instruction:
You will be given a summary of a story. You need to create a question that can be answered from the story. You can create a question about characters, events, facts and beliefs, etc. Your question should be specific, try not to use pronouns instead of full names. As the stories are sometimes movie plots, they will contain actor names in parentheses. You should not use those names. Only use character names. Try to ask a question about all parts of the plot, not just the beginning.
question:
The story begins with an account of how geologists in the mid-1960s came to understand that the "Kiowa fault" in the state of Colorado was actually part of a larger fault system running along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains from Texas to the Canada US border. In the summer of 1973 the land east of the fault slips downward, slowly but inexorably over the next few months, until the major rivers of the region (including the Mississippi) flood the new lowlands. The process is slow enough for people to flee eastwards, though conditions become more and more hazardous as the flooding increases.
The story recounts how, during this time the various authorities such as the Federal government and the State governors, try to quell panic by invoking patriotism or, in the case of the governors, the stalwart nature of the people of the "great Southland".
However the next act of nature proves even more cataclysmic. The Gulf coast of the United States, from western Florida to Lake Pontchartrain, simply sinks below sea level. The sea floods the new lowlands from the Texas Panhandle to North Dakota. As many as 14 million people perish. The state of Oklahoma is completely lost, as are most of the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Arkansas. The Ozarks become an archipelago.
There are tales of amazing escapes mentioned in the story, and of foolishness, as for instance when the governor of Kansas decides to stand fast and is wiped out along with most of his state.
Finally the country is left divided by a new inland sea, almost as big as the Mediterranean. The economy recovers, and the climate of the inner part of the country actually improves due to the moderating effect of this large body of water. The state of Wyoming becomes "a new Riviera" while Missouri is a "second California". Minnesota loses its famously Arctic winters.
The author comments wryly on the political fallout. The states which kept some portion of their land above water eventually demand their full representation in Congress, including two Senators each for several states which exist only as slivers of land.
Trade and commerce flourish on the new waterway. Eventually the new sea can be fished to great profit. The story ends with an optimistic view of a vibrant future in which "fleets of all the world sail...where once the prairie schooner made its laborious and dusty way west!".
answer:
What happened to the governor of Kansas?

question:
Set in a small town in Edwardian England, Regiment of Women is about the relationship between two teachers at a private (and elitist) girls' school. One of them, Clare Hartill, is in her mid-thirties and runs the school in all but name, the ageing and sickly headmistress depending on her whenever a decision has to be taken concerning the school or any of its pupils. Most of the girls are devoted to Hartill and gladly suffer under her strict but charismatic rule and the loads of homework she sets them, mainly to prove to her and to themselves that they are more academically advanced than she told them they were. Hartill lives alone near the school in a small, old-fashioned flat full of books but without gas or electricity.
The other teacher is Alwynne Durand, an attractive nineteen-year-old woman without any formal training who lives with Elsbeth Loveday, her unmarried aunt and guardian. When Durand starts teaching at the school she is immediately popular with her students but also excites Hartill's attention not just because the young mistress is as enthusiastic about teaching as herself, but also because Hartill is always on the lookout for companionship. The two women become close friends, and Durand spends more and more of her spare time in Hartill's flat, occasionally not returning to her aunt's for days. The couple also travel abroad together during the summer holidays. Although Loveday and Hartill hardly ever meet, a strange kind of antagonism develops between them, each woman fighting to spend more time than they do with Alwynne Durand and to be the dominant person in Alwynne's life.
In the course of the schoolyear one of Hartill's prot g es, an unfortunate fourteen-year-old called Louise who has disappointed Hartill by failing an important exam, commits suicide by jumping from an upper floor window of the school building. The suicide is successfully hushed up, pronounced a case of accidental death, and quickly forgotten. What Hartill deliberately fails to mention, however, is that Louise's death, which happened on the night of the school play, was apparently triggered by her harsh criticism of Louise's excellent performance in the play. In the months that follow, Hartill even manages to shift the burden of guilt onto Durand's shoulders, persuading the young mistress that she ought to have detected any suicidal tendencies in Louise while giving her extra lessons.
Hartill's increasingly bizarre and offensive behaviour and her naive niece's growing dependence on her older friend call Elsbeth Loveday to action. When, on top of her shattered nerves, Alwynne Durand comes down with the flu, Loveday insists on her not returning to school for the rest of the term and on recuperating from her illness in the country instead. Alwynne agrees, if reluctantly at first, to spend some time with distant relatives she has never met before. The idyllic spring landscape she encounters after leaving town actually soothes her nerves, and Alwynne grows more and more fond of country life and the people she meets in her new surroundings.
But Elsbeth Loveday's scheme includes more than her niece's mere convalescence. As planned by her aunt, Alwynne Durand finds a confidant, and secret admirer, in thirty-year-old Roger Lumsden, a good-hearted, intelligent and handsome man who runs his own gardening business. Completely inexperienced with men except for what she has read in novels, Alwynne does not recognise her feelings for Lumsden as love, and she still looks forward to her reunion with Hartill. When she eventually returns to her home town, Lumsden follows her, proposes to her, and, naturally, is rejected. Only when Hartill, too sure of her seemingly inseparable bond with Alwynne, continues treating her badly does Alwynne wake up to reality. She sends Hartill a telegram telling her she has taken the train to the country in order to get married.
answer:
Why does Hartill immediately want to connect with Durand?

question:
The first-person narrative is told from the point of view of Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor working for a Russian family living in a suite at a German hotel. The patriarch of the family, The General, is indebted to the Frenchman de Criet and has mortgaged his property in Russia to pay only a small amount of his debt. Upon learning of the illness of his wealthy aunt, "Grandmother", he sends streams of telegrams to Moscow and awaits the news of her demise. His expected inheritance will pay his debts and gain Mademoiselle Blanche de Cominges's hand in marriage.
Alexei is hopelessly in love with Polina, the General's stepdaughter, and swears an oath of servitude to her. He told her while on a walk on the Schlangenberg (a mountain in the German town) that all she had to do was give the word and he would gladly walk off the edge and plummet to his death. This leads to her asking him to go to the town's casino and place a bet for her. He refuses at first but, when goaded and reminded of his oath of undying love and servility, he succumbs and ends up winning at the roulette table. He returns to her the winnings but she will not tell him the reason she needs money. She only laughs in his face (as she does when he professes his love) and treats him with cold indifference, if not downright malice. He only learns the details of the General's and Polina's financial state later in the story through his long-time acquaintance, Mr. Astley. Astley is a shy Englishman who seems to share Alexei's fondness of Polina. He comes from English nobility and has a good deal of money.
One day while Polina and Alexei are on a walk they see Baron and Baroness Wurmerhelm. Polina dares him to insult the aristocratic couple and he does so with little hesitation. This sets off a chain of events that details Mademoiselle Blanche's interest in the General and gets Alexei fired as tutor of the General's children. Shortly after this, Grandmother shows up and surprises the whole party of debtors and indebted. She tells them all that she knows all about the General's debt and why the Frenchman and woman are waiting around the suite day after day. She leaves the party of death-profiteers by saying that none of them are getting any of her money. She then asks Alexei to be her guide around the town famous for its healing waters and infamous for its casino where the tables are stacked with piles of gold; she wants to gamble.
After being ushered to the roulette table, she plays and wins 13,000 Friedrich's d'ors (7000-8000 roubles), a significant amount of money. After a short return to the hotel, she comes back to roulette tables and she starts to get the bug; before she leaves the town, she's lost over a hundred thousand roubles in three days.
When Alexei gets back to his room after sending Grandmother off at the railway station, he's greeted by Polina. She shows him a letter where de Criet says he has started legal proceedings to sell Generals' properties mortgaged to him, but he is returning properties worth fifty thousand roubles to General for Polina's benefit. de Criet says he feels he had fulfilled all his obligations that way. Polina tells Alexei she is de Criet's mistress and she wishes she had fifty thousand to fling at de Criet's face. Upon hearing this, Alexei runs out of the room and to the casino where he in a feverish rush of excitement wins in few hours two hundred thousand florins (100 000 francs) and becomes a rich man. When he gets back to his room and the waiting Polina, he empties his pockets full of gold (Alexei estimates the weight to some 4 kilos) and bank notes onto the bed. At first she accuses him of trying to buy her like de Criet, but then she embraces him. They fall asleep on the couch. Next day, she asks for fifty thousand roubles (25 000 francs) and when he gives it to her, she flings that money at Alexei's face and runs off to Mr. Astley (they had been secretly meeting and exchanging notes and she was supposed to meet him night before but has come by mistake to Alexei's room). He doesn't see her again.
After learning that the General wouldn't be getting his inheritance and that Prince Nilski is penniless, Mademoiselle Blanche leaves the hotel with her mother/chaperone for Paris and seduces Alexei to follow her. Alexei goes with them, and they stay together for almost a month, he allowing Mlle Blanche to spend his entire fortune on Mlle Blanche's personal expenses, carriages and horses, dinner dances and a wedding-party. After getting herself financially secured, in order to get an accepted status in the societies, Mlle Blanche unexpectedly marries the General, who has followed her to Paris.
Alexei starts to gamble to survive. One day he passes Mr. Astley on a park bench in Bad Homburg and has a talk with him. He finds out from Astley that Polina is in Switzerland and actually does love him. Astley tells that Grandmother has died and left Polina and the children financially secured. The General has died in Paris. Astley gives him some money but shows little hope that he will not use it for gambling. Alexei goes home dreaming of going to Switzerland the next day and recollects what made him win at the roulette tables in the past.
answer:
What had Alexi offered to do before Polina asked him to place a bet for her?