"Robert Rankin - Snuff Fiction" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robert Rankin)

The man had entered the house through a hidden doorway at the back and the boy had followed him
in.
Once inside, the boy had found himself in what looked to be a laboratory, with strange specimens
suspended in tall preserving jars and much complicated apparatus of the electrical persuasion. He
crouched down behind a work bench and watched as the man made a call on a tiny wireless set,
speaking in a language that seemed to consist of squeaks and grunts. His call completed, he swung
around, pistol in hand and demanded that Doveston show himself.
Grudgingly the boy complied.
`So,' said the man, `you are an enterprising youth.'
`I'm lost, sir,' said the Doveston. `Could you tell me the way to the -railway station?'
`You are indeed lost,' said the man, in a voice that the boy described as chilling. `But now I have
found you.'
`Goodbye,' said the Doveston, turning to leave.
`The door is locked,' said the man. And it was.
`Please don't kill me,' the Doveston said.
The man smiled and put away his pistol. `I have no wish to kill you,' he replied. `On the contrary,
when I have finished with you, you will be anything but dead. You will be more alive than you can
possibly imagine.'
`I would rather just leave, if that's all right with you.'
`No,' said the man, `it's not. Now listen carefully while I explain the situation to you and then, when
I've finished, you can make up your own mind about what you do.'
`Do you mind if I smoke while I listen?'
`No, certainly, have one of mine.
The boy Doveston grinned at Mr Vaux. `I was hoping he'd say that,' he said, `because I'd never
tried a Carroll's before. I must say, however, that it was something of a let-down. The quality of the
tobacco was good, but the watermarked paper has a slightly glossy feel and burns unevenly. I was
impressed by the charcoal filter, but there is definite room for improvement there. Possibly the addition of
a cork tip such as with Craven A. I--'
But this particular discourse was cut short by the sound of Mr Vaux's slipper striking his desk. `Get
on with it!' cried Mr Vaux.
The boy got on with it.
`The man told me that he was part of an щlite group of scientists working for the government. They
had created an electronic brain that was capable of predicting future developments in technology. It
couldn't actually tell the future, because it couldn't access all the information required to do that. It
worked on a mathematical principle. If you are asked to work out what two and two make, you will say:
four. Which means that you have predicted the future. You have foretold what will happen when you add
two and two. The electronic brain works something like that. He said that it had worked out that by the
end of the century we would be almost completely reliant on machines like itself, computers, to run
society. They would be linked into almost everything. Food production, military defence,
telecommunications, transportation, hospitals, banking, whatever.
`But, he said, there would be an unavoidable design fault in the programming of these systems.
Something to do with the little date-counters inside them. And this would mean that when they reached
the year two thousand, many of them would break down. Society would then collapse, he said.'
Mr Vaux stroked at his moustachios. And if I'd had some to stroke, I'd have surely done the same.
It was fascinating stuff. Radical stuff Incredible stuff And, curiously, it also seemed as if it were familiar
stuff I felt certain that I'd heard all this before. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more absolutely
certain I felt that I'd heard all this before. Indeed that I'd read all this before.
In a comic book that the Doveston had recently lent to me.
I don't think Mr Vaux had read it though. I think he would have stopped the tale-telling sooner if he
had. I think he quite enjoyed the bit when the boy refused to submit to the brain-implant operation that