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Майк Ланкастер: Human.4

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Майк Ланкастер Human.4

Human.4: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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ALERT: Kyle Straker volunteered to be hypnotized at the annual community talent show, expecting the same old lame amateur acts. but when he wakes up, his world will never be the same. televisions and computers no longer work, but a strange language streams across their screens. Everyone's behaving oddly. It's as if Kyle doesn't exists. Is this nightmare a result of the hypnosis? Will Kyle wake up with a snap of fingers to roars go laughter? Or is this something much more sinister? Narrated on a set of found cassette tapes at an unspecified point in the future, is an absolutely chilling look at technology gone too far.

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"Danielini?" he whispered. "What kind of name is that?"

"Not a particularly good one," I whispered back.

I looked around at the people watching, acutely aware of just how badly this could all go for Danny if his act didn’t match up to the billing he’d just been given.

I could see Danny’s mum a couple of rows forwards of us watching the whole thing through the viewfinder of a tiny camcorder. I remember thinking how cruel it was to be filming him, and how at least I had been spared the humiliation of having my own talent show appearance filmed by my parents.

For some reason I had a sudden urge to check the crowd for Danny’s sister, but I couldn’t see her anywhere.

Maybe she was sensible and had found something more fun to do.

Like hammering nails into her feet.

Then Danny stepped on to the stage.

Chapter 4


You know sometimes you see a person you know, but there’s something different about them and you have to look again—do a double take—because you’re suddenly not certain it’s the person you thought it was. Maybe it’s a haircut that makes you suddenly uncertain, or a look on their face that you’ve never seen there before.

And often you’re absolutely right, it’s not who you thought it was, it’s just someone who looks a little like them and you’re relieved that you didn’t call out their name.

Or feel like a total ass because you did.

When Danny walked out I had the same thing happen inside my brain. I mean I knew it was Danny, but then I doubted it and had to look again.

It wasn’t just that he’d got himself a smart dinner suit that actually fitted him—although that helped. It wasn’t that his usually random-angled hair had been gelled and slicked back—although that helped too.

It was something that was both of those things, plus something else.

"He looks older," Lilly said, almost breathlessly, and Simon laughed at her comment.

He was wrong to laugh.

It was true.

Danny did look older.

Taller, too, because he’d lost his habitual slump.

And his face had an intensity to it that made him look a whole lot wiser than the kid who was the constant butt of our stupid jokes.

He stood in the middle of the stage as helpers lined up four chairs behind him. He was looking out across the audience with a confident expression that seemed spooky on a kid his age, almost as if we were seeing a glimpse of Danny as he was going to be, twenty or so years in the future.

"Good afternoon," he said calmly and commandingly. "Welcome to my demonstration of the powers of the human mind."

He unbuttoned his jacket and reached for the inside breast pocket, pulling out a brand new deck of cards. He took them from their box, cracked the seal and removed the cellophane, then mixed them up with a series of overhand shuffles.

Danny was a master with a pack of cards—he practiced card magic in front of his bedroom mirror—and I was suddenly afraid that he had bottled out of his hypnotism act in favor of some more of what he’d been doing at the talent show for the last couple of years.

"A deck of cards, new and shuffled," he said, squaring the deck in his hands. "But I only require nineteen of them."

He counted off the top nineteen cards and threw the rest over his shoulder.

"Although, actually, it’s not really nineteen cards that I require," he said, fanning the cards out in front of him so that we could only see their backs. "I need something else. Only the cards can tell me what."

He continued to fan them out, and then turned them around to the audience with a flourish.

Instead of the usual hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades there was a single letter on each card. Danny had fanned them out in such a way that there were gaps between certain cards that made the word breaks in the sentence the cards spelled out.

The cards read: I NEED FOUR VOLUNTEERS.

"Ah," Danny said, as if the cards had just solved a difficult problem for him. "I guess I need four volunteers. Any takers?"

Chapter 5


It was a good trick.

Actually it was an impressive trick, and I know some of the sleight of hand and false shuffles that Danny used to do it.

The rest of the audience thought it was pretty cool, too. There was a round of applause.

At the end of it no one had their hand up.

Danny was looking out across the sea of faces, but there were no takers.

Moments passed and still no one volunteered. It felt like the longer it went on, the less likely he was to get someone to put their hand up. I realized that I was gritting my teeth and holding my breath.

And still Danny looked around the audience, and there was a moment where the stage persona seemed on the brink of slipping.

No Danny, I thought, don’t bottle it.

It was only then that I realized my hand had raised itself above my head. I had been thinking about how maybe I should put it up, but I hadn’t got much past the initial thought, and certainly hadn’t reached a proper decision yet.

To this day I can’t remember lifting my hand.

Danny saw it and the calm returned to his features.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have TWO volunteers," he said, and that threw me. He was looking over at me and gesturing for me to join him on stage.

Then I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and realized that Lilly had her hand up too.

She caught my eye, smiled an odd kind of smile, and then shrugged.

If I’d known Lilly was going to stick her hand up, I’d never have volunteered. I only put it up because I thought it might, you know, spare a friend some embarrassment.

Still, it was too late now. I couldn’t put my hand down and pretend it had never gone up.

I saw Simon looking at me with a look like I’d grown an extra head or something.

"That’s two people my own age," Danny said as Lilly and I made our way to the front. "How about a couple of brave adults to make up the numbers?"

So there I was. There was Lilly. There was Mr Peterson—without Mr Peebles. And there was Mrs O’Donnell, an ex-teacher who served behind the counter at the Happy Shopper.

Four volunteers.

We stood there, in front of the whole village just about, and I reckon we were all wishing we had kept our hands firmly down at our sides.

I could see my parents in the crowd. My dad was smiling and pointing. He had his phone out and was taking a photo. That’s all mobile phones are good for in Millgrove. I immediately felt self-conscious.

Danny went down the line of four and welcomed us on stage and then got us to sit on four chairs, Lilly, then me, then Mrs O’Donnell, with Mr Peterson at the end.

I felt awkward, and not just because this was the same stage I’d died on as a comedian, but simply because I was next to Lilly. There’s . . . oh, it’s complicated . . . an odd dynamic . . . er . . . look, I’ll leave this for now because I’m talking about Danny.

"I want you to answer me truthfully," he said to us, but it was clear that the performance was for the sake of the gathered crowd. "It’s very important that the answers you give are absolutely honest. Can you do that?"

We sort of nodded and mumbled, unsure as to what Danny wanted.

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