<div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/thumb/0/0f/Benedictcasual.jpg/400px-Benedictcasual.jpg)</div><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Character name:</strong></td><td>Eric Cavendish</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Location:</strong> </td><td>Behind a large rock</td></tr><tr><td><strong>With:</strong> </td><td> Zhùhǎo </td></tr><tr><td><strong>Doing:</strong> </td><td> Responding to orders</td></tr></tbody></table><br/><hr/><br/>"Yes, Major." The electronic voice was triggered at a thought from Eric. Several such phrases had been pre-programmed, a process which had taken a few minutes to set up initially and saved many fractions of a second each time the tool was utilized. Eric had played around with installing different versions to indicate different emotional states, but in the end it didn't seem worth the bother. Contextual clues could provide that information if necessary.<br/><br/>His attention had been split between the cyberworld and the world of dirt. In particular, Zhùhǎo's reclining form. Cycling his personality graft on at a 20% duty cycle had permitted him to appreciate her female form without taking action or voicing any comments which he had learned would be inappropriate. That experiment was immediately shelved; he de-powered the graft and returned to his default state. Eric wished to leave no opportunity for random factors, including those originating within the meat of his brain, to compromise his role in the mission. If anyone were to fail, it would not be him.<br/><br/>The decoy car rolled smoothly onto the narrow road. Eric extended his senses through the car's built-in network. It was a production model, nothing extraordinary, but another source of valuable data. His cyberspace avatar sat in a wireframe model of the car's seat. Unnecessary surfaces were eliminated from display as a waste of processor power, and so to an electronic observer he appeared to be floating down the greenlit road on a paper-thin seat with a dashboard and control pedals floating in the near vicinity.<br/><br/>"Decoy car is in motion, Major. ETA to crash site twelve seconds."<br/><br/>There was no sign of the police vehicle on any of his datafeeds.