"Carrol, Jonathan - Fish In A Barrel (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Carroll Jonathan)

flatten them in another.

Bombs away! It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Also Kropik knew something they didn't-- having entered this office, they had to
take what was there. Had to, like it or not. Some people tried to pull back or
literally run away but there were measures to deal with that. The less said the
better.

Finding the boy's file (robin's egg blue), he pulled it with a flourish out of
the cabinet and returned to his desk. He sat down and centered the file in the
middle. The boy craned forward to see, his curiosity making' the muscles in his
neck bulge. The old man gestured for him to sit in the chair facing his own. The
boy didn't move.

"Come, sit down. I have everything you want right here."

Carrothead lowered himself into the chair as if sure the moment he touched down
he would get a lightning bolt up his ass. All the puff-chested bravado of before
had disappeared. Now he was only a skinny teenager with a worried look and a dry
mouth.

The moment Kropik enjoyed most had arrived. Putting both hands down flat on the
desk he conjured his best professional expression. "Every one of your lost
memories is contained in this file. They are listed chronologically and begin
the moment you were born." He paused to let that one sink in. From decades of
experience he knew the best thing to do was not make eye contact. Having heard
this piece of information, people's eyes invariably didn't know what to do with
it. As if having suddenly been handed something burning hot, like molten lava,
the terrible heat stopped their brains.

"You mean, like, I'll remember what it was like to be born?"

Kropik nodded. "That's right."

The boy looked at the file and his brow creased. "And every other memory I ever
lost is in there? How come the file is so thin?"

"Do you work with a computer?"

"Computers suck." A dismissive sneer.

Kropik let that one pass. "Do you know what a Zip file is?" The boy looked to
see if he was joking. Kropik spread his hands apart as if to show the size of a
large fish he had caught. "On computers, you work with files. You create
information and put it into separate files. Sometimes there's too much data for
one, so you must condense it." He brought his hands slowly together till they
touched. "There's a program that creates what are called Zip files. They allow
you to crunch together a great deal of information and fit it all into one file.
When you're ready, you unzip it and have everything you need." He touched the