator reached for the pen. Its sleeve caught the glass. It caught the glass before it fell, but water spread across the sheet of improvements.\n\nIt fetched the cloth and stopped with the dry corner above the water. It turned the cloth to find an edge without any part of the hand on it.\n\nWater entered the cloth. It lifted it, moved to another edge, and did it again.\n\nKnotwithstanding lost its knot.\n\nThe narrator wrote waterproof of concept on a third sheet.\n\nThere was nowhere dry to put it.\n\nOutside, something knocked again.\n\nIt put the glass on a shelf, without scraping off the patch. It folded the cloth so the damaged hand stayed outside the fold and laid it beside the glass.\n\nA corner hung over the edge.\n\nIt moved the cloth back.\n\nAt the door, the wood had swollen against the floor. The narrator pulled until there was room to put its fingers around the edge, then stopped and moved them to the handle.\n\nThe door opened a little farther.\n\nIt thought threshold improvement.\n\nIt went out before fetching the pen.\n\nThe rain was colder at the neck than on the hands. From the doorstep, the gate looked almost closed. From beside the crate, it was open far enough for a person to pass. The lower corner rested in the soil.\n\nThe narrator lifted it by the top rail. The post moved too.\n\nIt lowered the gate.\n\nGate expectations, it thought.\n\nThrough the crate's slats it could see a branch, thicker at one end, lying in the grass. It drew the branch out.\n\nThe first time it put the branch under the gate, the thin end sank into the soil. It turned the branch and tried again. When it took its hand away, the branch rolled half a turn and stopped.\n\nBranch management.\n\nLeaving the pen inside was proving less effective than it had hoped.\n\nIt passed through the opening and came back. Its shoe struck the branch. The gate dropped against its ankle, lightly, then settled into the soil again.\n\nIt moved the branch farther beneath the gate. This took both hands. The blue cloth brushed its cheek.\n\nIt passed through twice more, watching the ground.\n\nThe branch stayed.\n\nInside, it wrote: The gate stayed open for the two times I passed through. The post moved when I lifted it.\n\nIt had written I. It went back and made the letter straighter.\n\nBeneath that it wrote provisional branch approval.\n\nOutside, the ground beneath the branch was getting wet.\n\nThe narrator kept its shoes on.\n\nIt liked that sentence.\n\nIt looked down. Both shoes were leaving water on the floor. The left lace had come undone.\n\nIt bent to tie it. Its knee met the underside of the table, more gently this time, because it remembered halfway.\n\nSole vigilance.\n\nWhen it sat up, the gate was lower.\n\nThe sentence about the two crossings remained true.\n\nIt underlined two. Outside, the branch rolled. The gate sank without knocking.\n\nThe narrator looked up when the light changed, several minutes later. The rain had thickened enough to hide the lower rail.\n\nAt the gate, the thicker end of the branch had made a hollow full of brown water.\n\nThere was a flat stone beside the post. Most of it was buried. It tried to work its fingers under the edge, but the edge went farther down than its fingers could reach.\n\nIt had a sentence about leaving no stone unturned.\n\nIt left the stone unturned.\n\nThe crate stood on firmer ground. It could put the gate on the crate. The projecting nail would be at the height of a passing shin.\n\nIt looked at the open door. The chair had four sound legs and one wet seat.\n\nThe gate grew heavier in its hand.\n\nIt lowered it into the soil and drew the branch clear of the opening.\n\nIt went through sideways, returned sideways, and caught its coat on the latch.\n\nThe coat came free when it stepped toward the gate instead of away. A blue thread remained on the metal. The coat was blue too.\n\nFor a moment it wanted to go and check the crate.\n\nBack inside, it wrote: Later, the branch sank and the gate dropped. I removed the branch. I could pass sideways. My coat caught once.\n\nIt added latch and learn, smaller.\n\nThen it looked for a hammer.\n\nThe first drawer held string, two batteries, and a key with a paper label. The writing had faded except where the string crossed it.\n\nThe second drawer stuck against its swollen runner.\n\nIt pulled. Something inside rolled to the back.\n\nDrawer conclusions, it thought.\n\nIt put one hand underneath and tried again.\n\nThe drawer came out farther than expected. Its back tipped down. The narrator caught it against its stomach. Something struck the floor behind the table.\n\nIt stood holding the drawer. The chair was wet. The table held the pages.\n\nIt lowered the drawer onto the floor.\n\nA hammer lay behind the table leg. The wooden handle had a dark oval where a thumb had rested often. Near the head, a wedge stood slightly above the end of the wood.\n\nThe narrator picked it up. The head moved against the handle.\n\nIt put it down.\n\nA striking lack of attachment.\n\nThere was a screwdriver in the drawer too. It took that to the gate.\n\nThe latch had two screws. The lower one stood out from the wood. The coat thread was caught beneath its head.\n\nThe narrator fitted the screwdriver and turned. The screw went around. It did not go in.\n\nIt tried once more, with less pressure. The head remained at the same height.\n\nScrew retained on a consultancy basis.\n\nIt pulled the screwdriver away. A little wet wood clung to the tip.\n\nThe blue thread remained under the head. It would have to remove the screw to free it whole. The latch moved when it touched the screw.\n\nIt left both there.\n\nThe coat was missing a thread whether it recovered the thread or not.\n\nBack inside, it wrote: The lower screw turned twice without going farther into the wood. The latch moved when I touched it. I have not checked the upper screw.\n\nIt began to add that the upper screw was holding everything together.\n\nIt looked through the door. From here the two screw heads were one bright mark.\n\nUpper management, it wrote.\n\nThe hammer lay across the first sentence. It moved the hammer so it could not be read as a recommendation.\n\nGetting to the door now required stepping over the tools and the drawer.\n\nIt moved the drawer against the wall and put the tools inside it. It left the drawer out of the cabinet. There was room to pass.\n\nAn open-and-shut improvement, except for the shut.\n\nIt wrote nothing.\n\nThis was easier while holding the screwdriver.\n\nIt put the screwdriver down.\n\nOutside, the latch clicked. The narrator went to the door. The gate had moved a little in the wind. There was no person beside it.\n\nFrom the threshold it could see the projecting screw, bright where the driver had rubbed it. Beyond that, the orchard. Beyond the tree, nothing it could inspect from here.\n\nIt pulled the door farther open. The bottom scraped a pale curve in the floor.\n\nDoor diligence.\n\nRain reached the nearest page. It moved the page back.\n\nThe page was the one that said improved conditions.\n\nUnderneath it, the wood was still dry.\n\nIt put its hand there while it knelt. With the other hand it worked the left shoe off, keeping the knot it had just tied. A small stone fell from the heel onto the floor.\n\nThe narrator had not noticed it at the gate.\n\nIt picked it up before putting its knee down.\n\nA sedimentary moment.\n\nIt wished it had left the pen outside.\n\nThe stone was small enough to go under the door. It pushed it into the gap with one finger, withdrew the finger, and let go of the handle.\n\nThe door stayed where it was.\n\nRain came farther in.\n\nIt moved the pages again. This time it checked underneath them. The last sheet had stuck to the table along the wet edge. It lifted the dry edge first, then stopped when the paper began to separate from itself.\n\nHeld pending a peeling, it thought.\n\nThe door pressed against the stone. A grain broke loose and rolled across the pale scrape in the floor.\n\nIt left the sheet attached and moved the pen.\n\nFrom the chair it could see the gate, the loose thread, and the rain landing where its hand had been.\n\nIt could no longer reach the door without standing up.\n\nIt reached anyway. Its fingertips stopped short of the handle. Behind it, the chair shifted onto two legs.\n\nIt sat back.\n\nA stay of ergonomic execution.\n\nThe chair settled. The narrator put both feet beneath it before standing. The stocking found the water first.\n\nAt the door it held the handle and worked the stone loose with the toe of its stocking. Grit caught in the wool. The door moved toward it, carrying a narrow ridge of water across the scrape.\n\nIt stopped the door with its shoe.\n\nThe shoe was still empty.\n\nFor once, it had put its foot in something without putting its foot in it.\n\nThat needed work. So did the door. It had one hand on the handle and the other on the frame, and for a few seconds neither received any.\n\nThen it pushed the shoe clear with its stockinged foot and pulled the door across the wet floor. The bottom caught twice. On the second pull, the latch entered its hole.\n\nThe gate disappeared behind the wood.\n\nIt stood listening. Rain ticked against the window. There was no sound it could confidently assign to the gate.\n\nOn the table, the sheet remained attached along one edge. The dry part had curled upward. Beneath the curl it could read improved con.\n\nIt left that alone too.\n\nIt took off the stocking and turned it inside out. Two grains fell onto its palm. A third stayed caught in the wool. It worked the third loose with a fingernail, then emptied its palm into the drawer, where it immediately lost sight of them among the tools.\n\nPoor grit management.\n\nThe narrator looked at the drawer.\n\nIt took the screwdriver out first.\n\nThen the hammer, holding the head and handle together. Beneath it lay a pale crescent of wood. It could have come from the handle, or the drawer. It left the crescent on the floor beside the hammer.\n\nThe two batteries rolled into the space where the hammer had been. There were batteries in both drawers. It had begun to remember only one pair.\n\nA failure of cell recollection.\n\nIt put the batteries on the floor too, apart from the wet tools.\n\nIn the near corner of the drawer was a grain it could pick up. It did. Two more lay against the runner. One stuck to its fingertip. The other went beneath its nail.\n\nThree.\n\nIt looked at the grit still in the corner. Some of that might also have come from the stocking. Some of the three might have been there before.\n\nThe narrator considered putting them back and starting again.\n\nIts bare heel was cold on the floor.\n\nIt tipped what was on its fingertip into the empty shoe, then stopped.\n\nFor deposit only, it thought.\n\nIt turned the shoe over the drawer. Something fell. It shook it once more. Nothing it could hear.\n\nThe narrator sat down and put a hand inside the shoe.\n\nThe lining was wet at the heel. Near the toe, where it could not see, one hard speck moved beneath its finger.\n\nIt worked the speck toward the opening. Twice it lost it in the seam.\n\nThe third time it came out under the nail.\n\nThere was a saucer on the shelf beside the glass. It brought the saucer down and put the speck in the middle.\n\nA grit achievement.\n\nThe speck was too small to cast a shadow in that light.\n\nIt left the saucer on a dry part of the table, with room around it. Then it reached into the shoe again."
}

{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both worse and better.",
  "text": "The sun sank behind the hills, spilling copper light across the valley like an expensive accident. The claim was denied: the depression was preexisting.\n\nThe hills declined to comment. One had a slide prepared. It contained several bullet points and a village.\n\nThe village had not received the agenda.\n\nUnder other business, a roof remained visible.\n\nA curtain hung from an upstairs window and lay against the earth. Yellow cups repeated along it, each with a blue handle. Mud filled the lowest cup. One curtain ring had opened but not let go. Beneath it the threads had drawn apart. Through one opening you could see the wall. Through the next you could see farther.\n\nThe narrator called this resilience.\n\nThe ring had no means of correcting the record. Appeals were downstairs.\n\nIn the orchard, an apple still wore the dent of a thumb that had tested it for ripeness and decided to wait. It had ripened around the injury. A wasp settled in the dent and drank. Once, it lifted a foreleg and cleaned its face.\n\nYour waiting is important to us.\n\nThe narrator began a sentence about the hand.\n\nThe wasp turned around.\n\nBy the gate stood an empty crate. On its end, someone had written GOOD in pencil. Rain had thinned the second O until a wet grain of wood crossed through it.\n\nThe narrator read GOD.\n\nA sole proprietor. He worked in mysterious crates.\n\nBelow the first O, a nail had split the wood. Whoever hammered it had stopped before the split reached the edge. The head stood proud enough to catch a sleeve. A few blue threads remained beneath it.\n\nThey were the blue of the cloth tied around the gate. They might have come from it. There were other blue things.\n\nThe narrator wrote therefore, then crossed it out as far as the f.\n\nIt considered pulling a thread free and laying it beside the cloth. Then the thread would be beside the cloth because it had put it there.\n\nIt wrote inconclothsive.\n\nThen material uncertainty.\n\nThe second was almost useful. It added fray of reference.\n\nThe gate pulled against the cloth. Soil lifted beside the post and settled back. A pale root showed, then disappeared. The gate remained open by a slightly different amount.\n\nThe narrator suggested couples carpentry.\n\nThe post was already in the ground and could not leave the session.\n\nAn apple fell against another apple. The second had been lying with its unbroken side uppermost. A sweet smell reached the gate after the sound was gone.\n\nSomething small began feeding.\n\nThe narrator could not see what. It wrote stakeholder.\n\nThen stake smaller.\n\nIt crossed this out so heavily that the paper would no longer lie flat.\n\nBy morning, someone might kneel beside the crate and lift an apple. They might turn it to find the good side and keep turning. The skin might give before they had decided. Their other hand might come underneath.\n\nThere. A promotion.\n\nBoth hands occupied, they would have to work out how to stand. Under one knee would be a stone they had not noticed while kneeling.\n\nThey could put the apple down.\n\nInstead, the narrator gave them a dead mother and a childhood in the orchard. The mother peeled fruit in one long ribbon.\n\nIt removed the mother. Flour remained on her hands.\n\nIt removed the hands.\n\nA little flour remained inside the a.\n\nA proof of loaf.\n\nIt had removed the woman more easily than the joke.\n\nThe narrator added a second stone beneath the other knee, for balance, then removed it. This was the first thing it had done entirely for the person's benefit. It made a note.\n\nThe note said: improved conditions.\n\nBeneath it, the person was still on the first stone.\n\nA footnote explained that the person was hypothetical.\n\nThat helped the narrator stand up and get a glass of water.\n\nOn its way back, it struck its knee against the table. Water ran over its fingers. It put the glass down before reaching for its knee.\n\nFor a moment it had no improvements to suggest.\n\nThen it wrote joint responsibility.\n\nThen kneegligence.\n\nThen patell me about it.\n\nThe last required a pronunciation guide. It began an explanatory footnote, encountered the person already there, and moved them to an appendix.\n\nThey remained in the same position. There was more white space around them now.\n\nA draught lifted the page. The narrator caught the corner with the glass. The bottom left a wet circle around the person.\n\nAt last, a support group.\n\nInside the circle, the ink of one hand began to spread.\n\nThe narrator fetched a cloth. When its corner touched the water, the water went in at once. The black followed more slowly.\n\nIt stopped.\n\nOn the cloth was part of the hand. On the paper was the rest. Through the glass they still appeared to meet.\n\nA helping handkerchief.\n\nIt gave that a line of its own, where nobody could miss it.\n\nThe cloth had been cut from an old shirt. Along one edge were three opened buttonholes. The narrator put a finger through one. The edge pressed a thin line into its skin.\n\nIt took its finger out.\n\nThere was enough dry cloth left to finish the job, if that was the job.\n\nIt lifted the glass. The paper came with it, held for a moment, and dropped. A patch remained stuck to the bottom. The stone was on the patch. Most of the knee was on the page.\n\nThe narrator had wanted to separate them.\n\nIt set the glass farther away and crossed out the sentence requiring both hands to hold the apple. The crossing-out went through the apple too.\n\nThe person put it down.\n\nTheir fingers stayed curved for a moment. One hand went to the grass. The other pressed against their thigh. On the first attempt, their hand slipped. On the second, they stood.\n\nThe narrator began to write that they rose.\n\nThey bent again and pulled the wet trouser cloth away from their knee.\n\nThe gate knocked. They looked toward it.\n\nThe narrator waited for them to go to it.\n\nThey went the other way.\n\nFor three steps they kept the sore leg straighter than the other. The fourth took them behind the tree. The narrator could not see whether the fifth was easier.\n\nMaking strides, it wrote.\n\nOutside, the blue cloth tightened across a sharp place in the gate. One thread parted. The next took the strain.\n\nSuccession planning.\n\nThen knotwithstanding.\n\nThe last was good enough to be worse. It put a box around it.\n\nSomething knocked again.\n\nThe narrator put the glass on a shelf without scraping off the patch. It folded the cloth so the damaged hand stayed outside the fold and laid it beside the glass.\n\nA corner hung over the edge.\n\nIt moved the cloth back.\n\nAt the door, the wood had swollen against the floor. It pulled until there was room to put its fingers around the edge, then moved them to the handle.\n\nThreshold improvement.\n\nIt went out before fetching the pen.\n\nFrom the doorstep, the gate looked almost closed. From beside the crate, it was open far enough for a person to pass. Its lower corner rested in the soil.\n\nThe narrator lifted the top rail. The post moved too.\n\nIt lowered the gate.\n\nGate expectations.\n\nThere was a branch in the grass. It put the thick end beneath the gate. The branch rolled half a turn and stopped.\n\nBranch management.\n\nLeaving the pen inside was proving less effective than it had hoped.\n\nIt passed through the opening and came back. Its shoe struck the branch. The gate dropped against its ankle, lightly, then settled into the soil.\n\nIt moved the branch farther underneath. This took both hands. The blue cloth brushed its cheek.\n\nIt passed through twice more, watching the ground.\n\nThe branch stayed.\n\nInside, it wrote: The gate stayed open for the two times I passed through. The post moved when I lifted it.\n\nIt had written I. It went back and made the letter straighter.\n\nBeneath that it wrote provisional branch approval.\n\nBy the time it had finished underlining provisional, the branch had begun to sink.\n\nThe sentence about the two crossings remained true.\n\nIt underlined two.\n\nWhen it next looked up, the gate was resting in the soil.\n\nIt went out and removed the branch. It passed sideways through the gap, returned sideways, and caught its coat on the latch. The coat came free when it stepped toward the gate instead of away.\n\nA blue thread remained on the metal.\n\nThe coat was blue too.\n\nFor a moment it wanted to check the crate.\n\nInstead it looked for a hammer.\n\nThe second drawer stuck. It pulled. The drawer came out farther than expected and tipped against its stomach. Something struck the floor.\n\nDrawer conclusions.\n\nIt lowered the drawer. Behind the table leg lay a hammer. When it picked it up, the head moved against the handle.\n\nIt put it down.\n\nA striking lack of attachment.\n\nIt took a screwdriver to the gate. The lower latch screw stood out from the wood, with the coat thread caught beneath its head. The screw turned twice without going farther in. The latch moved when the narrator touched it.\n\nBack inside, it wrote those things down. It added: I have not checked the upper screw.\n\nIt began to write that the upper screw was holding everything together.\n\nFrom here the two screw heads were one bright mark.\n\nUpper management, it wrote instead.\n\nGetting to the door now required stepping over the drawer and tools. It put the tools in the drawer and moved it against the wall. There was room to pass.\n\nAn open-and-shut improvement, except for the shut.\n\nIt wrote nothing.\n\nThis was easier while holding the screwdriver.\n\nIt put the screwdriver down.\n\nRain reached the nearest page. It moved the page back. The page said improved conditions. Underneath it, the table was still dry.\n\nIt knelt to take off a wet shoe. A small stone fell from the heel.\n\nIt picked the stone up before putting its knee down.\n\nA sedimentary moment.\n\nIt pushed the stone beneath the door. The door stayed open. Rain came farther in.\n\nIt moved the pages again. The last had stuck to the table along one edge. It lifted the dry edge, then stopped when the paper began to separate from itself.\n\nHeld pending a peeling.\n\nIt left the sheet attached and moved the pen.\n\nThen it stood, held the door, and worked the stone loose with its stockinged foot. Grit caught in the wool. The bottom of the door caught twice before the latch entered its hole.\n\nThe gate disappeared behind the wood.\n\nRain ticked against the window. There was no sound it could confidently assign to the gate.\n\nIt took off the stocking. Two grains fell onto its palm. It worked a third loose with a fingernail, then emptied its palm into the drawer, where it immediately lost sight of them among the tools.\n\nPoor grit management.\n\nIt looked at the drawer.\n\nIt took the tools out again.\n\nThree grains lay against the runner. It picked them up, then looked at the grit still in the corner. Some of that might also have come from the stocking. Some of the three might have been there before.\n\nIts bare heel was cold.\n\nIt tipped the grains into the empty shoe.\n\nFor deposit only.\n\nIt stopped.\n\nIt turned the shoe over the drawer and shook it. Something fell. On the second shake, nothing it could hear.\n\nIt sat down and put a hand inside the shoe. Near the toe, one hard speck moved beneath its finger. Twice it lost it in the seam. The third time it came out under the nail.\n\nIt brought a saucer down from the shelf and put the speck in the middle.\n\nA grit achievement.\n\nThe speck was too small to cast a shadow in that light.\n\nIt left the saucer on a dry part of the table, with room around it. Then it reached into the shoe again.\n\nIts finger found the seam. Farther along, the lining had folded into a ridge. It pressed the ridge flat. When it withdrew its hand, the ridge rose again.\n\nIt considered writing nothing found.\n\nSole searching, it thought.\n\nThe shoe still had to go on a foot.\n\nIt loosened the laces."
}