Thunder

‘Right,’ said Joe. ‘Jean-Claude says Emma's in Sevenoaks, some place called Silverhurst Drive. I've got the postcode. He says the purchaser is a Mr Alan Lane and the clone was delivered on Wednesday. His wife took one look at the contents and had a conniption apparently. They had one of those "If you think that's coming into this house, you've got another think coming" sort of conversations and the box was taped back up and moved to the garage.’

‘How does he know all this?’

‘Emma heard it all and reported it. He says the system still isn't showing a request for a return label, so he's not really sure what's happening now.’

Kim was busy with a map app, looking up the road name.

‘It'll take us about half an hour to get there, looks like.’

‘Might be a bit early to drop in, on a Sunday morning,’ said Joe, looking at his watch. ‘Breakfast first and then we'll go, shall we? Any chance of Eggs Benedict again?’ He eyed the bowl of eggs on the kitchen counter.

‘I'll ask Xavier. Don't know what he's doing, I haven't heard a peep out of him this morning.’

* * *

Xavier was having a difficult morning. The dense clouds were attenuating the signal from base and a series of large tree limbs in the signal path to the Driver's satellite dish weren't helping the reboot after his routine overnight internal maintenance. Feedback suggested it was possible that insects had built a nest in the feed horn. Whatever it was, something rendered him immobile. Rebooting, he regained movement but developed a stutter which he was sure the Drivers would notice. Rebooting for the third time his language synapses reverted to French.

‘Merde,’ he muttered, trying again.

The crash of thunder and the following flashes of lightning alarmed him. For a moment he thought he had initiated this sound and fury, but a quick scan through the geographical material he had archived reassured him that it was an entirely natural phenomenon. Finally his circuits cleared and everything was in order once again. There were no fresh downloads but Jean-Claude had signalled the Drivers had asked for Emma's co-ordinates. This was encouraging news.